Through the Garden Gate--February 2024

The days are lengthening now which means more gardening time, but not when it's been raining as much as it has  in February. We wonder if it will ever stop, will we get some sunny weather soon?

There have been a few dry days when I've dashed out to get some work done. There's often a decision to make  "shall we go to the allotment? or stay home and do the garden?". It's which ever needs the most work doing. The damp, cold weather isn't good for me, it gets into my bones, but I try to keep going for the exercise. 

So in the garden I've started tidying up the beds. February is when I cut down the grasses. They were all very straw like, some of them still good looking but the new growth was appearing at the base so the old stems had to be cut back. 

The taller grasses had quite thick stems and could just be snapped off. I thought it would be easier than using the secateurs, but I'm not sure. Either way was hard on my arthritic hands. Last weekend I cut back the dead perennial plants foliage. The garden is looking a bit flat now with lots of the dead grass stems still lying around. They soon blow away or the birds take them for nest building. 

I can see now that the garden is slowly waking up as new shoots start to appear. The snowdrops have mostly all gone over but new spots of colour can be seen. Coming into flower now are crocuses, tete a tete daffodils, primroses and pulmonaria. 

The Hellebores have been in flower for a few weeks and are looking lovely. Hellebores 'Anna's Red' is a dark red and standing quite tall. It has big flowers but not many of them, whilst the other hellebores are low clumps of paler, smaller flowers. 

The patio is bright with pots of daffodils and the tulips pots should make a good show, that will be quite a while yet, but it's something to look forward to.

Well that was February in the garden, I'm hoping for some good weather in March, there will be much to do.

I am linking this post to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post.

Stormy weather and winter jobs

 It's quiet on the allotments at the moment, we hardly ever see anyone else down there. Not surprising, with all the storms and snow we've had in the last few weeks it's not been fit to do any work. We've managed to do a few short sessions since the start of the year, taking advantage of the odd fine weather day. Fortunately in the autumn we got most beds cleared and mulched and the greenhouses cleaned out.

I don't do any planting in the ground yet and I don't usually start sowing seeds in warmth until early March. It's surprising though how many other jobs we find need doing. This time of year is a good time to tackle repairs and  maintenance jobs. The high winds blew over some of the fencing so that needed fixing back in place, the compost bins need  repairs to some rotting wood, and the heavy rain upset our drainage system. 

An old land drain runs down onto our allotment from the plot above and when we took the plot on years ago Richard put a drain in place to divert the water down, into the pond, onto the lane outside and into the woods. It works well most of the time but after any really heavy rain the drain overflows and needs clearing of silt.  Well we've had our share of heavy rain in the last few weeks and last week after more rain there was water running down the paths and it had also got into the shed. So Richard has had quite a job on trying to sort out the blocked drain. This week he thinks it's sorted at last but we are left with a very muddy mess.

One job I didn't get done in the autumn was pruning the fruit bushes and that's what I have been doing recently. It's taking me longer than I thought to get it done. I have to work at a slow pace because  the pruning aggravates my arthritic hands and bending and shoveling compost hurts my back. After I've pruned the fruit I've been giving them a sprinkling of chicken manure pellets and a mulch of home made compost. Nearly done now, just have the blueberries to do. Those I mulch with the shredded branches of our Christmas tree for the acidity. The rhubarb is growing fast, it's pink shoots seem to increase so quickly. Every time we visit the plot it seems to have grown much bigger.

Finding the shed floor covered in water I had to sweep it out, but it reminded me that the shed needs it's annual clean out. It needs a fine day to do this so I can move the contents of the shed outside before I can give it a good clean out. This is my least favourite job as I never know what wildlife I will find once I start. For the time being I can put that job off, but I really want to get it done soon so I can have a clean start to the growing season. What we need is some drier weather then we can really get a move on.

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