Leaks, Beans & Furry Fiends.

Hello to my fellow Hive Gardeners.

It's April and that for me means one thing, the gardening season is in full swing. As usual I've had to battle against a low budget and the predictable unpredictability of British weather. This is how it's going so far.

It's all a learning process...

My first task was to get my notebook out from last year. I had written a few pages on what had worked and what hadn't from the previous season. This turned out to be a big help when it came to deciding what seeds to start off first, as I'd noted how long it took different seeds to germinate and how well the seedlings were doing in our cold house. I'd highly recommend doing this yourselves, as half of the struggle is trying to make sure your seedlings get a good start.

I then went out to check on the soil in my beds and make sure they were ready for the season ahead. Thankfully a good friend of mine managed to supply 8 bin bags of leaves from his back yard as he lived next door to our big local park. I spread those as a thick mulch as winter was kicking in last year to help feed the soil organisms and keep the consistency nice and fluffy. I also had a delivery of well composted horse manure from my parents to add a good source of nitrogen for the upcoming season. This is an amazing soil amendment, as long as you don't mind weeding out the occasional grass sprouts. I usually restrict myself to adding manure once per year as the longer it has been composting for, the less that grass seed is an issue.

Now back to that damned British weather! A huge problem for me last year was leggy, weak seedlings. No matter how many times I do this I feel like I will always have a tough time deciding when to get my seed sowing started. I check the weather forecast regularly but as anyone that lives in the North East will tell you, it can be somewhat unreliable in the mid term. As a contingency, I decided to purchase a small grow lamp.

As I've said, my budget is very small so rather than go all in I decided to experiment with this 5W LED full spectrum USB lamp. It only cost me £12 on EBay so I wasn't convinced that it would be any good but I'm glad to report that it's made a big difference. The tomato seedlings pictured have had a 3 hour timer on for most evenings since they sprouted and are significantly stronger than another set that haven't received any extra light.

Speaking of bargains, I regularly check in on the local Facebook buying/selling pages and managed on this occasion to get ahead of the pack and pick myself up an additional compost bin. I don't drive and my wife drives a Mini, so I often miss out on these opportunities, however on this occasion the seller was only a few streets away from my house and was selling at around 1/6 of the price of a new bin. This will be huge for me going forward, as I can now leave my full bin to break down completely and save myself a lot of back breaking sieving!

With everything in place I got to sowing some seeds. This year I started off with some of my tried and true crops like icicle radish, giant Italian parsley, beetroot (golden & regular), lettuce and tomatoes. While I was getting seeds in pots, my wife had made the decision that this was the year that I should try to grow some strawberries. Evidently she was feeling left out as myself and our Border Terrier Alfie tend to eat the lion's share of the small Alpine strawberries from my pot outside. 😁 As a result she decided to take matters into her own hands and took a trip to our local plant nursery.

I planted the strawberries into large pots in my sunny front garden and my wife has been excitedly keeping an eye on them ever since. Apparently she had been doing her own research and made sure that all of the plants she chose had flowers on them so she knew they were healthy. She did get a little over-excited and buy 3 different varieties, but I'm not complaining! Next up was to provide some protection against the last frost of winter. I set up a plastic hoop tunnel over my beetroot seedlings and my long plastic cloche over a row of red onion sets to stop birds from pulling them out.

I'll leave you all with some pictures of some of the seedlings that I currently have in progress and of course, my furry fiends that like to accompany me on the good days for a cheeky sunbathe.

Thank you all for reading and engaging! It goes a long way towards keeping me going in my quest to produce more food, while improving my mental and physical health at the same time. Catch you all next time.