March into April

We have so many things to update you about. We have been so busy in the garden. Planting and transplanting (moving seedlings into bigger pots), hardening of seedlings, moving out some plants, tomato seedlings to the polytunnel during the day to make them hardier. We purchased more fruit bushes, these had to be planted. We did a little more tidying the outside perimeter of the tunnel. We placed mulch at the front door. I have begun working on rebuilding another section of the collapsed stone wall between my neighbour and I.

Planting and transplanting. We moved some onions from the tunnel to the outside. And replaced those inside with more sets. The birds have a habit of pulling young onions out of the ground for fun! To protect the young onions, we place a net over the little onions until they get strong and the birds no longer can yank them out. We moved a lot of plants from the house to the tunnel outside.

The tomato plants are at the hardening off stage, this means each day we carry out the trays of individual plants outside to the tunnel and bring them back in again each night as its too cold for them. Actually, as I type, because today was such a spectacular day and the forecast is only for nine degrees tonight the garden manager has allowed the plants their first night outside, in the tunnel snugly covered with layers of fleece. We have … wait for it 14 varieties in the pipeline … all grown from seed I must add. These babies are really important in our house, a lot of time and effort goes into them.

Other brilliant news, we made a couple of bird boxes. We chose a couple of locations to hang them up. The good news, one of them has been chosen by a pair of blue tits. We noticed a little tit whizzing in and out of the house a few times now. This is brilliant. The little bird seems to hop through the apple tree, zig-zagging from branch to branch with little mouthfuls of nesting material. I have seen them now a few times over the past few days. Today I was hanging out washing about 3 meters from the house and it did not seem to deter the nesting birds as they continued their nesting business.

I have so much to write, I haven't mentioned that we have actually begun eating lettuce and we have enjoyed the first rhubarb 'tart' from our own garden.