Garden Update

This week the weather has been beautiful in the evenings and so I have had the opportunity to do some more gardening, especially with the long evenings stretching out before us. On Monday (April 13th) I transplanted my garlic from the pots in the plastic greenhouse to one of the newly-created raised beds. The bed was intended to have tomatoes in, but they are suffering quite badly at the moment, so I am sure that I can utilize the space for garlic. So far only one of the eight that I transplanted appears to be suffering from the move but I will keep an eye on them.

On Wednesday I put a fence around the garlic bed to ensure that the cats stay out as far as possible, and I planted a lot more seeds. This included a mild mesclun mix, a spicy mesclun mix, bedfordshire champion onions (the early planted seeds are not really working), two squares of leeks (one Scottish Leek and the other Durabel), and two squares of lettuce (both Marvel of Four Seasons I believe).

So far all of the seeds that I have sown in the garden are making an appearance with the exception of the spinach that I planted some time ago. I have, therefore, made another sowing of Bloomsdale spinach in the pre-existing square, and today I transplanted my beans to one of the beds. Having not quite enough transplants to fill the required space, I planted about 6 more Maxibel Filet beans to make up the difference.

I have also moved the sweetcorn that I planted a couple of weeks ago into the plastic greenhouse as we are having some good weather at the moment, and I think that the earlier I get them out there then the easier they will be able to handle the variations in the weather. We'll see.

Garlic

Today I planted, or rather transplanted, garlic into one of the beds, notably one of the beds for tomatoes. I am not too sure about the success of this as I have heard that garlic is not agreeable to being transplanted. I guess I will just have to cross my fingers and hope.

In other news, the corn that I planted appears to have shot up very well, and the pumpkin sprung up very quickly indeed. I have moved it into the plastic greeenhouse as I am not expecting any frosts over the next couple of weeks. Tomorrow I will plant some beans and peas.

Some More Beds Finished

Today I finally managed to finish off two more beds, meaning that I now have four raised beds finished. I have now got two beds left to finish but, unfortunately, that consists of completely building the beds, including the digging and the sifting of stones which is the most tedious.

We are coming up to the last frost date, which is pretty exciting. On April 1st it snowed, although it didn't really settle. This week has been pretty hot, and I think that I killed off a lot of my seedlings, which is unfortunate. I have discovered that I am extremely impatient, which is something that I need to start working on. Having said that, a lot of my plants are happily staying in the plastic greenhouse overnight and have done for nearly a week, meaning that they should be hardy. I will start to plant some of the seedings out, especially the garlic and the beans.

Today, I planted some more onions as the other onions have really been massacred. On top of this I planted some sweetcorn and a couple of pumpkins seeds hoping to get them off to a good start. Last year I planted the sweetcorn in June and they didn't really have enough time to mature, but this year I am going to get them in the ground earlier and see what happens.