The Garden Greenhouse

Just thought I'd give a bit of a summary as to what is happening in our garden greenhouse. If you read Martyn's blog you may already know about some of our recent acquisitions so bear with me.

You may remember our peach/nectarine mix up. Thompson and Morgan sent us a peach tree - Avalon Pride - instead of the nectarine - Fantasia that we ordered. We picked eight fresh peaches from it last year so weren't really complaining - who would - when we asked T&M if there had been a mistake or whether we had acquired a fuzzy nectarine. Anyway the result was a promise to shop out a nectarine this year. It's arrival caused a bit of concern as the delivery man said he had 'found' it in the back of his van where it had apparently been languishing for over a week. The arrival of the nectarine was closely followed by the arrival of an apricot tree - Flavourcot that we ordered last year.

Both of these are destined to be grown in pots in the garden rather than risk the precious fruit on the plot. So each had been potted into a large pot both of which will stay in the greenhouse for a spell of convalescence after the trauma of transportation - thankfully the buds of the nectarine are showing signs of green which is an indication that it has survived its long stay in the back of a dark delivery van!

You may also remember that last year we bought a miniature kiwi - Issai and that after a promising start it began to look a little unwell. We hadn't high hopes for it's survival but when we saw tint signs of life we (well Martyn really) discovered that it prefers an acid soil and so it has been repotted into an ericaceous compost and it is producing lots of healthy green shoots.

Then there was our Lazarus fig (renamed by me as it rose from the dead!) Well that is actually shooting too.

The new perennials I have mentioned before - they are already beginning to produce more shoots -  but I also took some perennial cuttings last year and most are still alive. The salvia in the front flower bed that I was concerned wouldn't make it through winter looks doubtful and unfortunately the cuttings that I took from it that were growing so well look as though they haven't managed winter in the greenhouse either. On the plus side my lavender cuttings are starting to grow away.

I also have several arum lilies which are beginning to shoot. I dug up and split a large clump that was growing in the garden last year and if all the pieces grow will have my work cut out finding space for them all.

Onto vegetables - the garlic is still growing well and the shallot and onion sets that have been started off in small pots and cells are beginning to sprout. This method worked well for us last year.

Instead of growing salad leaves under the indoor growing light which will soon be used just for seed germination and the raising of seedlings we now have some leaves growing in the greenhouse. These should take over once we have harvested all the indoor salad leaves.

Our first set of broad beans - Witkiem Manita - have been sown in pots - again a tried and tested method. As we do have a bit of a field mouse problem the pots are being protected under a propagator cover which will hopefully keep the greedy creatures from digging up and eating the seeds. They are pretty resourceful creatures though so fingers crossed.

The seed potatoes are also quietly doing their thing and chitting nicely under their fleece covering.

I know not technically the greenhouse but I'll mention here that we sowed celery and celeriac last month. We haven't ever had any success with attempts to grow either of these vegetables so we are trying to stick by the rules this time and sow the seeds early. Something we rarely do as our seed sowing tends to be held off until March at the earliest. The germinated seedlings are sharing the growing light with the last lot of our indoor salad leaves.

Don't forget to enter the competition here - I have had some entry forms submitted but it may be that some of you can't get the form to submit (it may depend on the browser being used) so you can email me your answers if you have a problem. My email address is on the side panel.