How Does Your Garden Grow?

Hello.

I really am enjoying Spring time outside at the moment and the poly house is filling up nicely. 

Right now I have some potting on to do in the next couple of days and maybe some planting out. Even though the weather has been as wet as wet can be at times recently, we are expecting some drier weather toward the weekend.

I'm feeling very excited about how both my sowing and growing are coming along, and I was able to show a new friend around #mylittlepatchofparadise on Wednesday. I met Karen on a couple of courses run by Kim Stoddart at Green Rocket courses and we had arranged for her to come to mine for coffee. She brought me some tomato, celery and early PSB plants and I was able to give her three different varieties of courgette. I've already potted on the toms...

and I'm looking forward to visiting Karen in Bethania, which is about 30 minutes from me, and seeing her set up including the big poly tunnel she has.

I now have a good amount of tomato plants but need to figure out which ones I can grow outside in order to maximise the space in the poly house along with the beds I'll be using outside since the loss of the greenhouse.

I got a fairly serious amount of seed sowing done on Tuesday morning; the weather was perfect so had a great time after getting my inside jobs done first. I sowed swede in the new bed, now known as bed three, and decided on the space where the climbing beans and peas will go. The dwarf beans are nearly ready to go out; 

I also managed to fit in a row of red and green lettuces! Talking of lettuces, in the drainpipe in the poly house the salad leaves there seemed to be needing a little more compost to boost their growth so I topped that up and hopefully they will be big enough to harvest soon and I can cross that off my shopping list!

I had made the decision to re-sow my carrots after only a very few of the first sowing had germinated so I got down to this. 

Two of the three beds Jon built on the other side of the fence to the main growing area are being used. In one are the turnips, which were the first things to go in, have now been thinned and I've sown a few more seeds in the gaps; I've now sown parsnips in the second.

I've made use of the remaining space in the bed with the shallots and sown additional Kale plus more salad leaves by way of a couple of rows of Corn Salad; I also intend to fit in a row of rocket I have in the poly house which is almost ready to go out! I'm really trying to make use of every space.

My cabbages and cauli and doing well and have been potted on once but will need doing again soon. I also have to get the two huge tyres ready for when they are planted out which is not too much work. They were mulched with chicken poo and compost and covered over during the winter. 

The bane of my life that is ground elder has only got into one of them just a little bit so should be ok when I weed it out and they are topped up with compost ready for planting. I'm going to be honest with you here, and a lot of people may not agree with me, but I HAVE to spray the ground elder sometimes. The way in which the darned stuff grows on #mylittlepatchofparadise I cannot cover it. To be honest there are parts where it grows that don't actually bother me as it doesn't affect the sowing and growing but sometimes needs must. There is no point strimming it, I think we all know that, and I cannot dig it up but what I hope to do next year is to lift up the tyres I grow in, put down membrane and then replace the tyres so that they'll hopefully be deprived of sun and the growing rate will at least be reduced.

In other news we are getting very close to finishing the third Airbnb listing which will actually be called Studio 4. This is a self-catering unit and we are VERY excited about the way we are theming and dressing it. I've just ordered union jack bunting and at the weekend we're going to Aber and Craft to look at buying miss matched crockery, pictures and hopefully some tin vintage style pictures. We're going for a war time theme and have wallpapered the inside of the wardrobe with paper showing old newspaper adverts. We should be able to list it by the end of the month. The biggest job is some electrical work Jon needs to do on the cooker but everything has been made now that the shelving for the bathroom, 

vanity table and bedside boxes are done. 

One of my fav things is the towel rail made from a refurbished ladder.

 I think I should get on with some other jobs now, ironing to do for the Airbnb rooms, a bed to change the usual chores but I think I'll have just one more brew before I start.

Bye for now

Lou.xx