Early May is such a lovely time in the garden, everything is fully in the process of waking up; and it’s exciting to see your new seedlings developing, but also see what’s decided to reseed or revive itself from the following year also.
I seem to have a bit of a veg addiction this year, and after mentioning in my last blog that I’m growing potatoes, parsnips, broad beans, peas, strawberries and attempting peanuts… well that’s been added to in abundance – more on that in a second. But first a little update on two re attempts from what were disasters last year. Three (only three, I planted twelve) of my peanuts have actually germinated, and I seem to have three little – and I reiterate little – peanut plants, though it’s still early days and I’m not certain they will fully amount to anything… it’s a step up from last year, and they seem happier being grown in a mini greenhouse. Then the purple sprouting broccoli, this just got eaten to death before it even had a chance to take off last year, and the only thing I’ve done differently this year, is buy some butterfly and bird netting to keep the predators out, and it’s thriving! I didn’t take a picture, because I didn’t yet want to disturb my carefully placed netting, but I will do a bit later on in the year.
I saw a garden with homegrown sweetcorn on Gardeners World the other week, and well, that was it – sweetcorn seeds ordered, and I’m now attempting them too. Same with tomatoes, a lovely lady had mentioned that she got some seeds, put them down and now has them in abundance – so again, I thought why not!
I think I mentioned in my last blog that I wasn’t doing pumpkins again this year, and that swiftly went out of the window – I’ve decided that I can plant them in once the potatoes are ready to come out, but instead grow the mini climbing type, and use them to decorate the tables at our wedding later in the year. I haven’t sown them yet, because I don’t want them to get leggy in their containers, so I’ll sow them about six weeks before the potatoes are due to come out, that way I can make sure I have (fingers crossed) a good succession planting agenda.
I was also going to order some bamboo canes to support the broad beans and peas, then I realised that I’d be pointlessly spending money… when instead I could use fallen sticks from ours, and friends and relatives garden; and create a bit more of a special and rustic type structure – it’s not perfect, but I actually like that, and I think it looks much nicer than bamboo sticks would have done.
