April - from apple espaliers to grassy bouquets

The garden and surrounding woods are looking fabulous, even the bits still covered with leaves and weeds. It's such a lovely time of year, and one of my apple espaliers is looking particularly special.

The other one has far less blossom, so we'll see how many apples develop on each. The box hedge is growing like mad too, unlike poor Monty Don's in Gardener's World. Box blight is not fun when your whole garden is framed with the stuff.

My funny wood shed patch is filling out nicely. Luckily the comfrey is coming back well after I thought I'd lost it during the drought last summer.

The raised beds are waiting expectantly... the leeks will soon be all gone, and C now has the front left bed for flowers as well as fruit and veg. She says it's OK to have veg as long as they flower!

And here's some of what's going in next... 

I feel more confident this year, but the addition of a million pink and purple flowers for C are not helping things! Especially when she's keen to help sometimes, but not others. Today we went for a walk after the much-needed rain had stopped, and she picked this lovely bouquet, taking a real interest in grasses for the first time! 

Happy Easter everyone! 

How much gardening does a princess do?

Last autumn I had a three-year-old witch as my Head Gardener, who was brilliant at stirring buckets of leaves. Now I have a four-year-old princess who excels at wafting around with bouquets of clippings. And my Chief Digger is a very enthusiastic 21 month old.

We finally got around to clearing a space for our family apple tree. C held it 'straight' while R and I back filled with soil, leaf mould and well rotted poo. It was a lovely way to start our exciting gardening year.

We've been planting lots of seeds, clearing the dead leaves and weeds, and generally enjoying being out in the sunshine together. C has her own raised bed now, which she has already started planting with flowers and strawberries, and she's got plans for some sparkly crown plant tags, perhaps the subject of our next blog.

Happy spring everyone! It's nice to be back.

'Prize winning' pickings

We still haven't got used to the HUGE shield we won at the Emsworth show, nearly a month ago. Our meagre offerings were enough to impress the judges in the novice categories, and the lack of competition certainy helped. The shield was surprise enough, but the prize money was even better - £41! I don't think we'll be entering the 'pro' classes any time soon though. Our carrots will need to be ten times as long.

A fun day and 14 prizes!

This week we dug up the rest of the potatoes and beetroot. Not as many potatoes as I would have liked, but the ground is very stoney and I'll have to work more compost in next year. Meanwhile, I've got my 'green manure' seeds ready to plant. Low maintenance ground cover which we can dig in next spring to fertilise the soil as well.

Spot the potato

Spot the child