Think I'm going potty

I'm living in conditions where I can't do anything without first considering the health, safety & wellbeing of hundreds of plants scattered throughout the house, hogging all the light coming in through the windows. Cannot open windows without moving trays of tomatoes & chillies. Cannot boil the kettle for tea without shifting aubergines. Cannot wash up without relocating the cucumber seedlings. And as for watching TV... well, let's just say that gymnastics are involved.


And that's just indoors. Out in the back garden there are the 2 mini 4-tier greenhouses to consider. Temperatures are warming up nicely now, so I noticed at the beginning of the week that everything was starting to look a bit wilty - so fresh air being the order of the day, each morning before heading out to work I unzip these, and I zip them back up of an evening when I get home.

I also have to remember to top up the food on the bird table. Two enormous big-bellied wood pigeons (is it me, or do they have teeny weeny heads?) have started visiting daily and gorging themselves on the seed that I put out for their smaller cousins. They're a bit of a pest and I don't like to encourage them - but now I'm on a chain-gang of endless seed provision, or my brassicas will get it in the neck.

Time to take some of this hardier stuff down to the plot this weekend - the 10-day forecast looking good, so worth taking a punt at planting some of it out now.

Tidy Backyard

Spent Saturday at the plot - got another 5 square metres dug over, only another 20 or so to go. Unfortunately it's the section I was planning to plant potatoes, so may have to whittle down the number I was hoping to sow or reduce planting schemes elsewhere. Hey ho. The last bit won't be easy either, as a few tentative fork pokings & exploratory spadings have revealed that at some point in the past some kind of structure - probably a shed - has been built there, as proved by the vast amounts of stones, bricks & lumps of concrete buried just under the surface of the soil. May need a period of good weather & some prolonged hard work with a sieve to properly deal with that area. Still, the stones are proving to make fantastic path material, and being of the sharp broken flint variety make brilliant slug barriers.


Hey! I'm making myself my own personal corral! an encampment of vegetables protected by razor-sharp flints from marauding slugs and snails! Well, it will be once I've pelleted all the ones I've encircled. With slug pellets of the organic variety, of course - wouldn't want to put anything down that harmed other wildlife. Or maybe I'll just drown them in beer (bit of a waste of beer though).



Today weather forecast suggested rain (which is only just starting to fall now at 7pm in the evening! Grrrr) so spent the day tidying up the back garden instead, which has been sadly neglected since we got plot last October. Insane really, as it's the backgarden that I look out onto everyday. Still - all nice & tidy now, everything trimmed back, and ready to receive the tomatoes, aubergines & chilli plants that I think'll do better in my sheltered back garden, rather than up at the exposed plot.

Hello my old friend

Lots of foliage has died back after the harshest winter in 30 years. An old mannequin head I planted 5 years ago is suddenly very visible again, after nestling & hiding away for a number of years. Good to see it again - think I might grow it a topiary wig this year with a leafy annual.

Still cold at night - we've been frost free this week - but any water in pots froze over last weekend. Leeks are coming up in the 4-tier greenhouse outside. Purple Sprouting broccoli is doing well & needs potting on this weekend - will hang on to those a few more weeks in my sheltered back garden before taking up to the more exposed plot.


Aubergines doing well. These are indoors on window sills over warm radiators, and will stay indoors till May I think.