Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4

Week 1

General

Continuing to remove old HELLEBORE and EPIMEDIUM leaves as and when we came across the plants.

Tree ties were checked and either loosened or tightened if necessary.

Allotment

Rebuilt cloche for top of hot box.

Turned compost heap.

Started cleaning through brassica bed, removing yellow leaves and digging up old stalks left after harvest.

Removed pile of well rotted manure which had been the mild hot bed last year and spread most on surrounding ground, although some was bagged up for use later.

Edged grass pathways.

Elizabethan Vegetable Garden

Harvested remaining winter hardy lettuce so that ground could be prepared.

Week 2

General

The bird baths and feeders were regularly topped up.

Any CURRANTS not pruned last month were pruned now.

We continued to prune all deciduous trees, any crossing branches were removed and some shortened if needed.

All potted plants in the greenhouses and conservatory were kept slightly on the dry side to reduce the risk of rotting off, thermostat controlled heaters are left on when cold weather is expected.

Allotment

Fillined hot box with fresh horse manure collected from a local stable yard.

General tidy round, as well as emptying water butts that had been used for comfrey and nettle feeds last year.

Cleaned out butts and put back into position.

Cleared through PARSNIPS and CHARD removing old leaves and weeding.

Painting coldframe.

Greenhouse

Organised seed packets into monthly sowing sections.

Made SWEET PEA tubes.

Sowed PAK CHOI 'Green Revolution'; MIZUNA; LETTUCE 'Tom Thumb' and CARROT 'Paris Market Baron' into modules.

Sowed SWEET PEA 'Highscent', 'Winston Churchill', 'Early Fragrance Mix' and 'Southbourne' into homemade tubes.

Week 3

General

We kept off the lawns as much as possible as they were saturated with rain water. As the water table was high there was no way of draining the water away.

Cutting back perennials that look untidy, weeding and forking over as we go.

We have divided any herbaceous perennials if needed and took any plants we didn’t require to the nursery for potting.

Allotment

Most of the POTATO tuber arrived from Dobies seeds and have been put straight out to chit.

Mulching CURRANT bushes with our own shreddings.

Ground is very wet so have kept off the ground as much as possible.

Nursery

Lifted and potted the various varieties of well rooted hardwood cuttings taken in the Winter of 2006.

Greenhouse

Gave cold frame a second coat of paint.

Our Heritage Seeds from Garden Organic have arrived.

Week 4

General

Mulched some gardens and borders with a layer of woodchip, this is best done after plants have been cut back and any digging such as dividing has been done, it will be an ongoing job over the next few months.

Carried on reducing the height of some of our perimeter BLACKTHORN hedges as they were becoming too tall to maintain, we have also started to shape our BEECH hedges, some of these need cutting back quite hard as they are also getting too wide and too high. All brash was shredded.

Pruned and tied in WISTERIA, LABURNUM and VITIS on pergolas, any rambling ROSES that had attractive hips and had been left unpruned until now were also pruned and tied in.

Some of the felt on our shed roofs had perished so we replaced it with new.

Any remaining EPIMEDIUM leaves were removed before the end of the month as the flowers will soon be poking through.

The ground is still waterlogged so some pathways and garden furniture was cleaned with a pressure washer if needed.

Allotment

Trained LOGANBERRY onto its wires.

Pruned and trained all top and soft fruit in our fruit cage.

Gave coldframe used on mild hot bed a really good clean.

Collected more fresh manure and started to construct the mild hot bed.

Capped hot box with 15cm (6") of our own garden compost and placed cloche over the top.

Autumn RASPBERRY canes were cut to ground level.

Greenhouse

Sowed TOMATO 'Golden Grape', 'Red Currant', 'Yellow Currant' and 'Yellow Pear' (all Robinson's seeds); PEPPER 'Beaver Dam' (Dobies seeds); AUBERGINE 'Black Beauty' and 'Moneymaker' (Suttons seeds); CHILLI PEPPER 'Dorset Naga' (The Really Cool Seed Company) and CELERY 'Martine' Mammoth Pink' (Robinson's seeds) and 'Giant Pascal' (Suttons seeds) into 8cm (3") pots.

Sowed SWEET PEA 'Supremo Mixed', 'Heirloom', 'Juanita', 'Patio Mix' and 'Lianne Marie' (all Suttons seeds) into homemade tubes.

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4

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