Four days in a row!

I can’t believe we have had …  I struggle to find the words – sunny days is too overstated, but cloudy days hardly seems worth getting excited about.  The wind is still there and it rains overnight – which is convenient.  But it is still really quite cold and definitely not imminently pre-summer weather.

I know:  Hooray, we have had four gardenable days in a row!  Although I did have a beanie on all day yesterday.  I have finally waded through all that needed to be waded through as far as indoor tasks and responsibilities and I had a full day to be outside. Oh what fun I had.

The first thing I did was give all the vulnerable plants – most of them, a liquid feed.  It was quite tedious, but only because I made it that way.  I filled a bucket with water by the greenhouse and added the food.  Then using my small 1 litre watering can I proceeded to wander back and forth, back and forth all over the garden.  I must have made over 50 trips back to the bucket.  It started out because the bucket was too full and too heavy to lift without spilling anything.  But then it morphed into intentional exercise.  All this inside business has taken a bit of a toll, although nothing that wouldn’t be hurt by 50 trips to a bucket.

The corn had all pretty much popped up and fortunately I had sown a spare set beside each one and a whole lot of extras along the side.  Thanks to the cold weather I needed all the spares to redistribute about the corn patch so there was an even grid.  But even then there was still 4 missing, so I resowed 12 in the greenhouse, hoping the warmth in there compared to outside will have them caught up in size in no time.  The boffins aren’t expecting it to get any warmer anytime soon.

Once the corn had been made to conform to regimented lines I turned my attentions to the tomatoes and took out laterals, weeded and tied them into the wire.  They have begun to grow in contorted shapes because of the wind and my attempts to grow them upwards.  It is like some kind of tomatoes tug of war with the wind.  I shall win, by determination alone.

When I got to the Black Krims – one of my favs – I discovered much to my disappointment that I had made a rookie error.  In an attempt to avoid medusa headed tomato plants and enforce a single stem policy, I raced out last week and whipped around the tomatoes removing unwanted branches here there and everywhere.  However with one of the Black Krims I mistook the growing tip for a lateral and pinched it right out.  Duh!  It has one set of flowers on it, but that will probably be it.  I have another one, and so I’m going to let a lateral grow on it and then nip it out and try and root it to make a replacement plant.

Then finally I did something really exciting.  I planted out my flower crop garden.  I went back to the seed packets and noted down the distance apart to plant them, and the height they grow.  I lined up all the seedlings in height order and then put the shortest at the front so they won’t get shaded by the tall ones.  The distance apart may be a bit hit and miss as in my desire for order I made the spacings between the rows the same.  Although it was more than for the smallest, however not quite enough for the big ones.  We’ll see.  I learn better by doing.  I divided the bed in two and then planted out each half with 9 rows of flowers.  So there are 18 different ones in total and they are all cut flower varieties.  I shall be interested to see what happens next.

As the afternoon shadows began to stretch, I did a bit of weeding.  The raspberries were a great bed to weed, because I ate all the red ripe raspberries as I went.  I think next time I should pick them to share.

It felt so good to be out there and getting my hands dirty and being amongst the plants after so long of watching through a rain streaked window.  I am looking forward to doing it all over again today.

Come again soon – there is loads to do, but sorting out the irrigation seems really cool!

Sarah the Gardener  : o )