Slow progress in the garden

The days are starting to get a little longer. It's coming lighter in the mornings and staying light for a little longer in the evening. The garden can look a bit drab and dreary at this time of year, but as time goes on plants are starting to emerge. Snowdrops are flowering, and other bulbs are pushing their way through the soil. 

The witch hazel has been in flower for a few weeks now. Next to it is a yellow stemmed dogwood and behind the witch hazel clustered around the base of the silver birch are a group of cyclamen. 

I planted these the first winter after we moved here and were making a new garden.  They seem to increase in number every year. Also in this area of the garden, the hellebores are starting to flower. This corner of the garden is definitely a winter garden, which was planned so we could see it from the house windows during the winter. Spring is not far off.

I'm trying to get back into doing some gardening work whenever the weather is good enough to go outside.  But with the awful cold,windy and rainy days we are having at the moment, that's not very often. I also have to divide my time between the garden and the allotment. To get my body back into doing the physical work of gardening I have just been doing half an hour or an hour at a time. I've been cutting back the dead flower stems and grasses in the borders. I removed the leaves from the hellebores to expose the flowers. On the little woodland/wildlife garden after clearing the debris I have put a layer of bark chips down. It looks quite good and it shows up the snowdrops and cyclamen nicely.

 

The crab apple tree produced lots of fruit in the autumn and made a beautiful display. In the last few  weeks the fruit has attracted interest from the birds, especially the blackbirds.  We have seen as many as four at a time pecking at the fruit. A lot of the fruit fell off onto the ground over the last few months and has made the patio a bit messy so I'm hoping that when the birds have taken all the fruit from the tree itself they will start on the fallen fruit.

I feel I'm making slow progress in the garden, but Spring is not far off and seeing all the new growth appearing makes me think of the better days yet to come.

Some cold gardening days

It's been so cold recently I haven't wanted to go outside for too long. So garden and allotment work has been limited to short spells with lots of layers of clothing. But so much needs to be done as we move further into February.  

On the allotment we have been sorting out the storage shed. Last year, late summer the roof caved in and as the whole structure has been needing some attention for a while, it was now time to do something about it. So over the autumn and winter Richard has been working on the roof, the sides and the floor. It's almost a new shed now. It was a good opportunity to sort out all the stuff we had been storing in there. All the things we'd saved because they might be useful, but they never were. So along with lengths of rotting wood, metal and plastic items have been disposed of, leaving much more room in this storage area. We will not be hoarding things again, I hope.

The weather although very cold has been quite dry recently and the allotment is looking much better now it's not as wet and muddy. I've nearly finished getting the beds ready. This week I pulled up  the few remaining cabbages, which are not very big but might make a meal. I left the kale in as it sometimes starts growing again in the spring. Richard raked up the compost and manure in the bins and there should be enough rotted manure to finish the beds.

 I went to the garden centre last week and bought seed potatoes and onion sets. A nice indoor garden job was to start chitting the potatoes. I bought Rocket, a first early which I've grown before and always had good crops. Also I bought Charlotte which is a good popular salad potato.

The onion sets I planted in trays in modules, varieties are Sturon, Centurion and Banana. These are now in the allotment greenhouse. I grew Banana onions for the first time last year and they did really well. Chitting potatoes and planting the onion sets are usually the first jobs I do so I feel I've now made a start to the new season.

I  had a tidy up in the garden shed, sorted out my seed box and ordered what I need for this year in vegetable and flower seeds. The pots and propagators are all ready now for me to start sowing. I'll be sowing broad beans and sweet peas in the next day or two, which I will do in pots then move them to the greenhouse. I don't usually start any other seed sowing until the beginning of March. Then things will get really busy. 

The garden is looking quite messy with grass bits all over the place. So I have started clearing debris from the beds and cutting back the grasses. I quite enjoy cutting back and gathering up bundles of plant rubbish and seeing the flower beds starting to look better. I can see plants emerging and then I try to remember what they are. There are more bulbs coming through and some unexpected ones, I remember that I planted more last spring. It's nice to get surprises like that as I work round the garden.

Waiting

Today was the sort of day to tempt you outside to do some gardening or go to the allotment. The snow had cleared and the sun was shining, it looked beautiful outside.  But I knew better, the wind  was howling and it was bitterly cold. We needed to go to the allotment though, not to work but to feed the cat and take some kitchen waste for the compost bin.

We checked the crops, some of the purple sprouting broccoli needed tying up to a stake. The wind had blown some wooden frames down onto the fruit bushes and while we were there some long planks of wood blew down across the path. Definitely not a safe place to be on a day like this!

I'm longing to get stuck in and do some work at the allotment especially our new one, plot 8. The beds are all looking very tidy and ready for us to start work. But it will all have to wait for better weather.

Winter salad growing

As the weather has turned colder and growing slowed down, I have moved my salad growing into the cold frame. I sowed some Sarah Raven winter salad mix a week or two ago and am pleased to see they have germinated.  I also planted some  seedlings of a frilly leaf mix bought from the garden centre.

 In the garden beds the red salad bowl lettuce is still growing well and the mustard is enormous. I tend to pick the smaller leaves as they look more attractive in a salad, but I think the larger ones are more peppery.  These have kept growing all summer, I keep wondering how much longer they will all last. I'm sure the cold will get to them soon and they will just flop. There is still plenty of watercress and just one small lettuce which I think is a butterhead variety.  Indoors I have started growing pea shoots again.  I think it's time to check out the garden centre to what salad leaves I can grow through the winter.

The only thing to do is go out for a walk

We're having some pretty cold weather at the moment, but fortunately where I live we haven't had much in the way of snow to disrupt transport and getting out and about. What little we had last weekend has now gone.

We have had some really sunny, but very cold days. Days which deceive you into thinking it's really OK outside until you go out to do something like putting rubbish in the bin or feeding the birds and then you realise how cold it is.

 

On these really cold, sunny days I've often thought how inviting the garden looks and how I would love to be outside doing some gardening. But of course the ground is frozen solid, so I can't do any work out there. I get a bit restless when the weather is dry, but I can't do any gardening.  Sometimes staying indoors and keeping warm isn't enough for me. I need to be outside in open spaces. Today was one of those days, and the only thing to do when this restlessness hits me is to go out for a walk.

It's amazing what half an hour or so of walking can do to calm your mind and lift your spirits.