Trying to keep on top of things

And somehow, it’s May. Time seems to be flying by without our to-do list getting any shorter – it feels like as soon as we cross something off, we add another few jobs. The garden is adding more than its fair share – weeds seem to appear from nowhere, and we’ve just realised that our front garden has been overrun with three-cornered leek and not (as we thought) a spring flower. I guess a silver lining of clearing this will be that we’ll have plenty of scones and pesto in the freezer to see us through the winter.  

The daffodils we planted along the edge of the wood are starting to die and need deadheading – easy enough in principle – but more weeds are growing in amongst them and crowding out the tulips (and hopefully the irises if they grow). We’ve made a start clearing this space, but our gardening gloves aren’t nettle-proof and after a while our hands are sore enough to change jobs!

One thing we’re really pleased with is our compost. After our first attempt when we shoved all our garden waste into our new compost bins (including pine cones and needles and sticks), we learnt that certain things just don’t compost down fast enough – and layering in rotten fruit and cardboard amongst the grass cuttings makes a real difference. We turned our third bed this weekend, and – save for a few twigs and pine cones – were pleased to see our bottom layer was dark and crumbly – everything we’re told compost should be. Perfect for potting up our first ever dahlia tubers, kindly gifted by my mum.

We’re also making progress with our orchard pruning pile – when we pruned the branches we decided to dry them out to use in our wood burner next year. We quickly learnt last year that when it’s cold, the last thing you want to do is stand outside and cut up wood, so we do this in the spring/summer months and store it in the barn until we need it. Because we pruned pretty severely this year to try and get the trees under control (and remove the canker), we had an enormous pile to work through. We’ve managed to finish the first stage – cutting off the smaller twigs to leave straighter lengths – and stacked it up under our back terrace until we have time to cut it down and store it. Somehow it feels slightly less daunting now. 

Our vegetable garden seems to be in a never-ending cycle of planting seeds, potting up seedlings and then planting them out when they’re slightly bigger and the weather gradually turns warmer. It’s hard trying to work out the best time to plant out into the garden – between the three gardening books we’re using, the seed packets and the internet, everything has a slightly different time or gem of advice. I’m sure we’ve skipped a step more than once – and our potatoes and squashes have been ready to plant out for a couple of weeks now… Let’s see if we can keep them going until we get our new bed in place – which will hopefully be next weekend. In the meantime we’re operating a trial-and-error approach – seeing if the first few seedlings survive before planting out any more!