As May turns in to June and we are full square in the middle of the busiest time of year in the garden, what have I achieved on my plot? I have certainly propagated more flowers and vegetables ever, to the point that I ran out of small pots for growing on my seedlings and for a week or so, I was desperately planting things out to free up some pots to allow me to pot on more seedlings that needed more space for their roots to develop. It’s a fine balance between leaving the seedlings long enough to grow big enough to handle, but not too big that their roots get too congested and then it’s difficult to separate one from another. A top tip though is, once you’ve got a clump of seedlings to separate, out of the seed tray, is to gently hold the leaves of 2 seedlings whose roots are congested and lightly tap the roots on a surface for the compost to fall off and to gradually allow the roots themselves to separate.
It’s also been the time of year to put shading up for the green house – did you know that too much sun on your tomatoes makes the skin tougher and spoils their flavour? In our plot, at this time of year, the green house gets sun from about 9am through to 9pm and that’s a lot of heat, especially this year with such a warm Spring as we’re having. So, we did our best to work out some way of providing shade, so that the seedlings, and their carer, can survive the high temperatures! That involves some Heath Robinson type ingenuity to fix the shade material so that it doesn’t blow away in the next gust of wind. We managed it and all being well lovely tasty tomatoes will prevail!
And Pond news: We’re now on tadpole alert to see which one will be the first to show some legs… it’s either that or which lily pad will provide our first lily of the season…. exciting stuff!
Finally – if you’re interested in joining me for a Pruning workshop in July, in North Bucks, we still have spaces available. Send me a message and I can give you all the details. It would be great to see you there.