Sowing seeds, sowing more seeds, potting on seedlings, and sowing more seeds! Yes, this is the month for the green house and the cold frames to come in to their own. We have quite heavy clay soil, so even some of the seeds that would happily go in to lovely fine tilth on the veg plot ends up in a pot of compost first as as much as I love gardening, even I struggle to get my soil to a fine tilth. Having said that it’s true that each year I add more garden compost to the soil so it’s improving it but hey sometimes it’s just easier to sow in a pot first and then plant out.
And what’s with compost? I never make enough compost for the garden. I don’t know how Monty does it but I’m always short on compost to mulch the beds and add to the veg patch, let alone having any spare for seedlings/potting on. So sowing seeds has become the theme for April. And this year I’m certainly building up my flowers from seeds as they are so useful to fill in gaps in the beds and of course for cutting for the house. Annuals such as cornflower, marigolds and nigella are great, and I’ve also got some rudbeckia and lupins on the go too. However, my fave free plants of the month have to go to the jasmine I rescued from a bed that had been badly planted. It’s a climber but there hadn’t been anything for it to climb up, so it had grown out instead, so as soon as the stems had touched the ground for any length of time it had sent out roots. As a result, when I realised and tried to move it I had to move the original plant and then over 20 new plants that had started to sprout from the stems around. Jasmine anyone? I have a few going spare!