OH, It IS bitter, I just went down to the greenhouse (unheated) and decided to come straight back and do some indoor jobs!!! wimp eh
I have Marigolds and Spinach I can pot on. I place them alternately all around the edge of the greenhouse to sacrifice to the slugs and snails. It usually stops them getting any further into the middle, where they will eventually find sweet peppers (and thats what I do not want them to get too!!). It has worked for the last 3 years.
Maybe a person's time would be as well spent raising food as raising money to buy food - Frank A. Clark.
I've previously had batches of frogspawn which look like caviar with little black spots in it and never quite understood what had caused it. I wondered whether it had perhaps become "frosted" if the overnight temperature had dropped below freezing for a certain length of time, and noticed that much of this stuff never developed into tadpoles. I usually end up with far more frogspawn than my mini pond can accommodate so it would be interesting to know the answer to this so that if it's undeveloped or damaged, I could haul it out and dispose of it, rather than leaving it in the pond to risk it possibly polluting the water.
Hello OH - yes, that's what I felt but I have never seen it before.
Primrose - it's not that the 'caviar' is in the jelly, but actually sitting on top of clumps of 'jelly'.
Certainly any proper frogspawn laid now is unlikely to survive with the coming weather. It's certainly jolly cold. Thought I might manage to do something outside as it is quite bright - but like garden serf I have chickened out! I'll finish sorting through my seeds and read some gardening mags/books by the woodburner!
Agree. It's bitterly cold here and definitely an "indoors" day. After a leisurely lunch I'll probably sit down and draft out my sowing plan for this year - always difficult to rotate things properly with my small veggie patch so have to switch around as best I can - and definitely no spare ground for the luxury of lying fallow.
Bitter wind at the allotment site this morning,didn"t stay for long,car temp.gauge showing 1 deg.C but the wind made feel as though I"d joined the Ice Road Truckers in the Arctic Circle!!! Off to the local nursery which had re-opened after the winter break. Bought my Arran Pilot earlies and Pikant shallots at proper prices and able to choose my own because they sell them loose, and not ready packaged,to my mind a good thing.Also the nursery doesn"t look like a department store as does Blooms where they are selling Sarpo potatoes, packaged,of course,for £2.49 a kilo.
Regards snooky
--------------------------------- A balanced diet is a beer in both hands! WARNING.!!... The above post may contain an opinion
It was cold and sunny here yesterday. I spent it outside, sorting out the soft fruit and giving it all a layer of manure - kindly donated by my farmer neighbour.
Today it's cold and not sunny, so I've been doing what I should have done in the autumn - clearing up the veg beds and getting them ready for this year. Done about a third of them and moved many more barrows of manure.
It's about to snow so I'll be helping Lyndon with the marmalade making this afternoon.
Hi Tigger - what sort of farm manure do you get. I used some cow manure from the dairy farm next door on my potato patch last year. I have no way of comparing being as I haven't grown potatoes in a bed so far, but just wondered what you used. As I did it rather late last year, I put the manure on top of the soil and then put a layer of home-made compost on top of that - planting the potatoes into the compost. Despite the blight, I felt I got a pretty decent crop.
I only manure the potato bed although all the other beds get a covering of home-made compost and the roots and brassica beds get a top-dressing of lime.
I am hoping to get some horse manure this year as I have a friend who has horses.
I'm using horse manure. The farmer used to keep cattle, so we've used that in the past. Now he only has sheep, but his wife runs a livery so they're always keen to get rid of the contents of their stables!
Hello OH - we don't often get snow in Cornwall but being a northerner I shall look forward to it if we do! I can certainly smell it on the wind which is icey. Just off to walk the dogs - with lots of layers on!!
I am sure the iris will be fine - I hope so anyway. I'll brush off any snow. I love the blue.
Hello Tigger - I assume this is well rotted horse manure. I am thinking of making a hot bed under my cold frame. Digging a shallow pit and placing some horse manure in the bottom and then some compost on top. Then sit the cold frame on top. Might be nice and cosy for my salads and perhaps a melon.
Hi Primrose, Glad i'm not the only one with a small plot and i know exactly what you mean about plot rotation. Each year i've dug up more of the lawn and put in more and more raised beds. My husband has banned me now!
Not much happening here on the spring front and given the amount of snow falling at the moment i think its a good job!
