Spring is a busy time for us gardeners, and we’ve been lucky with the weather recently, so here’s what we got up to last week.
Sowing chickpeas in old gutters
If you’re growing a lot of one plant, it can be very time consuming transplanting the seedlings out into the garden when the time comes. This year I think I’ve found a solution to this for chickpeas. It works for chickpeas as they won’t have the biggest roots when it comes time to transplant, so they can stay in the gutters until then.
I planted almost 200 chickpeas, and around half of them I planted in old gutters that were filled with soil. The gutters didn’t have ends (other than the end in the picture), they were just open, so I used some rocks to plug the ends of the gutter to keep the soil in place. I spaced them to their final growing position (roughly 4 – 6 inches between plants), so that when it comes time to transplant them, hopefully all I’ll need to do is dig a trench and then slide the soil (with the seedlings in it) into the trench. The gutters are currently in the polytunnel, where they will stay until planting them out after the last frost.
Looking after seedlings
There are a lot of seedlings growing right now in my house. Many of them are growing on heating mats, and then being put under grow lights once the plants have come up.
The winter squashes needed potting on as they were getting too big to stay in the modular trays that the seeds were planted in. They are now in small pots in the polytunnel, along with the broad beans that are currently growing in old mushroom containers.
The seedling count as of last week is:
11 Aubergines, 40 Broad Beans, 4 Cauliflower, 9 Chilli Peppers, 19 Sweet Peppers, 19 Tomatoes, 3 Watermelon, 14 Winter Squash.
General garden jobs
The branches from coppicing the hazel trees and pruning other trees needing sorting out and piling up, out of the way. The smaller ones went into a pile to create a habitat for animals, and will rot down over time. I started to stack up the bigger branches that will be used for wigwams, other growing supports, and possibly fences. We haven’t decided what to do with the thickest branches yet, so I just dragged those out of the way for now while we figure it out.
The rhubarb has come up, and it’s almost ready to try the first few stalks. The almond trees were hand pollinated, as the pollination success rate has been low in previous years, so we’re trying to improve that. The fruit trees are budding, and I’m very much looking forward to them flowering, as apple trees are one of my favourite plants. Many flowers are also out, including daffodils and many different colours of primrose, as well as flowering trees, including forsythia.
I am proud to be affiliated with JustSeed, a company that I have bought seeds from for a few years now. I believe in what they are doing over there, and if you are going to buy seeds, garden tools, or seedlings, then please consider checking them out and using my link below to do so. Thank you for supporting me.
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