February in the garden…

 Well, who foresaw one of THESE posts appearing so early in the year? Not me for sure, but then we got cracking on a small project we have been discussing for a while…

You’ll recall that increasing growing space has been right at the top of our garden agenda since we moved in. We made a start by stripping various shrubs out of the raised beds along one side, and of course the addition of the new veg bed. We’ve been discussing what other options there were though - there isn’t really any more options for adding anything at ground level so the next logical move was to add scope for things to grown upwards instead. A couple of cheap metal arches were acquired from a well known online store named after a big river, and last weekend we set about building and placing them. 

Once they were in place we turned our attention to the best way of really maximising the space there - and decided that sacrificing a strip of lawn on that side was the way forwards. That would mean that we could plant stuff for climbing up on both sides, and have a narrow strip available for other planting too - and a strip which gets a reasonable amount of sun, at that! My Mum has one of those useful half-moon edging tools, and we talked about popping over to borrow that, but then it was remembered that I also have some form for being able to actually do a remarkably straight tidy line with just a digging spade… 

There - what do you think? It might ideally want a bit of tidying up at some stage, but right now it ticks the box for “good enough” which is what was needed. Of course a bit like the other side, we did encounter a LOT of concrete and rubble that needed dealing with - indeed we have a whole compost sack of rubble to go to the tip (this feels familiar!) and several bags of dug out turfs as well. I suspect as we continue digging it over there will be more rubble appearing as well - but we are expecting that! 

That’s how it looks now - oddly enough the arches have completely changed the look of the whole garden, it’s very strange! There is still some tinkering to do on that side - we want to reduce the height of those raised beds by another level ideally to give less areas for slugs and snails to hide, the wood is beginning to rot quite badly anyway - eventually they will probably come out altogether. The new strip needs an addition of plenty of compost dug in to get it ready for planting as well. 

Elsewhere our efforts at getting spring bulbs planted in have paid off - we have crocuses all over the place…

…and lots of other things appearing too, most of which we can’t quite remember what they were - quite a lot of various tulips I think? And there were also a lot of alliums of various colours and sizes - you may remember from last year that those are a real favourite of mine and something I always knew I wanted plenty of! 

Auntie D’s Pulmonaria is flowering away cheerfully there as well as you can see - the ridiculous thing seems to have no concept of seasons as it started flowering around Christmas! 

The next month will be about buying any additional seeds we think we might want, and then making a start of getting things sown that can be I reckon, once again the front room windowsill will be pressed into action with the cheap and cheerful propagator lids we bought for seed trays to encourage things along.  We’re already starting to plan our growing for the year - with several different types of tomato in the mix and definitely some different squash as well - I have a fancy for having a go at some proper winter squash this year as it’s something we buy fairly regularly so that could be an excellent money saver!

Robyn