MY WEEK : 14 ( W/E 8TH APRIL )

Hello and welcome to this week's update of my progress at My Allotments and Kitchen Garden, and may I also wish you all a very Happy Easter. The weather over the last week has been absolutely amazing with temperatures more like early Summer than Spring and it looks set to continue for next week as well.
As you may have noticed by my opening photograph the Peach in the Cedarwood greenhouse has started to set fruit which I am thrilled about as when I was pollinating the flowers with the Rabbit's tail I did wonder if I was doing it correctly, in fact there looks like there will be so many that I will have to remove some of the fruits to allow the remaining ones to reach a good size.






The first main task this week at the Kitchen Garden was to clear the area around the Cedarwood greenhouse and to erect a support frame with netting for the Sweet Peas to grow up, the intention is to both provide an attractive screen to obscure the view of the Polytunnel and to provide wonderfully scented cut flowers to decorate the restaurant tables with during the Summer. Glenn dug a trench the entire length of the border and added plenty of well rotted leaf mould which we discovered at the back of the Potting shed, we then added Growmore to the soil we used to back fill the trench before erecting the netted support framework, all being well we get the Sweet Peas planted next week.





The Shallots have now established their roots and are starting to sprout well, the Garlic has also put on a good amount of growth over the last week or two. The Early Peas that I sowed only a couple of weeks ago have germinated and to prevent them from being attacked by the birds I have erected a netted covering over them, I will still need to erect a climbing support for the Peas in the near future for them to climb up either using pea sticks or netting.





In the Glasshouse this week the Arum Lily pictured top-left and one of the Canna Lillies have started to flower, both of which look spectacular. My Arum Lillies at home have only just started to sprout new leaves after the Winter and are therefore many weeks away from flowering themselves. The flower on the Canna Lily is incredible, it is amazing what beauty nature can produce and I am lucky to be doing a job with rewards such as this.






The Roscoff onions that I mentioned last week have all been transplanted now as shown in the picture top-left we have pricked them out into 24 cell tray inserts to grow on until they are ready to be transplanted out into the open ground. The Lilly of the Valley roots pictured top-right that I transplanted into pots have grown very quickly and this is why a lot of the Victorian Kitchen Gardeners used to have a supply of these to provide flowers for the Lady of the House to wear as a Corsage, they will with a bit of bottom heat produce flowers within 3 weeks apparently.




The next main job that we did this week was to plant up the borders either side of the central path of the Kitchen Garden with 140 Lavender Hidcote plants which is a traditional British variety with a beautiful slightly Citrus scent, it is also quite a compact variety and will provide us with a lovely edging to our path and will attract a great deal of beneficial insects to the garden.





Finally this week the remaining plants arrived from the nursery pictured top-right ready for the borders at the front of the hall to be planted and The Planting Team pictured top-left of Terry the Owner and her Daughter-in-law Becky along with a friend did an amazing job of positioning them first to ensure that they would be in the most suitable place for their expected height and spread before finally planting them. The slide show below shows you how the borders looked after they had worked their magic, well done to you all and a big thank you for enabling me to carry on with the work in the Kitchen Garden.

Well that is it for another week's progress, the weather as mentioned before looks set to be very good for the weekend and we will be spending a good deal of it at my allotments so next week I will have plenty to tell and show you about what we have done. Once again I hope that you all have a good Easter whether it is away on a holiday or up at your allotments, speak to you next week regards Steve.