The tortoise has left the starting blocks.

All talk of seed sowing on other blogs has left us feeling a bit like the tortoise in its race with the hare. Although we had sown some seeds under the indoor growing garden our seed sowing activity paled into insignificance alongside everyone else. I can now report that our seed sowing is now well underway. The first serious sowing of the season – broad beans – Witkiem Manita – has taken place. The seeds have been sown into small pots and will be planted out as small plants.

The cut and come again lettuce that was grown under the growing light was a success and has provided us with lots of salad leaves. We may manage another helping but I think that will be the end of that mini harvest. If we had transplanted the young plants maybe they would have continued to produce for longer but that wasn’t the point of the trial – we wanted to see if just leaving the lettuce to grow under the lights would provide some useable leaves. The next seeds to take up residence are the newly sown tomatoes - Moneymaker and Amish Gold to be joined shortly by other varieties of tomato, peppers and any other seeds that need a more cossetted start to life.

We managed lots of tidying on the plot – so much that we produced a gigantic heap of dry material. It was too dry to compost and so a bonfire was called for and the pile very quickly disappeared. Too quickly to take a photo other than at the very end.

Most of the permanently planted fruit beds have been tidied. The soil has been loosened and the bushes and trees fed with pelleted chicken manure. Last year’s canes of the autumn fruiting raspberries have been cut down to the ground – this year I think I’ll reduce the number of canes that are allowed to grow as quite a thicket is being produced.

Buddleias that mark the end of some of our long beds have also been cut back hard – it’s always hard to imagine how much they will grow after this treatment.

The heat treated onion sets arrived – three varieties, Fen Early, Hytech and Hyred and these have been planted directly into a bed on the plot. These always arrive later than the ordinary onion sets as it can take up to three months to prepare the sets. We have used these type of sets for a few years now and it has certainly saved us from the problem of onions bolting.

I had a happy surprise when clearing away the straw that had protected the carrots over winter. We thought we had dug the last of the useable carrots but I found quite a lot more large firm roots. We also pulled some spring onions that had been left in all winter and are also still harvesting parsnips and leeks. Fresh curly leaved kale is providing some fresh greens.

The frantic activity in the garden pond appears to have quietened down. The brief courtship ritual over, the frogs have hopped off leaving a clump of frog spawn to fend for itself.

On the other hand activity in the nest box has increased. Although at the moment there doesn’t appear to be a great deal of nesting material being collected what has been deposited in the box is being constantly rearranged and each night one of the blue tits roosts inside.

Don't forget to check our latest updates from the web cam update link on the sidebar.

I also have a detailed diary of activities in the garden and on the plot on my website which can be acccessed from the link on the sidebar.

There are more photos of our progress on Martyn's blog

Just a little warning about computer security. I had a call from a very persistent man with an Indian accent trying to tell me that my computer had been compromised and he wanted to help me rescue the situation. He tried all sorts of scare tactics to get me to agree to let him help even after I made it clear that I thought it was a scam. I contacted a computer expert friend who pointed me to this article . Just thought you should be aware!

Spring means primroses and goings on …

21st March the first day of spring kick started us into some overdue action in the garden and on the plot. We actually spent the first full half day of the season working on the plot pruning and tidying. Martyn spent a second half day clearing, digging and burning yesterday. Then today we had another afternoon mainly tidying the permanent fruit beds. More photos of our progress are on Martyn’s blog.

Beds are being dug so that soon we can plant out the fruit currently patiently waiting in the greenhouse. The raspberries were planted this afternoon. The fruit bushes on the plot are looking healthy and coming into growth. The greengage and plum trees have flower buds which I hope don’t suffer from any frosting. One fruit centred job that I never look forward to is the pruning of the blackberry which was done belatedly this week. The way we tackle this is explained here.

The trouble with things beginning to grow is that we may have harvested our last carrot as the ones still in the ground appear to have started to go mushy. Our last carrot wasn't a bad effort though weighing in at over 500g and that was after peeling.

Going by the sights and sounds spring was very much in the air.

In the garden we can almost watch the camellia, magnolia and crab apple buds opening.

The frogs are back – maybe some have never really left as males do sometimes hibernate in the mud at the bottom of ponds. They made their presence known by the now familiar croaking of the frog chorus. Obviously I wasn’t the one being serenaded and over the past couple of days more frogs have arrived increasing the level of activity. I just hope the croakers have managed to attract enough females and leave our fish alone as the frantic males can latch on to anything that moves in their desperation to grab a mate and fish don’t always survive unscathed!

The native primroses are looking fantastic full of flower so that must mean it is spring.

Activity has also increased in the web can nest box. A tentative attempt has been made by a pair of blue tits to start nest building – very tentative as they seem to take as much material back out as they do bring in. One bird has spent the last two nights huddled in the box so hopefully this is a sign that they are going to take up residence. Up to date images can be viewed here - well almost up to date as the latest activity won’t be available until later in the week as we have been too busy working outdoors to process and sift through the images.

The sun has shone all day (it's been actually warm) and Martyn has mown the lawns for the first time this year - IT MUST BE SPRING!

At least the birds will have missed us!

We were away in Cumbria last week so I was really hoping that none of my perennials would arrive whilst we were away. I had noted our holiday dates to suppliers but you never really know whether they will take any notice.

When we arrived home our first batch of plants were waiting at the back door – fortunately they had only just been delivered that morning. The plants were a collection of veronica from Hayloft Plants. They were supplied as bare rooted and as I expected were nothing like the size of the plants from Beth Chatto. I can’t complain as this was made clear on the website.

Even as a collection plants work out far more expensive than the larger plants sold by Beth Chatto but they didn't have the plants that I wanted.

To be honest I’d forgotten to include the veronicas on my planting plan and so had to adapt it. As soon as we had unloaded the car and had something to eat I potted them up. I’ve quite a few more plants to come from Hayloft and so I guess they will all be fairly small so maybe my dream of a mass of flowers at the front of the house won’t be fulfilled until next year!









The hellebores that I bought a couple of years ago from Hayloft have produced really good plants so I am hopeful that these plants will be the same, it's just a little more patience will be needed.

On the other hand the plants from Beth Chatto are growing well. Some are even on flower (the ones intended for the area under the crab apple tree). Once in position these should flower before the tree leafs up and then have attractive leaves that with stand out in the shade – well that’s the theory – I still haven’t found a statue for here though!

All the fruit biding time in the greenhouse is growing well including the replacement raspberries so we will now have to make a concerted effort to get them planted out. The cobnut is starting to produce female flowers.

They look a bit like sea anemones – being wind pollinated they don’t have any petals - they just stretch out the stigma and hope to catch some passing pollen grains! They’re not going to have much chance of that in the greenhouse so if I find any catkins on a nearby hazel bush I’ll steal some of its pollen top try and artificially pollinate them. If not it will be no nuts this year.

As a homecoming treat we picked our first lot of salad leaves grown in our indoor garden.
The plants may not have missed us but the birds have – the goldfinches (maybe with a bit of help form a few other species) had emptied the fairly large sunflower hearts feeder – it’s now full again and soon the birds were homing back in. We couldn't leave the bird cam running so have no idea of what went on in our absence but no-one has yet moved in.

 More March garden photos are shown in a photo album here

If you enjoy looking at other people's holiday photos Martyn has posted one or two on his blog here