Tag Archives: greenhouse

Sunshine, tulips and LandScape

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Our tulips on May 1st 2012

With May Bank holiday come and gone, now it’s time to look forward (hopefully) to the busiest month of the gardening season. The weather has been some sunshine but mostly showers so far, it rained most of the days and the lawn grass is competing with the weeds to overtake the berry bushes… I keep scaring the fat pigeons who think that the tiny showing of spring onions and carrots belong to them. All of my plants are still inside, either in the house or in a green house, but I live in hope!

Finesse strawberry plants potted up

There have been a few lovely surprises – our tulips are blossoming in the front lawn, a few gladioli pushed through and the lilies look healthy promising flowers soon. AND I finally got my strawberry plants from DT Brown. They are of ever-bearing variety called Finesse. I have 10 of them now waiting to be planted out (must not forget to cut off any flowers that appear before the end of May as supposedly it’ll help with better harvest for the rest of the season!).

Daughter's secret garden

My 5 year old daughter also has her little secret garden on a window sill. On 2nd May she sowed some sunflowers, French beans and dwarf beans Hestia and now she is anxiously checking every morning if anything has appeared in those pot noodle pots!

I also discovered a new magazine with a few of my favourite things together, it was launched just in April with a slogan “Life at nature’s pace”. According to a publicity release, the magazine’s editorial content will be based around the growing seasons and “will celebrate the joy of the garden, simple seasonal kitchen food, traditional British crafts and the wonder of nature and the countryside.”

LandScape launch issue cover

Take a peek at their website – landscapemagazine.co.uk . They have already posted some craft projects and recipes from the launch issue and some information about to expect in their next issue which will be on sale from June 13th. I must mention that they are bi-monthly for now and are welcoming all ideas and suggestions for what people would like to read about in their issues. Their asparagus and chorizo tart looks yummy and the simple flower arrangements with freesias are lovely!

Apparently they have a similar magazine in Germany – http://www.landlust.de – and it is quite popular over there. Maybe I should subscribe to a German version instead to brush up my very rusty German? Now that’s a thought…

Seedy business

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The only survivors from the first batch sown in March 2012

As I have previously reported, my seedlings sown in mid-March, were all gloriously burnt in my mini-greenhouse, thanks to fact that I had forgotten to unzip it on several occasions in sunny weather. Well, I say it is a learning curve for me as this is my first ever “growing from seed” season (the learning curve mainly includes trying to remember to unzip the flipping thing in the morning if the day promises to be sunny, and then not to forget to zip up the flipping thing again in the evening before closing the curtains on it!).

Only 6 plants managed to survive out of that first lot, but they still look battered and … well, tiny. Their counterparts in gardens centres are at least five times larger, if not all ten! Oh well, live and learn, they say (hopefully I will learn though!)

Last week on April 18th, I sowed the second batch, more of the same – turnip “Snowball”, tomatoes “Alicante” and some mixed lettuce. Amazingly the turnips and lettuce are showing up already.  Lettuce is usually fast anyway, but these same turnips took nearly a month to show up when they were first sowed mid-March. This time it took them literally 4 days to come out, now that’s fast! I am always amazed at how this tiny seed can tell the difference between what time of the year it is! All the seeds will be growing like crazy from now till about mid-July and then their growth will start slowing down again. So if you are thinking of growing something from seed, now is the time to try!

Lots of pouring rain forecasted for this week again, so not much work to be done in the garden. Maybe I will find a short window of dry weather to sow direct some carrots, parsnips and beetroots sometime this week.  The main goal though is to keep those turnips alive – just for the fun of it!