It's all go in the garden this week... And a great time to be searching through skips

 A happy man finding a bit of old rusty tat in a skip

This week’s exploits in the garden all started when I bought a twenty pack of pansies.

It was an impulse buy; I’ll admit it as I was just in the shop for a look around.  The impulse buy started a shopping frenzy. If I had some plants to pot up then I would need some potting compost, so away I went to the compost isle to get a couple of bags.  When I got home it dawned on me that there was so much to sort out before I planted the first pansy into a pot so I continued my shopping online and ordered a huge pile of 20 cell plug trays and a suitcase full of vegetable and flower seeds to fill them.  

For Tomorrow

I think the amount of initial work needed to kick start the season must be the main reason why so many of us don’t start the spring garden until quite late. Time is an important factor of course but it’s the thought of all of the preparation work that needs doing, it can all get a bit overwhelming. 

For that reason I tend to use the philosophy of just doing 10/20 minutes a day in the garden and keep picking away at the jobs until you feel you are making progress. I also use the wise words of Julie’s dads, which is “Leave something for tomorrow” I particularly like that idea as it takes the pressure off finishing a job in one go. 

With that in mind I thought I’d give you a blow by blow account of the jobs I have done over the past few days and I must say it’s been a real pleasure and I have an impulse  pack of pansies to thank for that.

A Week in the Garden

The compost I bought is very fibrous but needs sieving to make it suitable for seed sowing. It says on the bag that it’s ideal for germinating seeds but it looks like that was stuck on as a seasonal afterthought because it’s not in the list of instructions on the back. There is a quantity of “John Innes” compost added to the bag but have decided to embellish things a bit with some of my own  (also sieved) garden soil and material from the compost bin. It’ll get most of the seeds growing that don’t like being planted straight outside, which is my favoured method of planting I must admit as nature does most of the work.  

The seeds I ordered were the usual non root veg that we tend to go for. Salad varieties such as spring onions, lettuce (no tomatoes this year) coriander, rocket and chives. Then we have gone for the usual, broccoli, kale, beans and mange tout (no peas this year) it’s not a huge amount of variety but it’ll fill the garden up nicely. 

I have the seed trays filled up ready and needed to clear the tunnel and cloche inside the tunnel to accommodate them (which took 2 days)

To re-home the pansies we needed to empty the old pots from last year. Unlike the last three years everything in the containers has died. There are usually a few old geraniums survive but it’s been a colder winter this year. The old compost is now in the garden and the fresh supply is being added. There’s no point keeping any of the old material in the pots because they are an ideal breeding ground for root eating grubs such as vine weevil. I’ve also added a few hands full of shredded hemp stalks I have in abundance into the mix, I think these will absorb water and act like moisture retention gel for the pots. It’s a bit of an experiment but I think it’ll work and not starve the plants of nitrogen.

We’ve also been getting one bed ready for the broccoli. Last year it was taken over by nasturtiums, (my most prevalent weed in the garden) so this time we’re covering the whole area with the landscape fabric so they can’t get a foothold. I’ve also been collecting woodchip from an area in the park where they topped some trees last year. I thought it would be well rotted by now but it still needs putting through the compost bin to rot down a bit more before I use it.

So all in all it’s been a busy week in the garden. Making a start is the main thing for me. 

All work aside, the highlight of my week though was seeing an old dustbin garden incinerator, complete with chimney lid in a skip in a neighbours driveway. It’s old and rusty with most of the galvanized cover burn off – very aesthetic I think. I couldn’t resist it though and it’s now pride of place in my veggie patch.