It’s been a bit of a broken week….

I keep breaking things!  I broke a blueberry, a new tool, broke my budget, broke a nail and very nearly broke Hubby the Un-Gardener!

Spring is really starting to kick in, the days are getting much warmer, although a sudden breeze can drop the temperature quite dramatically in a matter of minutes, and we’ve had a couple of frosts.  Having learnt from previous years that all seeds have different germination and growth rates, and it is much better to wait until after the safe planting date – which is still a month away, I’m actually enjoying the preparation this spring.

I have staggered my sowings and so each short burst is a pleasure.  In the past when I have sat down to sow everything at once I get a bit fed up with it towards the end and instead of gently placing seeds – I just lob them in, especially the tiny ones.  I still have two more batches of seeds to sow – the Zukes, squash and pumpkins because once they pop up their growth seems to be exponential and outgrow their pots before it is safe to plant them outside.  The last lot to go in will be the ones that like to be sown direct, so hopefully by the time they pop up; all risk of frost will have past.

The digging and weeding, is coming along nicely.  There isn’t much to do as I managed to keep things largely under control over the winter.  Although there is one bed that still looks very much like a jungle and I seem to be putting it off.  I even started to weed the overgrown raspberries, until they started to bite me back… those things have prickles!  I have stopped working on the raspberries until I get some better gloves – my poor hands are in tatters!

Most of the digging is to raise the bed levels now they have a new wooden layer on them and that’s a job for Hubby the Un-Gardener.  I’m just a poor wee thing and would never have it done on time.  Today I nearly broke him – well the wheelbarrow is definitely broken now and so he is using a hand trolley and a large plastic rubbish bin to move my dirt.  I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and get him to use the dirt in the part of the pile that I want to move the Jerusalem Artichokes to… therefore I can re-plant in a hurry before they start to sprout (last minute decision) and he can fill a bed at the same time.  But he misunderstood me and almost completely filled the nearest bed with soil from the wrong place.  He was not impressed when I told him.  Poor guy – he’s really knackered tonight!

One of the jobs I had been putting off for a long time was to move the last blueberry into a raised bed, to get it out of the damp soil, so I carefully dug it out – only I didn’t get all of it.  I only got the top half.  The roots are still somewhere lurking in among the muddy sticky soil – opps!  I raced out and bought a new one that was about the same size so no-one will ever know – except for the fact there is a blueberry bush in a jar of water in the greenhouse, pretending to be a giant cutting!

When I went shopping for the blueberry bush all kinds of gardening related paraphernalia somehow jumped into my trolley.  I honestly didn’t see that coming – I had a very short list – irrigation connectors for my potato irrigation and a blueberry.  How I came home with all this other stuff I’m not quite sure – but it cost an arm and a leg!

One of the things I bought was a handy dandy grass cutter scissor type tool; because my new lawn mower doesn’t get as close to the beds as the old mower and the beds were looking quite scruffy.  It was such a fun tool to use, but I got a bit carried away and broke it the very next day – opps!  Well it was the bottom of the line, because I wasn’t sure it would work.  Now that I know that it does, I’ll get a better one when I take my broken one back to the store.

I have planted out my potatoes so they should be ready for Christmas day, and then I set up a soaker hose irrigation system for when the weather gets a lot hotter and drier – although I can hardly imagine that now!  I thought I’d give it a bit of test drive and plugged in the hose.  The top layer of soil didn’t seem to get damp at all, so I left if there and after a while there was all this water lying about on the ground and I couldn’t work out where it had come from, until I realised it was seeping out from under the bed.  I hope I haven’t drowned my potatoes!  That would be a disaster – a self-inflicted disaster!

Come again soon – I’m so proud of how the garden is coming along, I can’t wait do another update – although I have to do the work first!

Sarah the Gardener  : o )

PS:  I have a confession to make…  I’m blogging somewhere else as well as here!  I couldn’t help myself and am participating in our local NZ Yates Veggie growing challenge – for the 4^th time.  I’m not trying to win it… just hanging out, because it’s a great seasonally local place to be with other gardeners doing what I’m doing at the same time!  If you want to check me out you can click >here<.  I’ll be there until late December…  But I’ll still be here too!