Kitchen Garden Forum

Better be on my best behavior, just seen Lady Lettuce and Captain Carrot are online, on second thoughts.

Yippee - it's February 1st and the dreaded month of January is at last behind us. Here's to the lighter evenings creeping in, and the opportunity to get outdoors again.

Dear Primrose, i second that, it won't be long now.

The temperature in our unheated greenhouse rose to 19 degrees today, with the door and all the flaps open - primroses and violas are flowering beautifully in there and all the bulbs are moving as well. Should soon have some iris danfordiae and iris reticulata flowers. Even the French tarragon is showing new shoots in the pot.

Yes, bring on spring!

When do the clocks go forward, anyone know?

CoMpO

Compo wrote:When do the clocks go forward, anyone know?

CoMpO

Yes!










It's always the morning of the last Sunday in March. They always go back the last Sunday in October.

Very strong gusts of wind here this morning, think i'll give cutting the tall hedges, a miss for today.

Dear OH,

Very strong gusts of wind here this morning,

Hope your wind has settled this evening

Dear Donedigging, it seems to have got stronger, it's blowing everything about.

Dear OH,

I am sure you can buy something at the chemist for that

I've only ever used the chemist before, for one type of thing, cough mixture.
Dear Donedigging what did you think i was going to say.

My wheelie bin blew into my greenhouse and broke a pane of glass, what a nuisance.

Bit less wind here this morning but still raining. Not going to be fit to replace the glass it smashed in my greenhouse and with more wind forecast I am worried about more damage. Disintegrated one of the salad cloches I made out of the polycarbonate donated by a neighbour from the remains of a wind damaged greenhouse, I suppose I could only expect that. Just one sheet of plastic missing so I'll have to go for a walk down wind to see if I can find it to build it again - deeper legs this time! As I look out of the window typing this I've just spotted the neighbours hen coop on its side - hope it didn't break any eggs. It wasn't supposed to be as bad here as further North but the last two nights have been frightening enough for me.

I'm getting fed up with the gales and the rain. Not only have I cleaned 268 labels this morning I've counted them as well!
Was going to start filling pots and trays in the greenhouse but found the swaying staging off putting.

Well I'm feeling very self righteous, as all our bedding has just been laundered and is blowing dry in the wind so no carbon footprint with tumble driers! Just hope I don't end up having to track it down across neighbours' gardens!

Must sit down later and sort through all my seeds (again), and work out my sowing programme for the vegetable plot. I did sow my chillis and peppers this morning as I've got a light bay window sill which should give them enough light to stop them growing spindly. It will soon be time to re-assemble my little four shelved plastic greenhouse and stap it to the house wall again but I'm worried about severe frosts damaging the plastic cover or small seedlings inside so tend not to bring it into use until around end March/ April. By this time all the window sills in the house are totally overflowing!

Newly dug soil is drying out quite nicely with all these winds.

Lovely spring-like day today. I cleared a lot of old debris on a long bed along a south-east facing dry stone wall in the garden, especially sweet woodruff. Now the snowdrops can be seen properly and sweet violet and primroses have more breathing space. The woodruff is quite a thug, spreading everywhere, but it does smell nice when dried.

The six bird boxes on our village nature reserve have been cleaned and repaired and we have ordered a third box for the garden. Last year we didn't get any takers but usually it's a pair each of blue tits and great tits. This year there seem to be dozens of potential tenants, so hopefully the boxes will be to their liking.

Just before sunset today, a blackbird was singing lustily and this afternoon, a great spotted woodpecker was drumming..