Now it is Spring Time (Confirmed)

[Pa Snip]

Would this make you go

Opened my email inbox and there is mail from NEC headed

BBC Gardeners' World Live prunes 20% off ticket prices

Did you know there was a prunes section at Gardeners World Live ?
Would you be tempted to visit the Gardeners World Live prunes ?
is it perhaps just suitable for wrinkleys

Would you set aside a date to go see the prunes, or don't you give a fig.
Can't say as prunes do anything for me.

[Ricard with an H]

Yes, nails V screws depends on the job though most tradesmen will lean towards nails regardless. I'll use SS screws exclusively outside and in some cases inside.

Screws can easily be undone and you don't have the problem of the hammering disturbing things together with the wood splitting when the nails are bashed in without a pilot hole.

If you had your floor boards lifted and the tradesman nailed them back down he needs to go back to school.

Chipboard flooring held down by nails is pure poo-poo.

Ok Westi, screws for me most of the time.

[Westi]

Ha Ha Pa!

Obviously being in health care my nails have to look clean & short. Short not the problem, but do have to bleach them quite quite often when I have the 'Glove Fail'!

Westi

[robo]

Before the introduction of battery drills most thing where nailed apart from hinges and handles

[Monika]

Spring time? what spring time? The temperature has just reached 0C at about 10pm, so expecting it to go down to -2C by early morning. The (gentle) heater is on in the greenhouse and all the touchy plants like sweet peppers, chilli peppers and tomatoes are well covered up as well. No doubt by tomorrow noon with the sun shining, it'll be a job to keep the temperature below 20C in the greenhouse, even with all the flaps and door open. Well, that's April for you .....

[Geoff]

Minus 1.3°C last night but it didn't penetrate the tunnel quite 0.2°C so hopefully the double layer cloche over the Potatoes will have worked as well. Wrapped Gunnera in bubble wrap but haven't inspected it yet. Temperature rising fast in the sunshine 4.3°C already so off for the unveiling until perhaps tomorrow night!

[oldherbaceous]

Everything was very white here this morning, with frost, but nearly all gone now and it is beautifully sunny....

On the down side, it will take a good week for the ground to get into a workable condition again...

[Marigold]

Chilly over here. Taken the dog for a walk; three times round the house....outside I mean! Air is crisp and still with a hint of drizzle which has kept the frost away. My old freezer has been sounding the alarm at night as the kitchen has been too cold Must plant up more peas and broad beans in trays today and I have started the Great Slug War. To stop them enjoying my violas ... But there is a pheasant nearby yelling his heart out! The one cat who goes out came in early today and crashed on the bed so I suspect he has dined out. Never any mice etc here! Spring in the wider world up here in the mountains; like the black and white goat with twin matching kids I passed on the Ring road recently.. grass is not growing yet though and the land looking pleached and overgrazed.

[Ricard with an H]

I'm outside again with a barrow full of tools, weeding and felling last years kale that has grown to a more high though I did get a picking for a neighbour, the nettle roots are driving me mad. Even though I wouldn't use glyphosate on ground that I grow food on I do know that glyphosate only kills the top but the roots germinate again. I cleared this ground and burnt it of last year, seems the weeds like that sort of treatment.

Unfortunately the nettle roots came with the the muck I got from the nearby barns that used to house overwintering cows. The muck has been fabulous and got me off to a flying start as soil conditioning. I picked as much nettle root out as I could but it comes back with vengeance and you could use the roots as string, it's very strong.

I have a plan to burn again this year, burn whilst I'm digging out roots so the very fine roots that get left behind hopefully get neutralised.

[Stephen]

Spring? It was snowing yesterday, I was freezing cold for most of the day.

[Ricard with an H]

Mostly clear blue sky again for the third day and whilst it's cold it is warmer today because we have very little breeze from the north. 7 degrees this morning and 15 out of the breeze as I packed away at 1530.

Some of my nettle growth in this particular raised bed came from two underground root systems, some of the rhizomes were about three millimetre thick and whilst I followed them as far as I could they went deeper and got thicker. And creeping buttercup with roots so deep I had to go the full depth of a fork to loosen them.

[Marigold]

Heard a bee! Well almost drowned it as I was watering the violas and it shot away making a terrible din. .. Poor bee! I apologised profusely of course... managed to plant the rest of the second early potatoes and the bigger broad bean and my few precious pea seedlings and am about to deal with emerging slugs before I hit the hay...am I the only one hit by hay fever? Good night all!

[Primrose]

Hooray, sun is shining again. I's amazing how the twmoerature in my mini plastix greenhouse can vary during the day. I,ve run out of space on my large bay windowsill for all my germinating seeds. The nightime-daytime temperature range is more stable there. I do wonder whether a wider temperature range is more harmful to germinating seeds, whether their growth is retarded or whether they just do their stuff anyway once a germinating temperature has been reached

[PLUMPUDDING]

It's cloudy and windy here but no frost thank goodness. I put extra fleece on the newly emerged potatoes yesterday in case we had another keen frost.

I've made my usual promise to regularly use the hoe and keep top hand of any emerging weeds. It looks so nice with the final beds dug over and weeded. It never lasts long though.

I'm also going to buy some frames and nets for three of the beds to combat a new influx of wood pigeons and keep butterflies off the brassicas and our sparrow flock off the peas.

[retropants]

Saturday and Sunday I had 2 craft markets....Saturday must have been about 4 deg C, and it poured down all day, I was frozen, even with snow trousers on! Yesterday was a little warmer, but the promised sun only popped out a few times, and again I was frozen. Then when it cam to packing up, the sun came out, warmed us all up and then the thermals were too much!!