whether the weather be hot or whether the weather be cold

Happy Easter

I've been watching gardening videos courtesy of the vege club library, living vicariously. The only sort of gardening for this week end I suspect.  Pouring doesn't describe the rain, it's driving in against the windows and under the back door making its way into places it doesn't usually go. Has filled up the metre deep post holes that we dug last week for the retaining wall.

 

 Here's the Capri tomatoes looking more successful than they really were. Bigger tomatoes require a longer growing season to ripen, better care with watering and feeding, and this year, much better slug protection than they got. The smaller tomatoes were more successful, being satisfied with errattic attention, and well away from the ground. I have learnt that slugs will climb for tomatoes, but they don't seem to have a great head for heights.

 A beautiful strawberry flower below.  This plant was a gift that sat in the pot for weeks. When I eventually planted it, out came bracts of flowers. Too late for fruiting it's just too cold now but I have carefully planted out all the runners in the strawberry bed. 

 I am really pleased I got a day to clear around the fruit trees and bushes, strawberries in the foreground.
Mulched with compost and bedded with pine needles for the winter. I looked at pea straw, but the pine needles are free and I also use them on the floor of the hen house so I tend to have a supply on hand.

 Little concrete retaining walls are appearing everywher around the garden, using up the debris from the 'landscaping project' my euphemistic term for the great workshop build. Some people gracefully landscape their sections and other people dig, and build, and make things and it all looks good in the end. We are in the second category but it has yet to all look good.

I've been trying to work out what this picture is meant to show but I remember now. Brassicas on the lower right. This is an area with club root. I took your advice Mum and put a rhubarb stalk and leaf under each plant; they seem to be growing really well.

I have roughly divided my garden now into 4 working beds so my next project is to establish some sort of crop rotation and start to plan to plant accordingly.

Right, I better go and put some wood on the fire...