Through the garden gate--February

I decided to make a start on clearing the garden borders a couple of weeks ago. Although the wildlife might still need the seed heads and protection from the fallen leaves, if I left it all until later in the Spring there would be just too much work for me cope with.  We have a big garden so I work on a section at a time. I haven't got very far with it yet, but it's a start and once I 've got started I'm always very keen to keep up with it. So I have been down on my hands and knees with my hand rake, clearing away all the fallen leaves and debris.

After all the weather warnings about storm Doris, we survived with no damage to the garden (I haven't checked the allotment yet!), just a few more twigs and dead grasses blown about the garden.

The garden is gradually waking up, and clumps of colour are appearing in the beds. The snowdrops will soon be gone over and are now being replaced by crocuses and tete a tete daffodils. The crocuses get pecked at by the birds but provide welcome colour in February.  I love the mini daffodils which are starting to flower now.  They will last quite a few weeks. There are hellebores too which also last for a while.

One spot of colour I have been  enjoying this month is the witch hazel. Its yellow flowers start to open towards the end of January and continue through February. Its good to have some winter flowering shrubs.

The woodland garden is looking good now. Its best time of year is from now until about May or June. Once the tree comes into full leaf it becomes quite shady, but now the bulbs are carpeting the ground underneath. It's an out of the way place, so I have to make a point of going there. At the moment I usually pop up there every day, I don't want to miss any new flowers coming through.

This month I am linking to Sarah at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post.

Slowly

Slowly things are starting to happen down on the plot. For a few weeks there's not been much going on and I've tidied up as much as I can, in readiness for the Spring. I've enjoyed pottering about, there's always something to be done.  It's good to be down there, it's a good place to switch off from things at home, or think things out.

We have just a few little areas with bulbs and flowers and now we can see there's new growth. The spring bulbs and primroses are gradually starting to come through.They will soon be seen as little splashes of brightness.

The rhubarb is growing and there are buds on the fruit bushes. The strawberry tubs were looking a mess, they were full of leaves from the tree which overhangs the tubs. I removed the leaves, cut back the old leaves from the plants and got rid of the straw left over from the summer. I can now see the new growth and today I put a layer of compost around the plants. I have some new plants in the cold frame which are from the runners. I'm thinking of planting some of these up in troughs to put in the greenhouse for an early crop. 

Once my seed potatoes and onion sets arrived I felt things were really starting to happen. The potatoes  are now chitting in the back bedroom and the onion sets have been planted in cell trays to start them off. 

My seed order arrived too. There's always the dilemma of when  to start sowing seeds. My greenhouse is unheated and in the last couple of weeks I have started off chillies, sweet peppers, tomatoes, leeks, lettuce, and broad beans. The chillies and tomatoes I brought home to keep in warmer temperatures. This week the chillies, tomatoes and lettuce seedlings have started to come through. As usual it is so exciting to see those first seedlings germinated. 

And so little by little things are getting done. Soon in March there will be the mad rush of more seed sowing and planting. But in the meantime I am enjoying slowly pottering about.

Snowdrop time

It's that time of year when the snowdrops start to appear. They pop up all over the place. There are drifts of them in our local park. Down the lane where we walk every morning we see clumps of them peeping out from the garden of the house on the corner.  There are more clumps which have escaped into the hedgerow along the lane. I have some in the garden and at the allotment and every year I plant a few more in the hope of getting a lovely display.

The snowdrop seems to be loved by so many people.  For me they are a sign that life goes on, they appear at a dark time of year, one of the first flowers of the year and a promise of more to come. They grow, they flower, they die down, they have a rest then they come back again. I suppose that's true for many more flowers, but the snowdrop comes to life at a time of year which is quite gloomy It's a reminder of that hope which we so often need at this time of the year, a promise that Spring isn't too far off.

It's the start of the growing season. As we come out of the darkness of winter, more plants are coming to life and we can look forward to more colour in our gardens and in the countryside. Soon we can start work in our gardens and allotments--some of us have started already!

Into a dark world

a snowdrop comes

a blessing

of hope and peace

carrying within it

a green heart

symbol of God's renewing love

Through the garden gate in January

There's not a lot you can do in the garden in January and being such a long, dull, dark and dreary month, if you like to be out gardening it can be quite depressing.

But I find signs of hope as I wander around. The snowdrops are peeping through the soil now, so I know it won't be long before they are in flower. Walking around the garden I can also see the crocus and daffodils poking through the soil. Soon there will be little clumps of colour, it's something to look forward to.

I like to plant up pots of bulbs as well as having them in the garden borders. So I went off to the garden centre recently and bought little pots of snowdrops and  crocus to plant up. They will go on the garden table or potting benches.

I did some tidying up in the woodland garden last week.  It gets full of leaves from the lime tree, and although they do provide a good mulch,there are lots of little bulbs in the ground which get hidden. So I cleared the leaves away from the areas where the bulbs are coming through so that we will get a good display in a few weeks. There's also a hellebore plant which has big buds on now and will be in flower soon. I cut off the leaves to expose the flower buds. Hellebores are quite hardy and can manage without the protection of their big leaves which hide the flowers.

Around the garden borders there are still a lot of leaves, debris, dead plants and seedheads. I will gradually clear these over the next few weeks to get ready for spring.

Richard has been doing repairs to paths and fences over the last week or two. In the woodland garden he made a new fence panel to replace one which had blown down and fallen to pieces in the bad weather.  The wooden path through the woodland area was rotting  and he has repaired that too. Another path through the garden down to the drive was breaking up, so he has redone that with gravel. It looks really good and is much easier to walk on now.

So although January may seem like a month where there is not much to do in the garden, we have been keeping ourselves busy. What about you?

This monthly post is  linking to 'Through the garden gate' on Sarah's blog Down by the Sea

A few little jobs

On Saturday I popped down to the allotment  to do a couple of jobs whilst Richard was busy in the garden doing repairs to the fence. I went just to fill up the bird feeders, pull some leeks and the last of the cabbages. But once I was there, I decided to hoe and tidy the beds where I had been pulling up the veg. Then I decided to give the leeks a boost with some chicken manure pellets. I also noticed that the purple sprouting broccoli needed staking so I sorted that out too. There are always jobs to be done even in the winter.

When I arrived at the allotment site there was a pile of bark shreddings on the car park which had been left for the allotment people to take. I was quite pleased about that as I had been wanting to renew the bark mulch which I had put down on the path through the woodland wildlife area at the top of our plot.

The woodland wildlife area was originally made as a play area and den for the grandchildren. But they have grown a little older and have lost interest  in the allotment. Not me though, I love this little space. There is a bug hotel, a nest box on the big sycamore tree and shade and woodland loving plants. There's an old bench at the top, where it's good to sit and look down on the allotment. I found that putting the bark down has helped to suppress the weeds and it looks good too.

So another job I decided to do was to take a couple of barrow loads of bark from the pile on the car park. We both returned on Sunday to continue with the work, Richard barrowing the bark whilst I did a bit of tidying up and then spreading out the bark. The woodland garden is looking much better now.

Turning the compost bin

One of our first jobs of the New Year on the allotment was to turn the compost. We have six compost bins. One is for leaves and two of them are manure bins. We used to have a good supply of manure delivered to the allotments, but that source has now come to an end. We may have to look elsewhere.

The other three bins are for compost. One bin is for current use for all our garden and kitchen waste. The middle bin is for compost which is rotting down and not being added to. The third bin is pure well rotted compost ready to be used.  That's the system.

We turn our heap about once a month with a fork to allow air to circulate.  We find that the stuff rots down quite quickly and within about 6 to 12  months we have some fairly decent compost ready to be used.

As the first bin was quite full Richard decided to turn it into the middle bin. I let him get on with it. It's quite a strenuous job. The compost looks good but still has woody bits in it. That bin will now be left to rot down without any more stuff being added to it.

It didn't take me long to start filling up the empty bin with compostable waste.  We bring kitchen waste from home, fruit and vegetable peelings as well as cardboard tubes, shredded paper and newspaper. Also added is anything which will rot down from the garden or allotment. Grass cuttings and dead plant material. No perennial weeds, although I do add nettle leaves( no roots) which are good for making compost.

Comfrey leaves can be added too if I'm not using it to make comfrey feed. There is a big clump of comfrey on the plot as well as plenty of it growing outside on the lane. It's a plant which grows big and can take over if not controlled. But it's brilliant for feeding crops especially tomatoes. Woody plant material takes a lot longer to rot down so is not always a good thing to put on the compost heap, but I always put some twigs at the base of the bin when I am starting a new one. It allows air to circulate.

I never fail to get excited about making compost. To me there is something really magical about putting rubbish in a bin or on a heap and then months later to dig out a lovely crumbly mixture to put on my garden or allotment beds.

Allotment catch up

We went to the allotment three times in the last week. That's quite a lot for January. But we were making the most of fine weather to get the last of the beds cleared, weeded and mulched. It was good to get down there, the days are very dreary in January and to get out in the fresh air and do some exercise in the form of hoeing, shovelling and barrowing manure and compost made us feel much better.

It's very quiet down the allotments at the moment, not many people about. Some we won't see yet until March when the growing season starts again. This time of year though, is a good time to catch up on maintenance jobs. Like mending fences, making new beds, sorting out a new allotment.

The birds were glad to see us, we hadn't filled up the feeders for a while.  We have probably now refilled them three times in the last week.

There's always something to do on the allotment, but at this time of year there isn't the rush to get seeds sown or plants in the ground or the feeling that there is so much to do we'll never get through all the jobs. So we can take our time, make the most of leisurely visits to the plot and think about this year's growing plan.