January has gone, hurrah for February: let the gardening commence

This year’s seed haul is here so I can now bore the pants off you all with details of what I will be growing and how. Hurrah!

The excitement and build-up to spring started last week for me, with getting the greenhouse properly clean and tidy. It now feels awesome to walk in there and see all the propagators ready for action. And a couple of them have foxgloves I’ve grown from last year’s seeds, so I’m really excited about that.

It will be quite exciting to watch the foxgloves. As well as the ones I have deliberately grown in the greenhouse, they have also self-seeded, and there are HEAPS of tiny baby seedlings appearing in the actual beds now. These guys are from the very same batch of seeds, so it just shows you the difference a greenhouse and propagators make compared to the little guys that have to fight it out over winter outdoors.

The foxgloves aren’t the only little bursts of life we are seeing, obviously, there are the daffodils and snowdrops. But we’re also seeing little shocks of colour here and there from the dianthus, cyclamen and of course primula.

Also though and possibly more exciting is the huge amount of buds on our new trees.

It’s always the best feeling when you start to see the garden burst into life again, I can’t help but grin like a maddy!

Which is always helpful for the mood when you are stuck in the cold greenhouse. Cause you know, sometimes you really don’t want to be out in the cold, so those little inspirational bursts are essential. As are the cups of tea Kate brings out to heat me up 🙂

So yeah, last week I got the greenhouse properly sorted, there were marigolds…

buckets of soapy water, oodles of steps on my fitness tracker and a general feeling of contentment and happiness.

I have to say, the new glass greenhouse is sooooo much easier and quicker to clean than the old polycarbonate. A half-day, including lunch break versus last year’s entire day. I’m sold.

So now we are all set up and it feels great to walk into the greenhouse now, even with empty propagators, it feels good. Like there is potential. Right now I am grinning at the happy thoughts…

So what are my plans then? Well, this is the greenhouse right now… literally I just took this photo (I’m in the garden in my slippers and bear hoodie, Kate will kill me).

I’ve got one HUGE propagator (sun tunnel), on the left. I want another one of those but it looks like no one stocks them anymore, which I am really sad about. If any of you spy these on sale anywhere, give me a shout! And I have 5 of the smaller propagators.

The idea behind the increase in propagators for this year is because I intend growing a lot more in the way of flowers and concentrating less on tomatoes etc. This is a big change for us but I’m quite excited about the challenge. We do usually grow a lot of flowers from seed but because of limited space, they usually go out into the garden too early and rarely do well. Not this year!!!!

So this year there will be the usual petunias and impatiens and possibly violas etc. We also have the foxgloves and I’m going to try gazania. We always have these in the garden but we’ve never grown them from seed before. So this will be fun. Don’t worry, I’ll be bringing you all on the journey with me, so stay tuned.

As for the usual suspects, instead of two quadgrows (8 tomato plants), I’m going to restrict it to one, so just the four plants. I’m also not using the big quadgrow plus, so there won’t be salad etc in the greenhouse this year. I just find that the salad grows too well in the greenhouse and it’s difficult to keep on top of. So that’s going back outdoors.

I’ll be doing the usual tender herbs in there, like basil and french tarragon because we use a lot of those in cooking but this will also mean I won’t be doing as much in the way of peppers. I usually have 6 plants going, this year it will more than likely only be the 3. I’m also not going to grow chillies this year as, to be honest, we still have about 2 kilos in the freezer from 2 years ago, so we really are just growing them to give away.

We will also be going on a bit of an adventure in terms of a new harvest this year (she says optimistically). We are going to give french beans a try again. I have tried these twice before and been really disappointed, but we eat heaps of these, so it makes sense to grow them. Fingers crossed.

So that’s it for now… but if you are on this journey with me, good luck and let us know what your plans are. It’s always extra fun when you have other gardeners around sharing the fun.

Not long now till…