Gardening through spring 2024 & the wind and rain

I have for one reason and another unable to update the blog as regularly as hoped so far this year, all being well usual service can now be resumed. 

In my monthly column for the Romford Recorder I have spoken earlier in the year about how with the somewhat wild weather we have experienced through late winter and early spring a lot of my time in the garden has been spent repairing wide damage to fences and the climbing rose trellis along with retrieving a compost bin lid that had flown two-doors down and collecting various flotsam and jetsam that had landed on my plot!

Between the numerous rain bursts earlier in the year copious amounts of homemade compost, farmyard manure and blood, fish and bone were added and dug in across the veg patch beds and a sprinkling of chicken manure pellets was also added. The soil in the Greenhouse was similarly refreshed again with some fresh compost, farmyard manure, blood, fish and bone, chicken manure pellets and in there potash as well all added and worked into the soil. I will need all the nutrients I can get in the Greenhouse for the coming growing season. This year, amongst others varieties, I am growing a Tomato variety called Domingo, a beefsteak variety that can produce tomatoes to over 6lb. I have been told it is the variety that produced the current World Record for the heaviest Tomato which weighed in at 11.65 lbs! I doubt I will be troubling the people at Guinness World Records but you never know……..

I mentioned in my scribblings for the newspaper in March that due to the weather the garden and vegetable plot were somewhat behind where they would usually be at the time, well nothing much has changed. Night time temperatures are still dropping to as low as two and three degrees here and I daren’t plant out the Tomato seedlings planned to be grown outside on the plot whilst that is the case; they are sitting under cover in the log store still.

The blossom on the Cherry tree was beautiful for a day or two but due to the sheer amount of wind and the rain we have had in April nowhere near as spectacular as in past years. The Parsnip and Carrot sowings I made on the veg patch have also suffered with a poor germination rate. I will sow some extra seed here and there in the spaces between seedlings; the plan was to do so after writing this article but it has started to drizzle again and come over quite dark as I sit in the conservatory typing. It is going to be one of those springs. 

It isn’t all bad news. The Daffodils took a bit of a beating in the inclement weather of March but the Bluebells are currently looking lovely and the native Foxgloves that I originally planted in the garden a couple of years back are starting to naturalise, seedlings popping up in the two beds in which they are situated, and those due to flower this year are sending up thick healthy looking spires that will hopefully be covered in blooms in a few weeks time when the sun eventually, surely, begins to shine.

The Tomatoes planted in the Greenhouse a couple of weeks back are coming along nicely and the Red Onions sown in one of the beds on the veg patch are also growing well; the soil in the raised bed drains well so all the rain should see the onions at least off to a great start.

The Potatoes, Casablanca, a very tasty early variety and Pink Fir Apple a long knobbly salad type, planted in 30-litre pots are putting on plenty of foliage so I have topped-up the pots with more compost covering the emerging leaves and fingers crossed there are lots of spuds beginning to form therein. 

I tell anyone that asks me about gardening if you're not prepared to do the weeding you’re going to be fighting a losing battle. Despite the weather weeds are popping up across the plot and are best dealt with ASAP. I often pick out weeds as and when I spot them wandering around the garden and veg patch but I do try to get out with the Dutch Hoe at least once a week. It’s a fairly quick and straightforward task. I aim to sever the top growth from the roots of the weed, just below the soil surface, then leave it in the sun to wither and die. I also use my handheld Onion Hoe to get between the rows of vegetables sown a little closer together on the veg patch. Hoeing is always best done on a dry day and when no rain is forecast for a day or two, as this helps inhibit the germination of new weeds or worse still the weed you just hoe’d simply re-rooting itself!

Cheers 🍺