Over Half Way

And today's happy thought is .... we're eight days past the middle day of the bleak mid winter. Not that it's been too bleak at all this year (as yet), not considering what the weather was like in 2011. Anyway seemed like a nice day to spend a couple of hours in the polytunnel. To tell the truth, things are getting a bit out of hand in there and it's in dire need of a good sort out and a tidy up. Another day perhaps. Amid the cachophany (Carol Klein uses that word a lot) of pots and half bags of compost and the rest of the paraphernalia, we've now got 3 barrow loads of logs in to keep dry and a barrow load of sawdust and that's besides the two cats who like to stretch out in there on anything warm.

I sowed some 'All-the-year-round. cauli seeds last October and I transplanted the little plants out, the middle of December. I'm really fed up - the slugs are playing havoc and I don't know what to do. Today I circled  some of the sawdust around each of the plants. Think I might have over done it a bit. Be interesting to see if that deters the little blighters what ho? The sawdust is only from logs sawn up from an old ash tree which succumbed to the gales we had a couple of weeks ago, so there's no chemical in the wood. Have you got any good way of controlling slugs?

I sowed some Hispi cabbages the same time as the caulies. They seem to be doing quite well and the slugs have left them alone? The recommendation  on the seed packet is to sow them in March, but I usually find they over winter quite well from an October sowing. Hispi have pointed heads and are lovely cooked with butter or uncooked and made into coleslaw. They're really nice in April/May when all the fresh greens are in short supply and as dear as fire.

I sowed some Little Gem lettuce seed about a couple of weeks or so ago and they  (fingers crossed) seem to be surviving as yet. It looks as if it could be  bit frosty tonight so I've covered them over with a plastic tray. Must remember to remove it in the morning. Hey do you like my seed label? Plastic cutlery courtesy of Coffee City, Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. Well like they say - waste not want not!

I really like flowers and I love cut flowers in the house. I've got some delphiniums, lupins and loads of pinks cuttings in polystyrene coffee cups.Coffee City's done us proud.  They seemed to have survived quite well so far this winter so I'm hoping to blaze the colour trail in the borders when the summer comes.  Done most of the flowers from seed collected around the garden last year. I was really chuffed too, I've managed to get two little wisteria cuttings to root, the one is on the left side of the picture. It's just starting to come into bud. Sown the first batch of sweet pea seeds today, ten week stock and petunias too.

This was the temperature in the poly this afternoon

Once it started to get a bit colder I came in thinking to put the new seed potatoes in trays to chit, only to find that we'd picked up the wrong sort and they were main crop and don't need planting until March/April. These are some we did last year. They're ones called 'Rocket'. We had our first new potatoes the middle of May and they were gorgeous. Off to town tomorrow to buy some more seed.

Hope you've enjoyed your day too.