Spring is Sprung, the Grass is Riz....

Well, maybe not quite yet. But, posted to Facebook (and tagged as public so that everyone can see them) are five photographs of the back garden -- pear blossom, daffodils, other flowery things -- that I took this morning while the sun shone and the temperature, though not exactly warm, was bearable enough. But then I'm part Scots, I can wander around outside in a pair of running shorts and look suitably macho (or nearest equivalent) for the neighbours. Must be my Scottish genes, or something....

The Gardening Year Continues

To the allotment this afternoon, to plant out our potatoes....or some of them, anyway: there wasn't space for all of them in the one bed. So next weekend we'll have to dig up our remaining leeks and turn that bed over to potatoes as well.

Here's some photographs of Judith digging trenches for the potatoes we did plant out and then covering them over with some nice rich compost from one of our bins.





Meanwhile, having renewed one set of bed edging -- and having identified two other sets which also need replacing -- I sorted through the planks stacked against the side of the shed to weed out those which had been there for too long and had started to rot. That meant, in the event, most of them, which must teach me a thing or two about hoarding stuff: it would surely have been more productive for them to have rotted in the ground. But it does mean that before I can renew any more bed edging I'll need to break up the wooden fork lift pallet that's been on the allotment since, er, last September, I think....

Magnolia Stellata

Here is a photograph of the Magnolia stellata to which Judith referred in her previous post, looking very attractive in the cool of the morning. The photograph was taken at 7.00am on Monday (three days ago) in those few minutes when the sun is still rising above the horizon and the sky is still an opalescent grey. (I had just been out jogging to fetch the newspaper.)

Gardening Notes

This week, my magnolia
Is in star, a white galaxy.
Spring supernova!

Spring bursting out all over: purple-blue pulmonaria (lungwort) carpet the front garden, under the star magnolia, mixed in with crocuses. Grape hyacinths (muscari) are pushing up their flowering stalks, so are forget-me-nots. My Maysie Memorial Garden at the end of the street is a mass of crocuses and daffodils, with patches of lungwort and forget-me-not starting to do their stuff. Interesting to note that the west-facing (afternoon sun) side seems to be coming out about two weeks in advance of the east-facing (morning sun) side, which the sun has to warm up from night-time chill before it passes over to an already warmed up west side. Down the allotment, I sowed some rows of brassicas and radish today, lured down by sunny morning, with the soil warm to the touch. Then a chill east wind brought clouds, and I headed back to city life.

I planted out shallots and leek seeds into the same bed a couple of weeks ago, and have two beds of broad beans, early peas and lettuce. JN dug up what will be this year's potato bed at the weekend -- which may have something to do with his back now creaking and requiring pummelation. I'll probably 'pink manure' red orache and cornflower seed liberally over beds not needed for early planting -- let them fallow over April.

Having taken on co-chairing Growing in Haringey, the umbrella network for community gardens and sustainable food activity in the borough, I now need to do paperwork -- secured a small 'Local Lead' grant from Capital Growth, so have to organise getting it spent. The key thing we're using it for is to pay for at least a small amount of core organising work, to hold together communications. keep track of the various things being done on volunteer basis, and manage event organising particularly for the summer round of local outdoor festivals. Better get back to it...

The Gardening Year Resumes

The problem with writing about gardening is of course that it repeats -- unless you grow something different each and every year (which is perhaps theoretically possible), you'll end up with umpteen iterations of the number of broad bean seedlings you planted that day, or how much had to be pruned from the raspberry canes. But sometimes that is exactly what you want to say, irrespective of how many times it's been said before, because yesterday was a really mild, pleasant day -- the first mild, pleasant day we've had this year, and a welcome change after the cold weather that seemed to dominate February, with the wind out of the north and temperatures too low to spend any length of time out of doors.

So yesterday we hustled off down the allotment, me to dig over a couple of beds and Judith to plant stuff, and both of us to harvest stuff. The broccoli has begun to brockle, so we picked some of that -- and here's a photograph of a purple sprouting broccoli, our favourite -- and, with some of our leeks, turned it into broccoli cheese for dinner.



We also planted our broad bean seedlings, and here's a photograph of them, with their anti-pigeon and anti-fox defences -- the stakes keep the foxes out; the plastic bottles rattling in the wind stop the pigeons from pecking off the tender shoots -- and the cardboard tubes in which the seedlings were grown left to rot down alongside them.



Our next tasks will be to plant out our potatoes and repair some of the bed edging. In the meantime, there is frogspawn in the allotment pond and new growth on the raspberry canes: at last, it really does feel like spring.