No willpower

Yesterday, I didn’t get to washing the outside of the greenhouse but I did clear the bed in the back garden and mulch with the spent compost from the pots I bagged up last weekend (see photo below).  No sign of any flatworm underneath any of the bags, or inside after being tipped out.  Or under one of the Strawberry planters next to the greenhouse.  I should check the others tomorrow.

I decided to remove the Gladioli and Croscosmia bulbs from the bed as these are just too large for the bed at full pelt in Summer.  I potted up 3 chunks of Croscosmia but have left the Gladioli out (these can be seen in the blue crate at the bottom left of the photo).  There are masses of them so I’ll have a think about what to do.  There are another couple of plants to remove to pots at some point - an orange poppy potentially and an apricot-flowered plant which is lovely but droops over the side of the bed and gets a bit unwieldy.  Elsewhere in the bed, some Chives have emerged and there are some Primula and Forget-Me-Not.  Quite a lot of Mint running under the bed so I pulled as much as I could out.   

This leaves me with some space to think about planting more fruit and veg in the garden - the front garden is open to deer so is less of an option.  The bed is approximately 6.5m long.  I am seriously considering buying an Apricot tree from the garden centre, already trained as a fan.  A Tomcot which is self-fertile.  An expensive treat but would be lovely and wouldn’t take much room between the grape vines.  We’ll see.

On another positive note, I did see a few worms while digging out the bulbs so there may be a decent population.  I just hope I’ve not ruined it with adding the compost.

As the light disappeared I took some planting trays and large plastic pots to wash.  Really thinking about sowing tomorrow…must…..resist….  

Next day…

I got round to washing most of the outside of the greenhouse - all except the back and the two top panels at the back.  

I check the greenhouse for flatworm and found one under the true (so took that in to wash) and found two under one of the strawberry planters outside (no chordate of slugs though so perhaps they had only recently arrived).

After the grocery shopping, I treated myself to a trip to the two local garden centres.  At one I bought two pairs of secateurs (special offer), a packet of green Zinnias and some seed potatoes (10 Rocket and 2kg Carolus, amounting to 27 tubers of various sizes).  Neither sold Cara so chose Carolus as it has some late blight resistance.  Then I weakened and bought a Tomcot Apricot tree, trained as a fan, from the other garden centre.  I planted it between the grape vines in the back garden and watered it in.   

I nipped over to the plot very briefly to harvest some Leeks (mainly small and most with evidence of leaf miner), Jerusalem Artichokes and Parsnips to make soup for the week.  I am really lacking some fresh leafy greens and something has been nibbling at the dwarf curly kale.

I weakened further and ended up sowing some seeds.  Some saved Sweet Peas (Cupani I hope/think), 2 pots of Aubergine (Black Beauty and Long Purple 3) and some Alpine Strawberries (Mixed and Baron Solemacher). Some of the seeds are quite out-of-date so I convinced myself that sowing early would be a good mitigation for poor germination.  That is my story and I am sticking to it.