A "better late than never" post...April was mostly about trying to get stuff done that just might survive while we were away - first in the Hebrides for a couple of weeks, and then in the Channel Islands for a further week. It was also about starting to enjoy seeing the garden wake up into spring, of course - with more of the the bulbs we had planted previously bursting into flower.
The currants started showing signs of flowering and fruit began forming on the Gooseberries which was great news - unsurprisingly we didn't get any fruit last year as it was the first year for all the plants - the Gooseberries having been moved from the flat and the black & redcurrants being in their first year of planting all told. The strawberries we planted up in troughs last month also began flowering, and to add to all that we took our first small harvest from the rhubarb as well - so a fruity month all round!
Those peas I also mentioned we had sown last month pretty much all germinated which we were both delighted and slightly alarmed about - although quite honestly it's not possible to have too many peas is it! A garden centre visit also lead to the discovery of some extremely economically priced packs pf pea and bean netting being sold off on clearance too, so a few boxes of that were grabbed and now we are well set up for pea supports for the next few years with luck.
In terms of other things sown we had mixed fortunes with those - the Bishop's Crown chillies did extremely well almost all germinating as said previously, and although we did lose some to dry conditions while we were away some clung on. Sweet peppers too were surprisingly good on the germination front, while none of either the Hungarian Black or Bhut Jolokia chillies ever showed any signs of germination unfortunately. We may yet try for a re-sow on those, on the "nothing to lose" basis, and perhaps they simply required more warmth to germinate.
Finally - and yes, this is a bit of a sketchy post, but it was a bit of a sketchy month as we were only around for half of it - those Ranunculus I commented on last month burst into flower just a matter of days before we went to the Hebrides - lovely to see even though we didn't get as much chance to appreciate them as we should have done, and sadly they too fell victim to lack of water.
Robyn
