Veg to plant in April and things to do.

Jesthar

Not a huge amount plant wise this weekend, but I did spend couple of hours digging weeds and grass out of my gravel drive, and another hour or two taking the mower to pieces, cleaning it and replacing the blade. Mows a lot quicker now!

Bizzarely, when I was hunting online for where I could get my replacement blade from, I came across one review which basically said 'oh, wow, finding I can get a new blade has saved me from having to buy a new lawnmower again!" Wha? There are people out there who buy new lawnmowers instead of new blades?

Seeds are doing well, too. All but a couple of the French beans are up, and the first of the runners is starting to show, plus five of the peas and - oh, wow - one leek. None of the toms yet, though.

No sign of my Unwins catalogue, though...

~Jes

Orange_King

ginvzt wrote: »

Are these from gardenbargains/idealworld? Mine are looking nice too, but none of them had any flowers!

Yes, ideal world it was. Only the Apple appears to be flowering as yet while the pear is only just showing buds. The other 2 have plenty of leaves so fingers crossed.

Raspberry_Swirl

I spent 3 hours on Saturday morning with my parents who kindly came round to help me sorting the garden out. Dad dug out a conifer in the front garden that i'd planted too close to the house a few years ago and mowed the lawns whilst my mum and me cleared out all the dead stuff from last summer (yes, I am that lazy!) and put new soil in all the pots (I don't have beds yet) and planted some pansies for a bit of colour. Also planted seeds for radish, sugar snaps, lambs lettuce, courgettes, dwarf beans, beetroot, spring onions and my chitted potaoes.

Still got pak choi and carrots to plant but ran out of soil!

Any

Right, so after over a month of waiting for my chillies to germinate, I pushed in couple more seeds and put them on the plate on top of the aga... And this weekend 2 came up!! I was nearly giving up on them and planning trip to garden centre to buy some plants..
OH is very excited as that is the only of my growing veg/fruit he is interested in.. Oh and rhubarb. If I make rhubarb crumble afterwards.. but we are not supposed to pick it in the first year, so even though it is doing brilliantly he is not excited about that one much!

[Deleted User]

has anyone put brassicas in open ground yet? I have some small cabbages doing extremely well at home in raised beds and I know I can put fleece over if it gets too cold/wet/windy. I have several cabbages of different types, purple sprouting brocolli, kales, kohl rabi, all doing well in modules but pretty pampered at home. I don`t know whether to take a chance re the allotment (sw and mild) or to wait

I am growing sweetcorn for the first time this year and am planning a 3 x 3 plant arrangement. The seeds have just germinated inside and I will start hardening them tomorrow. Allotment soil is heavy clay, at present covered in weed fabric, so I need to prepare the soil for them. What do they like? I have bfb and dried manure available also dried seaweed. Do they like a fluffy bed or a firm bed?

An absolute shortage of rain here as we only had enough yesterday to tickle the soil. Water butts are almost empty and dh has put in another 3 x 100l butts just in case it ever rains. All my transplanting into `permanent` pots is going into compost containing vermiculite and water gels and I have 40 plant waterers ready and we have drunk our way through 30 odd bottles so far (thank you approved food)

I must say that I will be glad when everything is transplanted to final positions. I do like it when the tiny seedlings get some size and strength into them

grrmich

Kittie I have cabbage seedlings in the ground and they're fine.

I've also sowed more cabbage, sprouts and kale in modules, and left them up at the allotment with an old plastic storage box over them for protection. They all seem to be growing fine. I'm in the SE area so fairly mild here too.

[Deleted User]

thanks for that. I`ll start putting them out this weekend

prophecy_grrl

My seeds have all sprouted now. They're all in little pots except the lettuce I have transferred to a big gro bag. I have 2 questions for you experts:

Shall I start transferring everything to bigger pots now?

My tom plants are looking more leafy - is that normal?

ginvzt

I had an evening 'off' house work yesterday and went for a garden centre tour. Saw the biggest rosemary bush in any of the places to buy, but it was £199!!!! It would have been great that size for us, but not for that price.

Anyway, I ended up buying:
chocolate mint
horseradish (as the one from Wilko never started growing)
caraway (I still have the caraway from spice rack on the wet paper towel, and noticed some rrots, so will planting that one out as well)
tri-color sage
curly parsley (well, they did 5 for £10 offer... or each £2.49)
Rosemary 'Capri' (trailing variety, looks very pretty with blue flowers)
Evergreen 4-1 lawn treatment (and I did spread it out last night in the front garden, so I will be watering it in tonight if no rain - we might be able to cut the grass then early next week)
Some more fertilisers as well.

So, I planted the mint and sage in the bigger pots on my return home, planted out the horseradish in the flower bucket, parsley and caraway out in the flower bed (ok, with will not be just the flower bed now!). Then, I decided to stay out a bit longer and transplanted the sage I have grown from seed - I had 9 seedlings in one 10 cm pot, so now they have their own home each, and also planted out the tarragon in the bigger pots. By the time I got inside, it was 8:55pm!!!

And this morning I just had to plant out the gherkins in the pots out of modules as they all came up while I was away at the beginning of the week and started getting leggy.

And the good news, that whilst I was away for 3 nights this week, my OH managed to kill only one cucumber seedling out in the plastic greenhouse. He did let the temperature drop to below 4C, but everything else seem to have survived.

mountainviews

I planted out my cauliflower plants this morning............this afternoon I saw a cabbage white butterfly on them, can you believe it! how did he know I had just planted them out? I have just had to go along the rows and rub each leaf that had little tiny dots on it!
I have also got out in my garden Broad beans, Runner beans, and courgettes, all doing very well so far.