By Pete Langford,
Barron Knights founder and lead singer
At last the garden centres are open, just great news and good timing for everyone to buy their lettuce plants as well as runner/broad beans and all the other lovely flower plants,
It’s been a worry of so many keen gardeners. I was lucky I had loads of seeds to get things going in the greenhouse’ and now the broad beans are full of flowers and the runners are crawling around the canes…but I did make a big mistake.
For the past couple of years, I have defied the golden rule to not plant runner beans until May 12, or as farmers say, the 19th, and not had a problem, but this year, the cold winds and a slight frost killed them off; but luckily I had seeded up a reserve and planted them and they’re looking healthy.
We had two days of very fierce winds and because April was such a warm month, my early potatoes had sprouted and good growth showing; but the winds burned some of the leaves and did the same with leaves on the raspberries. What was very sad was the tops of my dahlias browned off (so was I) but they are back to looking strong and healthy. Lots of these were the tubers from my last year’s dwarf dahlias.
We had so much rain in the winter, we never thought there would be a hosepipe ban, but there is talk of it although there is good news for the winter wet, and that is all our fruit trees are showing so much fruit, we may have to open up a shop. The plum trees look like they have bunches of grapes, not plums.
My other big mistake was sowing seeds in the greenhouse and not marking up what they were and I thought they were sweet potatoes and chillies but my wife who is a passionate gardener thinks they are weeds and showed me pictures that looked exactly the same, they are now in pots in the corner of the garden, so I live in hope they produce something we can eat.
Not only do we have more pigeons than ever this year, but a rabbit has tried to make a warren underneath all the ashes on our bonfire area. Instead of filling it in, I have kept it open to see how deep he/she will go, but all of a sudden it hasn’t returned – Yippeee.
It’s another beautiful morning and I will survey my wild flower area because it is packed with plants, but not sure what is what. I’m learning all the time.
Happy gardening
Subject: FW: web news gardening from Pete Langford