February fill dyke, be it black or be it white – an old saying and very true. We had heavy rain here with storm Ciara and it will take a good bit for the garden to dry out. Even though our limestone-based soil, which has good soakage is good, it’s best to leave it a while before digging.
However, there is also plenty of work to do as it is the first month of spring. An early start with some seeds is good as it gets them ready for planting outside later on.
This is all done in the glasshouse where we have seeds of summer cabbage, butterhead lettuce, celery, leeks, sprouts and tomatoes.
It’s nice to sow something different and to watch and wait for the results
The latter are soon indoors in trays for heat and all are sown in organic compost. It will take them almost two months to be mature enough to plant out. They need a consistent amount of water during this time as flooding, or under-watering, could kill them.
The weather was fairly good over the last couple of months which saw my daughter Jenny and I dividing herbaceous plants and doing plenty of weeding. It’s nice to sow something different and to watch and wait for the results.
We added a three fruiting pear tree to add to our orchard. This means it was grafted with three different pears, the names of which are Conference, Williams and Bahus. It took four years to mature enough to bare fruit with a very heavy crop. Always remember for fun to try something new.