Beginning to clear the beds of the over-wintering crops ready for the new seasons’ sowings. Now that the birch has been removed the light is much better over the whole patch.

The early sprouting broccoli and the spinach and leeks are still going well as is the newly planted garlic in the foreground.

The circles of daffodils around the orchard trees have worked well even though I was worried that I hadn’t planted them deeply enough. The white ones are flowering later than the yellow but no matter. They do seem to have escaped the ravages of the rabbits and while there is something (a badger?) doing a lot of digging in the orchard none were dug up. Success! Now to underplant with herbs and lavender for later in the season, although I will need to fence off the areas as I do it as something digs them up as soon as I have planted.

I decided to clear out the pond and work towards it being a nice feature and useful wild-life habitat this Summer. I have taken out loads and loads of leaves and twigs and skimmed off masses of duckweed. Sadly there are no signs of life in the sludge – not even the odd snail and I think that because of all the decaying leaves the water is not good.

I plan to get some oxygenating plants and a water lily and see if I can make the water conditions better. In the meantime a local moorhen seems to appreciate my work and has been enjoying the water!

What a lovely  and productive weekend in the garden.

Yesterday was actually rather cold and grey and I did some digging in the bed by the garage- long overdue, but rather a trial as it is so overwhelmed with bindweed roots, nettles and couch grass. Getting out all the roots has been awful. I decided to do just a little at a time and do it thoroughly.

I also dug up some really old and woody delphinium roots. I have divided them into over twenty smaller units which I hope will grow into new plants. Some are in the new left hand bed and others in pots in the greenhouse. I also transferred some iris-like things (need to find out what they are ) some red leaved bugle and the odd plant whose names I do not know. It is funny how so many plants in this garden are not ones I have gardened with before.

I also planted some chives, lavender and foxgloves under one of the orchard trees. I have had to cordon the area off with a gauze barrier which I hope will stop the rabbits and/or badgers from digging it all up. I plan to work around the orchard under-planing one tree at a time so that I can protect the small plants until they are established. I plan to use lavender, hyssop, borage, comfrey, nasturtiums and anything else that I read is a good companion to apple trees. The idea is the follow permaculture principles to keep the fruit trees healthy and encourage bees and other insects ( and deter codling moth and other nasty ones).

I sowed tomatoes, chilli, aubergines and basil indoors over the last month and my window cills are now well and truly crowded. For flowers I also sowed cosmos (purity) and snap dragon (royal wedding).

Today I made my first sowing outdoors of beetroot (boltardy and choggia), broccoli (summer purple), leeks (musselborugh), and salad leaves ( bright and spicy and ‘baby leaves’). The garlic planted several weeks ago looks to be doing well and the early broccoli is at last cropping. A few leeks are also still going as is the perpetual spinach and some salad leaves that have been going all winter (the rocket bolted in the last  week).

In the greenhouse I have sown sugar snap peas in a gutter for transferring outside once it has germinated and some calabrese , kavalo nero  and cos lettuce in modules. I also sowed night scented stock in modules.

Full steam ahead!

Last month I completed a pretty radical round of pruning in the orchard. The pear trees got off lightly as they had done so well last year and only needed a few little snips to keep them on track, however some of the apple trees needed something more radical.

Tree number nineteen at the back didn’t even survive. It had no fruit last year and precious  little foliage.By the time I had cut off all the diseased wood there was nothing left. Sadly it was completely overcome with canker.

The cox’s orange pippin I gave a pretty radical prune for shape and also to get rid of the worst diesased wood. Hopefully it now has a more ‘open’ shape and will fruit again happily when it has recovered.

The tree in front of number 19 also bore no fruit last year- or rather there were about a dozen fruit that never matured. I gave it a radical prune and I’m also hoping that the removal of the alder tree at the beginning of the wood helps.

The Norfolk Royal I gave the start of a good prune and then gave up- I think I shall finish next year and I never even started the Spartan.

The tree behind the Spartan also had a radical prune. Again, very few fruit last year so hopefully the prune will help.

Cox’s Orange Pippin after a good prune

General view of a section of the orchard with the alder logs in the background.