Category Archives: Gardening connects us all

Wow it’s 23 degrees in March (not in the UK sadly!)

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Thanks to Debby H who is away in Tenerife at the moment where it’s a lovely 23 degrees. She sent us some pictures of the garden of where she’s staying at and it looks fantastic. We love this view above.

The bird of paradise/crane flower (strelitza) there looks well established (above) and we did a plant search on the plant below using Plantnet and it came up with agave. If we’re wrong on that, please do let us know but it’s great to see all these brilliant plants on their home turf so to speak and in their full glory. Cheers again Debby!

It looks like spring has sprung

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Pic: The pond this morning.

A big thanks to our good mate Gerry Hectic for sending us a mix to celebrate this first day of spring called “A sunshine mix in spring”. It’s a brilliant garden/nature related mix and one to have on when you’re sowing those first vegetable/flower seeds indoors on the potting table (in our case the kitchen sink!)

Here’s the tracklisting:
Intro – Ursula Rucker (& Charles Webster) – Begin Anew (Acapella) Edit)
Alabaster DePlume – That Was My Garden (Edit)
Tunng – Snails
Oscar Jerome – Smell The Daisies feat. anaiis (Radio Edit)
THSA – In Bloom
Late Nite City – Higher Ground
United Freedom Collective – Moonshine
lovetempo – But I Do (Daisybelle Remix)
Gabril Gosse – Breeze ft. Emile Parisein
Shane Sato – Gardenia
Yahushi Ide – A Place In The Sun
Ebi Soda – Bamboo
Evren Furtuna – Little Flower
Ursula Rucker (& Charles Webster) – Begin Anew (Acapella) Edit)
Chaos In The CBD – Midnight In Peckham ft. Isaaz Aesilli
Ursula Rucker (& Charles Webster) – Begin Anew (Acapella) Edit)

So raise a toast to Jean-Michel Jarre if you’re that way inclined or just to the forthcoming season when one day soon you will wake up and not see a frost. Cheers Gerry!

This is a warning!

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Pic: The grass outside this morning.

The sun’s been out, it feels lovely and warm and you feel a real need to sow those seeds outside or get those seedlings into those freshly prepared beds. Think again, do your research, watch those John Craven’s Countryfile weather forecasts and have a look at the frost calculator here.

You only want to be going to the garden centre/nursery for those bedding plants once. Watch out for frost!

Pic: John “good bloke” Craven

Stick your plastic plant labels

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We’ve always had this thing about those plastic plant labels. You buy a pack and you have the best intentions of keeping them for ages (using Barkeeper’s Friend to clean off “Lettuce” or whatever their last usage was) then you lose them or they snap and you vow never to use them again.

Yesterday we thought “Never mind that!” and just got a “sharpie” and snapped a few bamboo canes into quarters. Saved us a load of hassle. We then stuck some polythene sheeting on top of some pallet box collars and there you go, a makeshift cloche full of clearly named rows of broccoli, cabbage, leek and beetroot!

Are you sure it was sunny here this weekend?

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Where has that sun gone to, the one that appeared here the weekend and the same one that contributed to Sunday being 17°C? You will laugh, as over the weekend we even put some plants out in the back garden to harden off. It’s only March and we’re thinking about hardening off plants, we must be crazy. The above pic is a of self-seeded tomato in front of some suncream, after sun and insect repellent, a taste of things to come you reckon?

Do remember that frost prediction site here as that will come in handy if you’ve got that “we’ll get those seeds/plants in early” feeling like us. It’s nearly there but do wait a little before sticking those plants out. Have you seen the forecast for this week?

Surprise Spuds!

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Cheers to Debby H for sending us a message: “We found a small cardboard box in one of our cupboards recently. It had strange shoots coming out of the ends. Upon opening it we saw two small potatoes that had sprouted. We had forgotten that we stored them away last autumn to be used as seed potatoes. We planted them in a flower pot and now they are growing quite well.” Brilliant stuff and hope they give a good harvest.

Talking of potatoes, one of the things with growing spuds in the soil outside is leaving a few small ones in there even if you think you have pulled every one up. Then come the year after, you get  “volunteers” sprouting up. We wonder could these volunteers be moved and would they give you a good harvest. Your thoughts please.

And back to Debby H’s garden here’s the daffodils and primroses that are doing well. Cheers Debby!

Garden updates are always welcomed here. Send any pics to one deck pete (at symbol) geemail dot com.

Don’t let the green grass fool you…

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It’s been a funny old week for weather, we’ve had some lovely days of sunshine (still a bit nippy at times out of the sun though) and then frost in the mornings like today (above). Don’t let the sunshine fool you! It’s just only turned March and as AI has just informed us “Plant out after the chance of frost has passed” means to wait until the last possible frost date in your area has passed before planting your seedlings outdoors. More on having a vague idea when your last frost date is here. Do remember though nature doesn’t always play to the rules.

Don’t get lulled into a false sense of security just because we’ve had some lovely days. We’ve even had some washing out on a couple of them but that don’t mean those leggy tomato plants (if you started them off on New Year’s Day like we used to do) can go out.

We did manage to do some jobs like finally getting around to cutting up some prunings from next door’s tree which will be burning in the fire pit in a few month’s time (above). In the picture next to the gardening recycling bin are the loppers we bought in Lldl many years ago where the person on the till said twice “Do keep the recipt handy just in case you need to return them”.

Make use of this bout of sunshine but don’t put out those geraniums out just yet!

 

It’s all starting!

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Cheers to Mike and Julia from near Coventry for a picture of their new basil grown hydroponically and we must say the basil is looking far better than ours that we’ve started to grow on our kitchen windowsill.

Also thanks to Debby H for sending us some pictures of the first flowers in her garden. “Our snowdrops had their flowers eaten by something, which was disappointing. We have been more successful with the dwarf daffodils (tete-a-tetes?), which are now beginning to flower.”

“We have had primroses/primulas for quite a while. They are the conventional yellow colour but there are also a few red/purple ones. Lovely to have some colour in the garden.” Debby’s right

We here at Weeds hope everything is starting to pop up now in your gardens, if you’re not in those parts of the world that are covered in snow at the moment.

Big shout to Thompson & Morgan – Part 2

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A big thank you to Katie and all the team at Thompson & Morgan Blog for sending us over these new vegetable seeds to see how we get on with them. They look great, so this afternoon we popped 4 of the chilli seeds into compost to start off. Quick Fire is the variety and it mentions on the pack that you can get up to 100 chillies per plant! We’ll keep you all posted on how we get on with all of them. Cheers again T&M!

Big shout to Thompson & Morgan

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Thanks to all at Thompson & Morgan blog for including a tip of ours in their new article “Money saving garden tips: cost-effective seed sowing” here. It’s a great article and a great blog to check out.

By the way we hope that anyone who has sowed early like us is having some success and the seeds are starting to germinate. Looks like the chili seeds we had that said “Sow by end of 2023” haven’t, but that’s a risk you got to take with out of date seeds. Good luck with what you stick in your seed trays!