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
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 was funny old weather again today, cold then later on in the day it heated up a bit. Judging by the weather forecast for tonight it’s supposedly the last one where there’s a possibility of frost (London has a low of 3 degrees tonight and then tomorrow night it goes up to 7). Our hotchpotch collection of frost protection is out in full force this evening complete with an old duvet cover thrown over some of the spuds (we got that great idea off twitter the other morning!) One of the potato plants is even starting to form flower buds. How long have they been in the ground again?
Also the dahlia’s are starting to show through so some of that black membrane we bought to stick under the decking before it went up has been thrown over the top. What month is it again? And whilst you’re there, can you tell us the year? #gardeninginlockdown #canwecomeoutnow?
There was a frost here Wednesday morning (as we’re sure we saw a white veil over the local cars on the way to work) and hopefully that’ll be it now, even though it’s still a bit parkie outside today.
We’re not taking any chances here for a few days at least, the tomato plants that were outside in the upside down terrarium are now in the back room (that might have to be hardened off a little before they go out) and there’s still fleece over the Easter Sunday sown spuds. And then there’s the brassicas, runner beans and peppers that want to go out, finger’s crossed it won’t be too long now…
And if you have lost a plant or two in the recent frosts here’s a tune for you…
It’s a corker from the great Mongo’s Hi-Fi (which we’ve featured a few times here at Weeds) with Johnny “Move Out Of Babylon” Clarke called “Rain keeps falling” which comes back with a lovely dub as well. The 7″ single is a special record store day release and you can get it here and if you fancy the download go here. Tune!
Here’s a well mellow number played on the Tom Ravenscroft radio show last week. It’s a tune by C Duncan called For and it’s released as a free downloadable on the FatCat label. Just mellow, man.
It was a lovely scorching day today and some time was spent “tipping around” in the garden this afternoon but as soon as the sun disappeared it got very cold, so the fleece, bubble wrap and jam jars have reappeared!
There’s been another frost warning tonight so the big cover up continues here in SE23. Listening to the last episode of Gardening with Tim & Joe on BBC Radio Leeds this afternoon, Joe mentioned using something as simple as old newspapers as frost protection which, being cheap and cheerful, is well up our street!
Me, I’m using a combination of some old bubble-wrap (from an e-bay purchase) over my tomato plants, some fleece over my early potatoes and jam jars and a top off a seed propagator over some sunflower seedlings, all various ways of doing the same job. Jack Frost please be kind to us tonight!
Weeds up to me knees 