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.

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.

Through the garden gate--November

The garden is slowly settling down for the winter. As I look around there is still colour to be found, from stems, leaves starting to go over and flowers still struggling on. There were some amazing leaf colours from trees which I gazed on briefly only for them to have blown away a few days later.

I have done an autumn tidy up. Just a little one as I like to leave a lot for the wildlife over the winter. But the garden looks better for it. I love to see the seed heads of plants gone over, a reminder of their summer display.

There are still some plants which are making an attempt at flowering again, little flashes of colours amongst the foliage-- a bit of blue lavender and campanula, pink geranium and as for the Rudbekias, well they are still going strong as is the fuchsia in the front garden. The grasses are looking good, this time of year they give some welcome colour and interest to the garden borders.

I'm feeding the birds most days now and they are often to be seen perched on the fence in the morning waiting for their food. In the back garden there are groups of starlings, pigeons, doves and magpies with the occasional blackbird. In the front garden the sparrows and blue tits are active in the shrubs. 

I bought some white hellebores this week to make some Christmas pot displays on the garden bench, they seem to be becoming a popular plant for this time of year. They are lovely.

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

Garden calling

The garden has been calling me for a week or two now. But I have been neglecting it and giving all the attention to the allotment. Not that this time of year and the current weather conditions are really gardening weather. But a gardener will always find something that needs to be done. Having spent most of January doing jobs around the allotment I decided that I needed to give some time to the garden. The garden does tend to take second place to the allotment, but it's good to see that it can look after itself for a lot of the time.

In the autumn I cut back some of the very messy looking dead plants and left the rest--the grasses and seed heads, to give some interest through the winter and provide homes for insects and food for the birds  I decided that now was the time to finally cut back these plants and get ready for spring. I was glad to cut the grasses down, there were bits of dried grass blowing about all over the garden. Not sure if that was the result of the winter storms or Holly the cat who likes to roll about in them. Holly supervised as I worked and was probably a bit miffed that I had destroyed her playground. The birds might feel a bit more secure now that she can't hide behind clumps of plants as she likes to do, ready to pounce.

The garden looks a bit flat now, but soon new shoots will be appearing and the empty areas of the borders will fill up. As I cut back I discovered some treasures-- snowdrops, narcissi, crocus. I also found a lovely pink hellebore flowering for the first time since I bought it from a charity plant stall two years ago. The  hamamelis, otherwise known as witch hazel is now flowering. It's yellow spidery flowers are a welcome bit of colour at this time of year.  I  potted up some tete a tete narcissi into small pots to display on the garden table.  These can  be seen from the house and look brighter every day as a few more flowers open up.

As I worked on the borders, Richard dug out some compost from the compost bins.  He managed to fill an old dustbin. My next job after I have finished clearing all the borders of debris will be to mulch the borders with compost or leaf mould, but I will need more than a dustbin full of compost for that.