Saturday 26 March 2011

Busy Busy Busy

Eddie and I have had a week off together this week - aaaah, bliss. And what great weather for it! Of course, we've taken the opportunity to catch up with everything in the garden and the allotment, which has meant a pretty busy week!

I've sown all my seeds for March at last - there's just some chard, corn, squashes and beans left to sow in a few weeks' time. I've sown purple sprouting broccoli, calabrese, swedes (Angela and Marian), sprouts (Evesham Special), spring cabbage (Offenham), courgettes (Astia F1), squashes (Sweet Dumpling, Butternut and Crown Prince), plus summer savory, catnip, rosemary, tarragon, sage, Thai basil, red basil, and dozens of marigolds, poppies, poached-egg plant and cornflowers. And some more Angelle tomatoes to replace the seedlings that we lost.
My seed collection is getting a bit silly. Am I the only one that accumulates tons of half-packets of seeds past their use-by date? I don't want to just throw them away and I don't want to use them in case they don't work! I've tried to thin them out a bit this year but my seed drawer still looks like this:

It's sorted into families: peas and beans, flowers (annual and perennial!), herbs (annual and perennial), tomatoes and peppers, brassicas, curcubits, salad veg, and miscellaneous! And I keep two big bags of silica gel in there to keep moisture low - I don't know if it does any good but it seemed worth a try.

Also, on the plot, we've dug several beds over and planted our onions (Stuttgarter Giant, in an effort to get some decent sized bulbs this year!), shallots (Picasso) and garlic (French Cledor), and sown parsnips (White Gem, which always do really well for me).

And it's not just us that have been busy - there are plenty of signs of life appearing on the allotment too. We have radish seedlings...
Spinach seedlings...
Broad bean shoots...
And look!
Asparagus! In March! We usually don't see it until the first or second week of April. I'm very excited!

The pond is full of frogspawn...
And the purple sprouting broccoli is finally sprouting...
Ha! I want to say spring is definitely here, but 'British Summer Time' begins tomorrow!

3 comments:

Monica said...

Your garden is truly inspiring - the asparagus alone! Love your seedbox, though. Mine is getting there... I have a file folder of seeds that's starting to bulge. I never through away seeds. In fact, I accumulated two more packets today - yellow onions and spring onions. I was in the mood!

Paul and Melanie said...

That looks like a busy week! We saw our first asparagus at the weekend too, only one spear but it's a start!
I hord seeds too, very rarely throw things away (although only been growing for 4 years) although had my first complete failure this year with some iceberg so perhaps it's time to start getting rid of the older ones....

Nome said...

Monica - high praise indeed, thank you! Asparagus is dead easy, you just need patience...

Paul - if that's your first complete failure you're doing well!

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