Daily Archives: April 7, 2021

John Wayne won’t be big leggy

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We don’t know if it was the great Joe Maiden or someone on the council who told us this great “pinching out” tip that makes sweet peas that little bit bushier but whoever it was, it works.

We’re also not sure if we should have waited a little longer (when there were more sets of leaves) but the other week we just went for it and nipped the growing end out (just above the leaves) and you can see now some new growth from out of the lower leaf nodes. The whole idea is to stop the plants becoming tall and “leggy”, encouraging more side shoots which in turn will bring more flowers. We haven’t done too well over the last couple of years with sweet peas so let’s see if that changes this year.

Locking stable doors after horses bolted

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Yesterday was a funny old day, cold with a bit of sunshine and then in the late afternoon a very light slurry of snow! Crazy eh, but then again it’s only the first week of April.

This morning there was a light frost on the grass, thank God we put out the teepees of old fabric as protection yesterday afternoon. Walking back into the house we thought of the site someone told us about a few years ago that has a frost predictor of sorts. Just go here, tap in your location and it’ll give you a rough estimate of when you can expect the last frost but then again it’s no guarantee so our fabric teepees are going to be on hand for a few weeks yet!

And talking of stables here’s a couple of tunes that’s just came to mind. The Billy Hope version even has a sort of “Steptoe and Son” vibe at the start (very in keeping with the horses theme!)