Weather in March, and in April so far, has been lovely and it has been a pleasure to get stuck into our gardening!
Our dynamic joinery duo of Will and Dave have soldiered on with the raised bed construction and two more loads of topsoil were delivered from St Michael’s Tippers (thanks for the donation again!). Other volunteers have worked tirelessly to distribute this into the raised beds which are now pretty much ready for planting.
They also managed to turn our massive outside tattie bed from a rocky patch full of mangled metal into a fabulous potato field.
The sensory border bed along the main path has gone from a watery ditch to an edged bed with improved drainage, ready for planting. The first two roses have just been put in last week by Ian and Peter (Rosa gallica officinalis and Rosa mundi). Many more perennials are waiting their turn patiently in the polytunnel…
Lots of smaller jobs have been done too – gravel spread to fix the paths, another compost bin constructed and a start made on the water collection system for the polytunnel.
But it is the growing that’s been really exciting this month!
We’ve had our first crop of the year from our radishes in the polytunnel, and the lettuce and carrots sown at the same time are coming along nicely. The broccoli seedlings are almost ready to transplant into outside beds too. The polytunnel tatties have been flourishing – we think that the careful care from Jenny tucking them in for the night with a frost-protection fleece and giving them some motivational speeches has made a real difference;)
Outside, Peter’s been relieved to see some parsnip germination (he talked about sowing them in his recent blog here) They are a bit tricky to get going but we now have some seedlings coming up among the radish sown to mark the rows. The garlic and onions in the bed next door are doing just fine too.
All of the outside potatoes have now been planted. We have five 1st earlies (Epicure, Lady Christl, Red Duke of York, Ulster Prince, Winston), five 2nd earlies (BF15, Marfona, Maris Peer, Nadine, Salad Blue) and seven main crops (International Kidney, Maris Piper, Ratte, Record, Sarpo Axona, Sarpo Kiri, Sarpo Mira). Hope you are all ready for a tatie tasting extravaganza!
Capsicum, tomato, basil, pea and okra seeds we had sown during our seed sowing workshop in February have now turned into seedlings and some have even been pricked out into pots in the polytunnel.
A new raised bed against the shed is a host to two lovely Tomcot Apricots and a fig tree (Figuir Brown Turkey C10TG Goblet). These varieties were selected by Peter as he’s seen them fruit successfully when planted outside elsewhere in coastal Fife. And our established fruit trees and bushes in our fruiting hedge are starting to flower.
Unfortunately, we’ve had some ‘delayed successes’ as well. Our carefully planted pea seeds have been taken by pigeons! We have learned from our mistake and have now protected the bed with some metal mesh, ready for repeat sowing. Lucky there is still plenty of time to get them in…
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