2022 - What I did today

We should see who gets the first ripe strawberry

Did a bit of GH pottering, garden mooching and seedling spotting in the morning. Chased a Great tit out of GH1 - found greenfly on the DFBs in GH4. Wonder there that bird went as it has a job to do.
Went out to collect freebies then to Morries for a yellow sticker hunt. Lots of people clustered around the marked down shelves - little old me didn't stand a chance of reaching anything. However, one of the regulars I've been meeting in the aisles for years appeared and he's tall with long arms that could reach over the front row - so he'd pull things out for me to inspect and replace them if I didn't like what I saw. For some reason he thinks I have cats and that I want meat to feed them. I keep telling him its dogs and they'll eat anything - even the black pudding and haggis that I brought home! Lots of cream cakes too and 4 pints of whipping cream for 10p. Not sure how I'll whip it but it sounds like fun.

Always pick up the cream.... make butter with it and freeze for using in cooking.

Trip to the plot earlier.....

Sowed Salsify & Scorzonera in upsidedown planter 3.

Weeded all the pallet collar beds, fairly easy hopefully that was down to the heavy layers of leaves applied?

Ten minutes of weeding and then back inside out of the rain.

Set up 5 Raised beds for carrots and beetroot and sowed some of each into 3 of them..
They're the deep plastic stacking veg crates that the shops use - I have 5 - and they're up on the table made from old secondary glazing window frames.
I emptied last year's strawberry planters into the wheelbarrow, picked out the weeds and put the chickens in it to peck the soil over. Then filled the crates, adding some sand and vermiculite that I'd mixed up last year.
Hoping for some edible carrots and beets this year. I'll sow the remaining crates next month.

I put up the Aldi pasting table, I bought last year but didn't use, into the new gh as  temporary collapsible staging (I'm hoping it won't collapse under the weight of the seedlings currently on it ).  Pricked out begonias. Potted on Grandpa Ott. Sowed lots of seed swap flowers. It might be a bit late but nothing ventured, etc.

I have had a busy week or so, and not really had much time to pay attention to my seedlings. I checked on the cucumbers that I sowed 7 days ago, and they're all up and leggy! Blimey! I forget what a difference the heat mat makes. I've put them on top of other boxes now so they're not so hot, and will pot them up tomorrow night, or Friday

Yesterday was  a shopping day. 

Today, weather permitting, I hope to try my hand at dry stone walling a section below my new fence I have just  had erected. I did some walling at the rear of my house which looks the business, but this needs to look really neat as it is at the front of my house.  Once done this will give me a narrow flower bed at the base of the fence to practice my flower gardening on. The idea is to utilise pockets in the low wall for growing rockery type plants as well.

I need to tidy the yard this weekend so the pots in the pictures will be going to the plot....

I've taken two black ones already, about to set off with two more.

       

Played with water.
Had to empty a waterbutt as the roof it caught water from, no longer existed. Of course, it was absolutely full, so emptied it with a watering can into a miscellany of containers. When the water butt was empty enough to move, connected it to another butt and refilled it with the water in the containers.
Got wet, as did Ted who ran under an emptying watering can!