February 2002

The continuation of cold weather at the start of this month did not put off work in the garden. The shed was embellished with guttering and water butts; ready for the copious amounts of water required by our growing stock of plants. This brings me to a confession...

I’m addicted to plants. A visit to the local plant auctions left my chequebook dented even though it was my first ever purchase through an auction. Having arrived one Friday morning to “see what sort of plants were available” I easily got in to the swing of buying plants. The plants were of good quality and VERY cheap. It is well worth a trip if you are stocking up on plants. I managed to get sufficient plants to fill my first woodland bed and a few grasses to start on the grass bed. A visit to my in-laws’ garden enabled a further increase in my plant stock. I took many Hebe cuttings from this garden in the hope that although really the wrong time of year, some of the cuttings may root.

A warmer and dryer spell of weather enabled the woodland bed to be double dug and enriched with mushroom compost. Very hard work! The bed has now been planted up and is almost complete apart from a bark mulch. The grass bed in front of the lounge window has also been dug over and enriched with mushroom compost. This bed was only single dug since it was already in use as a rose bed. My other excuse for single digging is that a four-inch depth of gravel had to be removed from the bed before digging commenced. Surprisingly my back has held up well to all this physical work – I put this down to digging little and often.

The cold February days have required escape to indoor seed sowing and potting up. Among the sowings were sweet peas, sweet peppers, rhubarb, begonias, dahlia and a number of herbs. Last months strawberry sowings have not faired well with only two seedlings surviving damping off disease. Not to be put off more strawberry seeds were purchased and sowed in the last few days of this month. I’m starting to run out of space in the plant room and conservatory so it’s a good job I’ve ordered a 20’ by 8’ greenhouse! This is destined to be placed in the front garden in a soon to be dug fruit and vegetable garden.

Finally it feels as though progress is being made on making the land more manageable. Ploughing began in the middle of the month and I now look out onto neat rows of soil. It’s not quite finished yet, about another acre to go. Decisions will soon have to be made as to exactly what meadow mix will be sown in April.

February has turned out to be quite a busy month in the garden – inside and out! I look forward to the warmer weather when I can really get stuck in to this years projects.