Inspired by lepotager’s fantastic photo update over at Trafford Eco-House and Hardworkinghippy’s inspiring account of self-sufficiency gardening over at Powerswitch, I have taken a few photies of what is going on in the garden.
We seem to have a slightly different microclimate here in Bury than other people do in the region – things seem to germinate a bit later here for some reason, and generally take a bit longer to get going.
I am normally very impatient to get things going in the spring, and will germinate some seeds in a propagator on the kitchen windowsill to give them a head start. But they invariably end up a bit pale and etiolated (‘leggy’), so I always end up wanting to put them outside ASAP.
This is what I did with this year’s seedlings, I put them out in our new greenhouse thinking that they would do much better in there. But the cold weather has really dragged on this year, and although the cucumber seedlings are OK, they seem to have got a bit scorched by the cold. The tomato seedlings are looking decidedly dodgy, and in fact the only really healthy looking ones are the pepper seedlings, which according to the instructions from RealSeeds, should have been the most difficult ones of all to germinate!
I have also tried to fill every available corner (including the top of the small toolshed) with pots which I have seeded with various things, lettuce, radish, parsley, stuff like that. Not much to look at yet but all of the seeds in the pots seem to be germinating nicely.
I think I am really coming to the conclusion that actually, seeds know perfectly well when they are supposed to germinate, and trying to force them to hurry along can just have the effect of exhausting them at exactly the time they need to be gathering their strength.
No sign of any frogs or frogspawn this year. Maybe they haven’t survived the harsh winter, or the arrival of our furry monster. Fingers crossed there are still some in the garden somewhere though.
We have already had our first crop, chives for a potato salad!!
Green Cottage 