Going to Pot

Horrah! My second favourite time of year is finally here! Seed sowing time. We planted our first seeds of the year this weekend and it couldn't of come sooner. I just love sitting at the table with seeds all around me and deciding who goes where – it's such a defining moment of the year and bursting full of potential.

So week one it was Beetroot – these little fellas went straight into the ground – we germinated them last year on the windowsill but we're hoping they're hardy enough to just get going on their own. One thing we slipped up with a little last year was not staggering our planting enough so we planted one row this week and then we'll leave it for 3 weeks and plant another.

Into the propagators we planted tomatoes, basil and chillies. We had a bit of a nightmare with the basil last season so that's indoors for the duration of it's life this year – we just had too many munchings and nibblings, the poor things took a real beating.

Anyway – I digress. In the past we've spent a lot of our hard earned cash on compost – seedling compost – that's expensive stuff. So we purchased a sieve and tried our hand at creating our own seed compost. Pretty simple really – quite tiring but hey – no pain, no gain.
It's weird you end up with all these little balls of earth that look like rabbit poo. Brilliantly successful though – our seedlings now have lovely fine soil to sprout through – no trouble at all for them. Well worth the £9.99 investment.

It just amazes me that from one incy wincy teeny tiny little seed you get so much. It's pretty unbelievable. I mean just look how tiny they are. Truly amazing. You can't help but be impressed.
So presently everyone is sitting safe and warm on the kitchen windowsill. I just love getting up in the morning to see if any little cheeky fellas have broken through the topsoil. Nothing yet – it's only been 3 days but jeez I'm impatient! Such a wondrous occasion and no better way to start your day.

Feather Someone Else's Nest

I bought one of these the other day. It's a ceramic holder for sheeps wool. Now why would I want one of those I hear you ask? It's for the little birdies. Right about now they'll be looking for twigs and feathers and all sorts of suitable material to line their nests with. A large number of birds would originally have used wool – but because our farmland is being replaced with houses, fried chicken shops and betting shops the little fellas can't really get hold of it anymore.

It's been up about a week now and I can honestly say I've not seen one bird even remotely interested in it! So today I took a little of the wool out of the holder and stuck it on a few random branches around the garden. Maybe that will encourage them to be a bit more nosey.

I'll report back with my findings.

Some overdue TLC

After the long, harsh winter we've had our poor little garden was in dire need of some TLC. We'd purposely let it be for a while so the mess would harbour lots of insects for the birdies and we wouldn't disturb anything that might be sheltering from the snow and rain and sleet and hail and frost and wind and you get the message....

So, with an ever so slight hint of spring in the air today the clean up started. Once the weeds were all cleared we gave it all a good dig over and sprinkled a generous amount of fish, blood and bone all over to help replace all the nutrients. We're pretty lucky with our soil, a previous owner was a keen gardener and we're reaping the benefits of her hard work.

Actually, looking at that picture it doesn't look that tidy! But my, it's a vast improvement believe me.

Tonight we're going to sit down and order all our seeds for the coming year. We're thinking maybe some Borlotti Beans and we're going to make a concerted effort to grow different varieties of things – stuff that you can't buy in the supermarkets like purple carrots or those green stripey tomatoes. We'll post our shopping list up so you can see what the year ahead has in store for us. We're both really looking foward to getting the garden up and running again, can't wait for it to be in full vege bloom again. It seems such a long time ago.