Topic: Fine weather gardening!

[tim]

Wimp? Yes - too cold at present.

But it's all ready!! And cut down to size for an easier year.

[Tulipa]

Wow Tim, that looks wonderful, bet you can't wait for the warmer weather.  Have fun.

[MrsKP]

i suppose the digging fairy did all that for you then did she ??  :P

you look as if you've put an awful lot of work in to get your plot looking that wonderful.  and yet another set of photos to give me some inspiration of how mine might look when i know what i'm doing.

 ;D

[Hyacinth]

Brilliant, Tim.

All my beds are ready, too, apart from a new bean trench I'm starting off - maybe we win over on the lottie folk by having our plots in our gardens? - I've been able to do an hour here and there whenever I've had a bit of time.

Notice that your bean canes are up - left from last year, or newly 'planted'?

[spacehopper]

Looking good.  :)

It was bitterly cold at the plot today, couldn't feel my fingers after an hour, so stopped!

[tim]

Last year's, Lishka - & note the 8 raised beds to ease the pain!

And not forgetting the other bit, with some virgin-dug soil for shallots & garlic!

[kitty]

lovely tim!
we have raised beds and galvanised containers(old baths and wotnot)for everything this year-far far easier!
i am definately a fair weather gardener but i cant wait-already started some seeds in the conserv.
kitty

[MrsKP]

I've just joined the fair weather club.

How can you do ANYTHING when the ground is a mud bath.  I was bringing out more mud on my boots than tramping in the hole.

Another wasted weekend.  :'(

[supersprout]

If you have oodles of mulch on the paths between your beds you can sow seeds on seed tapes in the pouring rain. It's quick cos you don't need to water in the drills, and prepared (home made) seed tapes leave you with impeccably spaced seeds (sowing small seeds in the rain is a no no as they just stick to your fingers). Provided I don't veer off the paths, and just reach to the middle of the beds, boots don't end up sucked off or muddy, and there's the glow of something achieved in the teeth of the weather. And you don't have to stay out in the rain too long either, but can say you just got soaked planting 14 rows of carrots or whatever when you go home to admiring family ;D.

[mat]

Fair weather club...  umm, rained all day today for me too... So spent all day on laptop, putting sowing, planting and harvesting times into spreadsheet under each week of the year... This will help me know what I need to do each week later in the year ;D  I may investigate and try this seed tape idea after I was kindly PM'd from supersprout, a list of advantages.

I did manage to get various things planted in pots yesterday though (and into my £14.99 wilkos polyframe) - chinese artichokes, jerusalum artichokes, egyptian onion, anredera tuberosa, bunium bulbocastaneum, babbington leek,  and apios americana)  all are hardy (apparently) (though I have placed the anredera indoors just in case) and are only in the polyframe, as the allotment is not ready for them and if I leave them in my gaden, the local cats use the pots for something unmentionable... I will plant them all out on the lottie in a few weeks time...

mat

[Merlins Mum]

That looks great Tim, wish our lottie looked half as good.  Have dug most of the beds once and two or three are actually ready for planting when the time comes but still have a lot more to do.  Had hoped to go down there today but it's been really wet and miserable.  Why does it do that at weekends? ::)

MM

[Jitterbug]

WOW Tim - best (and neatest) looking lottie I've ever seen.

Yesterday when I went out to try and finish off the hard landscaping in my back garden (north facing) I nearly broke my hand when I plunged the spade in and it bounced off - the ground was frozen solid - and I live in Dorset - who said we have milder weather :o

Anyway, had to change tactics and ended up pruning my two shrub rose bushes - which is just as well as they are already starting to bud (in the south facing garden).  Then decided to do a clean up of the greenhouse to prepare it for all the babies which will be in there soon...  and then dug in new compost into the two beds in the greenhouse.  So all in all - I think that I had a productive day.  

Today it was raining and besides going out to show a gardening friend of mine my two little snowdrop that had popped out and my rose cuttings that I had just discovered were starting to bud I'm afraid all I did was a bit of armchair gardening.

Alto I did end up watering all my seedlings (indoors)  ;D ;D