No pictures

It's been snowing lightly here all morning (now into the afternoon). Definitely no gardening going on. In fact, the weather just makes me feel like curling up on the settee with a cup of something hot and a DVD. Pity I have work to do on my websites. Although I have received a new gardening catalogue in the post recently, so perhaps I'll take a break and leaf through it ... just as a reminder of more promising times to come in the spring.

Welcome Sunshine

It's so bright and sunny here I should really be doing some stuff on my terrace but it's soooooo cold I decided against it. The most I could manage was a 5 minute stint just to see what's happening and take a couple of pictures.

With the albeit light but unexpected snow on Friday night, plus the heavy frosts, my over-wintering onions are looking decidedly flat however, my pansies have perked up!

Better still, there is real hope of spring on its way with the daffodils showing good signs of strong growth. A little bit of an experiment this year as I re-potted all of the bulbs last October but have tried an old method of planting more bulbs in each pot but at different depths. The aim is to get a container to hold more plants.

I planted some around 12.5cm/5-inches deep - covered them with a good layer of compost, then put more bulbs on top (about 7.5cm/3-inches deep). Not only do you get more plants per container but, with a bit of luck, the ones which were planted deeper will come up just that little bit later so extending the flowering period. Great idea.....if it works.

Yes I know the pot needs weeding but truly, it was so chilly out there it was as much as I could do to take the picture.

Forward thinking

With all the snow gone from my terrace, it's making me feel a little more like planning where I'm going to grow all my goodies this year.

I have already ordered and received all my veg seeds - went a little mad due to the increased growing space I'll have with the purchase of a new raised bed frame and extra troughs - and mentally plotted it all out before I ordered so I'm sure I'll get it all in.

I've had some limited success with growing butternut in containers. I say limited because I've only managed to get 2 butteruts from any one plant. So this year I'm going to try what seems to be a new variety of pumpkin which is supposed to be ideal for containers.

It's called Summer Ball and has the added advantage that you can cut the fruit when they are very small and use them like courgettes, then leave some to mature into pumpkins. Hopefully I'll also get lots of the flowers which can be deep fried.

So, all-in-all this is a great choice where space is limited as you're not taking up an area or container with a plant which only produces crops late in the growing season.


The seeds can't be sown until April (indoors) but I'm looking forward to growing this new variety and will, of course, report throughout the coming season on how it goes.

No gardening

As with much of the country, there's still lots of snow here. Not much point in going out to look at how the plants are doing. But rather than not write anything, I thought I'd go back to something I mentioned in an earlier post, namely coir.

Coir is wonderful stuff, especially if, like me, you grow in containers. It comes from the outer husk of coconuts and is often sold in small dehydrated blocks - excellent if storage space is limited or if buying heavy bags of compost is difficult.

Although there's not much nutrients in coir, it is light and clean to handle and can be mixed with soil or compost to bulk it out. And if you grow in containers, you will have to feed your plants regularly anyway so the lack of nutrients won't be a problem.


The blocks are usually about 20cm/8 inches x 10cm/4 inches x 7.5cm/3-inches deep and once reconstituted, make about 7 litres of compost. It only takes about 20 minutes to reconstitute the blocks. It can be used much like peat except it's obtained from a sustainable source.

I've found the easiest way to reconstitute is to place it in a thick plastic carrier bag - make sure there are no holes in it - then add the water and leave it. It's made my life much easier - I love it.

First Snow of the year

Well actually, it isn't because we had loads in January. This post is a day late - the snow arrived overnight Thursday/Friday am.

I was somewhat amazed because on closer inspection, I found that the net I had over my onions and lettuce (primarily to keep critters off the bed) was keeping most of the snow off the plants beneath it.

Surprising because the holes in the net are quite wide - about 2.5cm/1" so I assumed the snow would have passed through them. Wonders will never cease.

Cold and Frosty

It's only been the last few days that I haven't woken up to find the ground wet with rain. Today I awoke to white white white: everything covered in frost even by mid morning despite the bright sunshine....and so COLD the rain water which collected in some new (un holed) containers outside has frozen over.

My onions and lettuce are holding up, as they should, but the pansies I bought and planted in with my new plum tree seem to be suffering and have drooped all over the place. I thought they were winter hardy. Ho hum.

Wild and windy

Saturday was blowing a gale. So much so, it blew the fleece cover off my new raised bed in which I planted some onion sets and sowed some over-wintering lettuce about 3 weeks ago.

Just as well because some of the onions had already sprouted and growing tall enough to be bent over by the fleece.

Luckily the weather calmed down and I managed to get onto the terrace to take a good look (and do some weeding) on Sunday which was actually quite a nice sunny day.

As it's still a little blowy but not too cold, I've decided not to replace the fleece yet but I've left the netting on just in case an foxes decide to take an interest

The germination of the lettuce is still very sparse but I'm sure it will pick up in due course although I will put the fleece back on if it turns particularly cold.