Ramblings of a Haphazard Gardener

On the last triangle on the vegetable patch, things really got started when garlic was the first crop to be planted out on a beautiful sunny day in early March.  The other job for the afternoon was to install another bird-feeder.  In January, having a bird feeder seemed a nice wildlife friendly idea – especially after such a hard winter, and it was duly hung from the Medlar tree, giving it a certain rustic charm.  Unfortunately, this was just too much temptation for the neighbouring grey squirrel so a new feeder now sits atop a state- of –the- art anti-squirrel device in the form of a stick.  Something that flies through the air is definitely nibbling the nuts and seeds as the feeder empties on a regular basis but whatever is doing the nibbling appears to be invisible to the human eye as no-one has seen it yet.

A row of Tulips that were planted as deep as they would go in November are at last showing [ with only a few suspicious holes – see the squirrel menace above. ]  The plan was to have those lovely rows of cut flowers that look so right on allotments but on a rather windy day later in mid-March, some leftover Marigold , Poppy and Black Cornflower seed was forcibly broadcast sown instead.    Clarkia is such a gorgeous old cottage garden flower that there had to be room for it somewhere.  The difficulty lies in the fact that if the soil is too rich and fertile then there will be lots of leaves and not a lot of flowers.  The soil in the garden has been cultivated for over 200 years and added to the fact that a memorable day in November last year was spent spreading, and digging in, a generous trailer full of manure, the Clarkia seed was sown more in hope than in expectation.  The other cut flower that has been sown is blue Nigella damascena Miss Jeckyll which, like so many hardy annuals, does much better sown in autumn but just didn’t get sown in time.

 A number of crops – Broad Bean Aquadulce for example – can be autumn sown for an earlier crop but on the triangle, April is when the work starts in earnest as most crops will be sown or planted out, starting with red and yellow shallots and waxy potatoes,  Osprey and Pink Fir Apple.  Hopefully, sowing little and often will extend the harvest but there is something exuberant and abundant about the glut of summer that inevitably demands the purchase and sowing of more tomato seeds.  This year the varieties will be Black Krim from Russia, Brandywine Pink from the USA and small, yellow Sungold

More from Sean, our Haphazard Gardener, next month …………