About me



I'm a half Finnish designer who has since taken a break to bring up my children. I used to work in Graphic Design, but now I prefer working with textiles and illustration. This blog is about my allotment and garden. I have been gardening for many years and grew up watching my mum and dad do the same. I began my allotment in Jan 2010 in memory of my father who passed a way just before then. I also love cooking and finding inventive and delicious ways to make my produce into meals. I'm growing with my experiences, and welcome any helpful advice! Sometime soon I hope to use my garden as inspiration for my art.

Sunday 10 April 2011

April muddle

It's at this time of year I tend to get terribly confused at what needs to be done by when, and usually get in a bit of a tizzy and miss out some essential jobs. This year I'm determined to do little and often with regards to hoeing, watering and sowing seed, which sounds like such a basic list of things to do, but they can so often go neglected by a few days and suddenly you have a glut of jobs to catch up on. Today I was feeling a bit low (pregnancy wise) so decided not to work hard at anything. Instead I enlisted my kind husband to fill up my water butt for me, with a water sack I bought ages ago which is slightly leaking, but needs must. This meant I was at least able to water a few seedlings and not worry to much about things withering. To cheer myself up a bit, I brought my seed sowing kit indoors tonight and crossed off a long list of plants that needed to be sown. They are as follows:

Cucumber spacemaster
Dill
Basil
Tom Thumb lettuce
San Marzano Tomato
French Bean Neckar Queen
French Bean Cobra
Swede Marian
Beetroot Boltardy
Beetroot Burpees Golden
Queen anne's lace
Calendula Indian Queen
Larkspur

The last three are cutting flowers, I am experimenting with a few this year as well as the usual wildflower mix which seems to love my poor soil!

I am growing so much from seed as so little seems to germinate well on my plot. Even the lettuce sown 12 days ago has failed to come up yet, and that's usually a failsafe. I know some of the things hate being transplanted, but if I don't plant relatively big plants, they just don't make it. For example, in a row about 2.5 metres long of parsnips, only 3 have germinated. Either they don't like the soil, or the slugs have polished them off, hard to tell! On a plus note, my asparagus has not given up, there were three new spears appearing this evening, so if they have gone tomorrow, I will know something is definitely chomping it. I can't wait till May when everything gets more established!

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