Good to hear from Mike & Julia, just outside the parish of Coventry for getting in touch again. Mike mentioned that they had a bit of trouble from Storm Dave up there the other day too, “It’s a bit feisty up here.”
He went on to say “We’ve been busy getting a new patch of the garden ready today. Here’s the before and after shots. Still some work to do but you get the general gist. Slabs and bark and a veg trug and some old metal storage tins with flowers added.”
Great for sending the pics over as the patch looks great! We look forward to seeing how the garden grows up there and do send us more pics as the year develops. Here’s a good post with some nice pics from their garden last year here.
Yesterday was a lovely day. We started on the garden early, around 7:30am, when it was still grey and a little cold but as the hours passed, the weather gradually improved. After lunch, the grass was cut and looked great in the sunshine. The top right-hand corner of the lawn is the “wild area,” a tribute to a cat who passed away last year and loved to sleep there among the longer grass. Now the cat has gone, a fox has been kipping there on and off.
The side bed towards the bottom of the garden was cleared, and in place of the weeds, wildflower seeds were sown. It’s still cold, so whether they’ll thrive remains to be seen as it’s a bit of frost pocket down there. We were also told by a neighbour a few doors down that an underground stream runs through the gardens around that area. Whether that is true or not we’re not sure, but the soil is a bit on the boggy side around there.
Talking of seeds, one of our favourites plants has to be 
Then at the back of the bed we stuck in the remaining seven seed potatoes of the “Jazz” variety. There’s still going to be some cold nights to come, so when they do sprout they’ll hopefully be protected by the jam jars. Hope there’s been some work in the garden where you are.
The other day we saw a great space saving device on Facebook; someone had put their seed trays on a shoe rack. Unfortunately, we haven’t got a shoe rack on hand, and the kitchen window is well full. We found this rack thing in the street a few months ago knowing it will come in handy soon, and it did! It’s holding up some Moneymaker tomatoes and some marvel of Peru seedlings. Below are a few different varieties of basil which we sowed today.
We’re trying to find time to tidy up the wild bit and going to fill the now weed-free area around the penstemons and love-in-a-mist with some wildflower seeds. The window frame that once had glass in it is now used to shield some plastic seed covers so they don’t blow away. Waste not, want not, part 33!
Cheers for the great pictures of your garden again Spike and keep them coming!
Today we had some good weather so had a couple of trips armed with the odd teabag and egg carton back and forth to the compost heap. On the way back we spotted these three on the pond. We’ve just found out that it’s toads that lay their spawn in lines. Well you learn something new every day.
The moneymaker tomato seeds have germinated, and we’ve taken the plastic freezer bag off them. As long as those black fungus gnats stay away we should be alright! We’re taking advice from Gardener’s World: “Control them by allowing soil to dry out between waterings, using yellow sticky traps, and placing sand on the soil surface.
Weeds up to me knees 