In our garden :: April

Ooh at last the sun is out, the warmth of spring has arrived and it's time to get back out into the garden. With the draw of the wonderfully sunny warm weather last weekend my mind has been dreaming of what our garden will produce this year. Last summer we bought a greenhouse and this is my first time I've had to make the most of it during spring.

A few weeks ago I spent a Sunday afternoon weeding our garden, preparing the raised beds, tidying our greenhouse and setting up our garden space for a season of planting. One hour became five as I tidied our space and lost track of time, only realising the time when the light levels started to drop. I started planting a few seeds that weekend to make a start on the growing process.

Peppers and basil were both planted into left over blueberry punnets and placed onto our bathroom window sill to germinate. A few weeks on I think that they are nearly ready to prick out into separate pots.

I'm on the beginning of my journey with growing seeds. Last year I managed to grow a few nasturtiums and stocks from seed but apart from those I did manage to kill quite a few too as I didn't tend for the seedings as well as I ought to have done. A lesson learnt! I wanted this year to be different plus to make use of our greenhouse for the part of the planting process that happens at this time of year.The further stage of seed planting began again last weekend. I had a moment of feeling a little middle aged late on Saturday afternoon, I popped on my wellies, grabbed a mug of tea and the radio and headed off to the greenhouse to make a start planting the seeds. Carefully reading the backs of the seed packets I started to work out what I needed to plant when and where. Many of the seeds need the warmth of our home to kick start the germination process and so our bathroom has become the dedicated seed germination space. I have limited space with warmth and good light to start seedlings off inside our home and so I've decided to stagger the seed planting process. In a way this feels like a good idea because each of the following stages after germination can be taken in small batches to plant out at a time.

Sitting in trays of seed compost in our bathroom are the following - courgettes, tomatoes, stocks, antirhinnums, sweet william, nasturtiums, petunias and marigolds. I wonder how I will get on growing these and whether they will flower and grow well. Fingers crossed!