It's Garden Time!

It's Sunday, which means it's garden time!  Hooray!  I'm tired today as Alastair and I did quite a long wak yesterday, so I have just done a few jobs today.  I have:

1.  potted my cauliflower seedlings on.

I sowed my cauliflower seedlings loose in a seed tray.  I might be inclined, I think, to sow them directly into fibre pots next time (if there is a next time).  I wasn't quite expecting anything to come up, so when an entire seed-packet germinated I wasn't quite sure to do with them!

I'm not sure whether it was the right thing to do or not, but I thought that some of them might like to spend a little time in fibre pots before being potted on to bigger pots.  I don't have that big a garden so I selected 10 of the most splendid seedlings and transplanted them into fibre pots.

I half-filled the fibre pots, then made a little hole with my finger...

...and gently lowered the roots into it.  I have read that you're meant to handle seedlings by the leaves not by the stem, but they didn't seem to mind either way as long as I was gentle.

My potting trowel (which is what I think it's called!) was very useful for filling the little pots, because of its pointy tip.

2.  potted my courgettes seedlings on.

My courgettes sprouted splendidly, I couldn't believe it!

Unlike my cauliflower seedlings, they were clearly ready to go into bigger pots.  The were bursting out of their fibre pots.

The brilliant thing about the fibre pots is that you don't have to take the seedlings out of them, you just put them in the bigger pot.  They rot down and fertilise the seedling.  Again, as I don't have that big a garden, I only transplanted 10 plants.  The remaining ones will be given to neighbours who garden.

I ran out of compost, so one of the courgettes has been potted in soil from the garden.  I wonder if it'll grow any differently.

3. potted my broad beans on. 

Strictly speaking these aren't mine, as Dad sowed them for me, but they have been living in the coldframe since before they were little green shoots so they're kind of mine!  They were flourishing.

I teased their roots apart...

And put them in bigger pots.  They are in soil from the garden, so I hope they're okay. 

All the pots were put in the coldframe, where hopefully they will be safe from the frosts and not get too hot when the sun shines.

4. planted some onion sets.  Never done this before either so hope I did it right!

I was helped by a very silly cat.

6. top-dressed my blueberries with ericaceous compost (this sounds impressively knowledgeable, but it's what it said to do on the label!).  Aren't they splendid?!

7.  pruned my gooseberry bush.  Poor gooseberry bush.  He's never done very well.  In the summer of 2010 he had one gooseberry on him, and last summer he had none.  He's had the sword of Damocles hanging over his head ever since, as Alastair keeps asking when I'm going to get rid of him.  But I'm not giving up on my gooseberry bush yet!  I'll see if a hard prune does the trick. 

8. tidied up my clematis montana - just getting rid of the dead wood and rearranging him a bit - who is about to flower profusely and splendiferously.  He has literally hundreds of buds.

9.  planted some delphiniums (where Clematis Seboldeii used to be).  I am deeply sceptical about these.  I bought them in a box from B&Q, and I'm not quite sure what I expected to see when I opened the box, but I first thought that I'd been sold a bag of compost.  On very close inspection, it was a bag of compost with what looked like some bits of slightly fluffier compost in it (little dried-up roots I think).  It said on the packet to soak in water for 3-4 hours then plant.  I wasn't quite sure how to soak in water, so I lay the fluffy things on top of the soil in the garden where they were going to go and gave them a good water.  I kept soaking them every so often, then after about 3 hours, stuck them in holes and covered them up.  We shall see what happens!

That's quite a lot actually, isn't it?  I deserve a cup of tea!