Shiny Greenhouse etc.

it’s a really beautiful day today, if a little chilly, but it encouraged me out into the garden. I love being out in my garden and doing things to make it look nice. I knew one of the things I had to do was to finish cleaning the green house, so I got on with that first. Now it’s not only is it shiny on the outside…..

…..it’s (mostly) shiny on the inside. Which means I can actually see through the glass 🙂

I did some cutting back and sweeping up

and tidied up the rose arch.

I took a sneaky peak at the seeds I sowed about three weeks ago and there’s signs of life.

I love to see things growing, I find it such a blessing, I can’t wait to sow some more 🙂

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Tomatos and Chillies

Over the last month, as you know, I’ve been starting to sow my seeds.
I went down to water them today and not only did I have cayenne chillies and aubergines sprouting which I knew about

….I have a Roma tomato

and a birds eye chilli as well!

I just love it when everything starts growing 🙂

Seed trays

If you are like me and it is late winter where you are, you will be thinking about sowing your seed, whether flowers or veggies. Therefore how about re-using the meat or veg trays that sometimes are unavoidable when you are shopping.

I’ve got some here, and some seed trays I made a while ago with wood from a broken fence panel. I also re-use trays that I occasionally get from the garden centre or nursery when buying plants.

It does show that gardening doesn’t have to be unnecessarily expensive, especially when you can get free seeds like I showed you in my last blog post! 🙂

Although, if anyone has any solutions on what can be turned into cloches I’d be greatful!

 

Seeds

Oh yes, it’s that time of year when I review my seeds and start planning what I’m going to sow. I just get itchy fingers, only put off by the cold weather!

I had some packets left from last year and bought a couple of magazines which had free seeds with them so I have a good amount of seed to go on with. All I need is some winter sunshine to get me out to prepare for sowing! 🙂

One of My Favourite Times of Year!

Yes, it’s one of my favourite times of year. I can see everything is brightening up. The particular bird song, new shoots peeping through the soil, blossom coming out, so it’s time to get active in the green house. My fingers get itchy this time of year and I get the impulse to grow things! I’m not one for gardening in the cold so tidying up is being done now as well. 🙂

I’ve had a sort out in my green house and moved a few things round and it’s now set for action.

Today I sowed some tomatoes, cucumbers and small red peppers

I have made a gardening journal from an old book, that I try and keep a record of how things go in my garden as well as hints and tips for me to refer to.

Here’s a sample page. 🙂

The Garden – New Year, New Start!

It’s time to start getting the garden ready for this years growing, so I bought myself a magazine for a bit of encouragement. Free seeds are always good, if you get what you like, especially if your spare seeds got nibbled up by vermin last year! I was very lucky with my free seeds, they were the sort of varieties I might have bought myself and there are plenty of hints and tips as well.

I’m hoping it will help me have a spring in my step for going out to prepare for spring in the February garden 🙂

 

In the garden at last!

A quick over view of  what’s been happening in our garden.

It’s amazing how much chaos can be created when sorting the greenhouse inside and out.

A nice tidy lawn, so as not to get wet when hanging out the washing.

The chickens have found their favourite place.

We have enclosed the compost heaps, as the chickens liked to go in and scrape around sending it all out on the lawn.

And, for the finale, I have an aubergine! 🙂

Weeding and planting out

Today, more quite urgent jobs….weeding the spinach and chard before they got swallowed up by weeds….

….and planting out my beetroot and parsnips as I experimented with sowing them in modules this year in the green house to see how that works. I don’t know if it is because we live next to a meadow but the weeds grow thick and fast, so as far as finding the seedlings, it can be a bit of a joke!! So they’ve been planted out today and they look fine…..

…and also there’s no thining out, I’ll keep you posted!

Enjoying gardening!

I re-sowed my chillis, peppers and aubergines today because there was no sign of shoots from my earlier sowings. I’ve also sown my tomatos (Roma and Genovese), and broad beans (Bunyards Exhibition and Dreadnought). I love home grown tomatos and broad beans so I wait now with anticipation for the first shoots!

Yummy broad beans!

I’ve also been preparing my roses for their new growth and so finished them off today with a good mulch of our home made compost. The mesh around the plants is to stop the rabbits eating the new shoots!

I dug over one of last years potato bed to make sure it was clear of potatoes aswell, things are starting to look good!

Sorting Seeds

Had a good day today getting some things done in the garden and sorting the seeds to see what we have and what we need to buy and then sorting them into when we need to sow them.

I would like to save more of my own seeds as obviously in some cases it would save alot of money. We got some free seeds last year from the BBC’s big dig, the green beans ‘blue lake’ did particularly well and we saved some of the beans and they have dried so we have free seeds this year of some really good beans.

They are lovely to handle actually and it’s so satisfying to produce things yourself. I think I might try saving some broad beans next as they are quite expensive to buy.