2022 - What I did today

Got up bright and early (forgot to turn off my workday alarm!) so walked down to Lidl for a grocery shop and accidentally bought more seeds. I then caught the bus all the way to the top of the hill to vote before walking back down to my house.

Since then, I have sown some seeds and been sorting through my tomato plants so that I only use compost/pots to pot on the ones I'm actually going to keep. I have quite a lot of spares that I will need to try and palm off on someone!

I'm shattered.

I've done lots and lots of potting on. I find it very hard to compost a viable seedling, so I definitely need to find some people nearby who may take some plants off my hands! Sadly, I probably won't be able to find room
in my own garden for 24 Asturian tree cabbages (I only sowed into two modules!)

I will be composting some of my squash seedlings though. I sowed some seed from a Lidl winter squash that I enjoyed in 2019 (I have no recollection of what it looked like or how big it was and they often have a tray with multiple different squash in the Autumn, so it could be anything). I suspected it wouldn't germinate well, so I sowed it quite densely. Well, every seed in the pot decided it was thrilled to have the chance to live rather than having been dumped in some Grimsby dustbin, so they all blooming germinated! Alas, I know I can't foist my mystery squash off onto people as it may not be true to type or could be completely inedible. So I have potted on five, and will condemn the rest to a pitiful end. Obviously, I can't grow five of them either, so I will have to discard more later. Poor seedlings. It would be so much fun to have a huge garden so I could have an entire field of squash for experiments!

The worst bit was shifting all the pots around at the end. I've moved all the potted on tomatoes to the greenhouse and will just have to cross my fingers they are okay in there. It's a long walk up the garden when you are carrying lots of things and making repeated trips! Some things have come back indoors, but the upstairs things haven't made it further than the hall yet. I'll take a tray each time I go upstairs, honest!

Finally, I have done some watering and surveyed my garden. I have been a bit suspicious about the honeyberry my parents returned to me a few weeks ago, as I was sure it should be leafy and even flowering by now and I was wondering what my parents had done to it while it was under their care. Well, it has leaves now... Leaves that look a lot like a currant! Whoops.

Pricking out and potting on today, and composting unloved spare seedlings. As long as I can think of them as just another kind of green manure I'm just about okay with it!

Pricked out honesty, cosmos, coreopsis, celery & rudbeckia.
Potted on water melons, a eucomis & an over wintered chilli.
Potted up 3 bare root hummelo for the bank bed. The original order of a dozen or so perennials is apparently stuck in Pau and may yet arrive, but what state the plants might be in is anybody's guess!
Cut down a load of stems of goat willow and shoved them in a slit trench to extend the goat willow fedge.  They may take, but the stems had to go anyway now that the blackbirds have fledged. Took some cuttings in a pot, too!
Dodged the downpours.

Digging up buttercups and dock to fill the green waste bin ready for tomorrow's collection. Dug most of them out of a "path" between some "mostly flowers" beds. The dogs had dug big holes under the logs around the edges in their hunt for meeces (two found so far this week) so I decided to reroute the path instead of trying to remake it.
Its so nice to have the chickens out again, "helping" by inspecting every bit of fresh soil for something to eat. I think they're pleased too.

Lots of planting out before the very welcome rain this afternoon:
Sweet peas "old fashioned mix"
Cerinthe
Salvia Salvatore

Direct sowed red sunflowers, nigella, godetia and campanula in the same bed as the plants above. Also moved around some verbena bonariensis and crocosmia "Lucifer" to make some room.

I used root trainers for my sweet peas fir the first time and they've produced fantastic plants with robust roots. I'm very pleased with them and would recommend trying.

Not much today. Definitely not scratching around in my pots of beans and peas to check for germination. Ahem. (I think several varieties will have heads above the compost in a couple of days.)

Did a bit of watering and hope to be able to plant out some Bijou mangetout and some sweet peas at the plot this weekend.

I've been worrying about some of my second sowings of chillies and tomatoes that were left on the heatmat. I've not checked on them for days. Tonight, after tea, I went out to have a quick look and as if I'd asked for them to not grow too fast, they're only just big enough to brave it in the greenhouse. They'd been lifted up from the heatmat too, so they've not been kept too warm.

That's it. That's all I've done. I don't like working this much.

Cleaned the outside of the tunnel. I was told 13 years ago it use fabric softener to keep the plastic supple and it seems to work. Not had to replace the cover and only had to do minor repairs.

I dug trenches around three quarters of the climbing frame. Lugged manure and leaf mould from the far corners of the garden. Had lunch in the garden and put my ar.....bum through the sun lounger creating much hilarity and amusement for P. Trying to figure out how to fix it now.

Pressure washed my GH inside and out, it's surprising how full it gets over winter not counting the plants, pots and tools so it seemed to take ages to empty.