Kitchen Garden Forum

Seems awfully dark this morning.

Dear OH, Well, if you WILL get up in the middle of the night when the rest of us are still trying to catch up on our lost hour's sleep.......

Still, it will be lovely to have some lighter evenings, and for the next six months until the clocks change back, my car clock will actually be reading the correct time. After ten years, you would have thought I would have remembered how to alter it!.

Dear Primrose, i hadn't thought about that.

As you say, the lighter nights are wonderful, but i do like the lighter mornings too.

I struggle to remember how to set the central heating programmer each time, you just didn't get that problem with an open fire.

My other half makes it his annual twice yearly mission to get up at the crack of dawn the morning after the clocks change and usually greets me dozing in bed about two hours later after a marathon of timer resetting, during which at least one piece of equipment has got the better of him because we've lost the manual. There seem to be so many pieces of equipment these days with timers - ovens, microwaves, answerphones, etc.

It's times like this that I envy the simplicity of my grandparents' lives - they probably just had one timepiece in the house with a little button for manually moving the arms of the clock.

It may be a bit dry up on the allotment but this warm spell has allowed me to (nearly) catch up with the weeding, do most of the digging, get the spuds and a few other bits and pieces in and it all feels lovely. I am a very happy chap. I have even tidied the shed and put up some more hooks
Although I watered everything in the light rain and showers forecast for the next couple of days will be most welcome.

Things are growing well at the moment - Broad beans in root trainers will go into large tubs at the weekend, carrots in a tub in the greenhouse are just through, onions are up and some planted out, parsnips and carrots sown into the raised bed, and the first International Kidneys are coming through the first layer of compost in tubs in the greenhouse. I have also harvested a lovely small bunch of purple sprouting broccoli for Sunday lunch (currently waiting in one of those special Lakeland green bags). The boys are all off fishing on Saturday, so I have a day to myself and I will be planting out the brassicas. I have held of sowing any of the delicate squashes etc. that caused me so much heartache last year - I will be leaping into action with those during Easter week.

Oh, and dear OH, my dahlia tubers are surviving and sprouting in the greenhouse under a nightly cover of fleece .

Dear Elle, may i just say, i'm very pleased to read your news.

Definately Spring down here - the Asparagus is up! First one poked it's
nose out a week ago and today there are several dozen a few inches
high. The knife is sharpened and poised...and I'm hoping it gets a lot of use over the season!

Westi

Dear Westi, i hope it will be a nice Summer too, i can hardly wait.

No very springlike here at the moment. Still almost dark at 7 and throwing it down

Lovely bright sunny morning here

Lovely bright and sunny here too, but i think Alan is going to share his weather with me later.

I think you are all right he seems to have blown it this way, I don't know what he used but there was a lot of rumbling.

Beautifully sunny here now

Sorry OH and Geoff I tried to push it back westwards, but it got the better of me

It is quite mild here and the sun is trying to get out. My next job is picking broken glass out of my sweetpeas etc. in the coldframe as the wind blew the lid off and smashed it all over everything yesterday.