April so far

Well, the weather has been warm this month so far and it can only mean one thing for me - carry on gardening! I've been very busy with sowing both veg seeds and flower seeds in a bid to get as much in the garden as possible. The shelves in the polytunnel are heaving under the weight of so many trays and pots, but I've also been transplanting veg to my prepared beds outdoors now.

During lockdown my husband has also been very busy getting creative for wildlife. He's hidden away in the shed working on various projects, including a hedgehog house, bird table and a cover for the pond pump to place more plants on. I'm hoping he'll carry on producing more wonderful items.

The pond now has a much better look to it thanks to Steve.

So, back to the planting. I've finally put my potatoes in. This year I'm only growing a maincrop variety: Rooster. These were reasonably priced, from Wilkos. I can't remember the price but it was around the £2 mark. There were 20 in a pack, so I dug two trenches and placed 10 in each. I've left mounds of earth beside each trench so that I can continue to earth up the potatoes to get a good crop.

 I used an egg box or two to chit my potatoes in. These now had some good shoots and were ready to go in.

 To keep it as neat as possible, I used string to mark out straight trenches.

 Spacing out the potatoes to give each plant room to produce a good yield. I left a space of just over a foot between each potato.

The peas that the children had sown in to toilet rolls had germinated and some were growing quite a bit. In some cases the roots were already in view underneath so I took them outdoors and planted them in a prepared bed. Out of the seven varieties that were sown, all but one did very well. Unfortunately, the variety Kleine Rheinlanderin didn't germinate at all, so I won't be eating any of these in the summer.

With the help of my husband, the peas were placed in rows and covered with protective fleece. The fleece is there for two reasons: firstly the plants are still very young and I wanted them protected from any harsh frost and secondly young pea plants can be a tasty treat to pigeons, which there are a lot of in my garden! This crop probably won't make the kitchen once the peas are ready for picking as the family enjoy eating them straight off the plant. There's nothing quite like the taste of fresh peas and I can't wait!

You can't see the peas here but I assure you that they are very much there!

One plant that has probably felt a little forsaken in my garden is the humble strawberry. A small plant with delicious, very popular iconic fruit, which unfortunately didn't produce much (if any) strawberries for me last year. I'm guessing that it may have been the weather as I wasn't the only one. My local pick your own was often closed last year during season with a sign on the gates simply saying "closed due to lack of fruit", which was a huge disappointment for my children who both love picking fruit. I do hope that they didn't suffer too badly financially and that we'll see them open for a long season this year.

I cleaned up my own strawberry plants, removing any dead leaves and left the runners intact. These I then attached to pots with homemade metal pegs. They will remain attached to their parent plants until they successfully root into the pots, at which point I'll then cut them free from the parent plants and pot them on elsewhere. Just to give it a try I've also sown some strawberry seeds. Two varieties, one being an alpine strawberry. Alpine strawberries produce smaller fruit, which is still very tasty and are supposed to aid digestion. So far none have germinated, but it's early days so I'll  let you know how I got on.

For the runners, I just filled small pots (0.5ltr) with compost.

I used an old wire coat hanger (as I hate using them as hangers) to make my pegs.

Making the pegs wasn't easy and I must admit that Steve helped me with this bit!

The strawberry runner is now fastened down in the pot and should start to produce roots. Once the roots are there, the stem from the parent plant will be cut.

Other seedlings in the green house and polytunnel are various brassicas, tomatoes, beetroots, onions and lots of different flowers, including lavatera and nasturtium seedlings. I will write about these later on but finally I wanted to introduce you to Speckled Jim, a feral pigeon who has taken to visiting my garden since the centre of town no longer has people eating out due to the coronavirus. He's come out to where there is food and visits every morning and evening at 8.30am and 5.30pm on the dot. During the early evenings I sit with Jim to get him used to me. I think it's very important to get close to nature and although Jim is just a feral pigeon, it's so calming to sit with him and feed him. He's not the only one: we also have a resident hedgehog that my daughter feeds in long dry spells and yes, the hedgehog house that Steve built is for that little fellow. There is also frog spawn in the pond and it was delightful listening to the adult frogs sing, which I managed to get on film.

Now a regular visitor, Jim is always welcome.

There's still plenty of work to get done, so I'll be back very soon.