91Èȱ¬

Hoorah, hoorah, the first cucumber, Petita, made it in time, was duly picked on the last day of March and appreciatively eaten. Oh sure I've other fresh stuff but a cucumber is a real prize and announces the 'grow your own' season has really started. Indeed with some jerk seasoned mushrooms, very mixed salad and mashed potatoes the cucumber topped a delightful meal, shame my new potatoes in buckets under cover were not yet big enough.

A dry spell has followed the cold spell and although established grass is growing the newly seeded patches have still not germinated, and with continual thinning by birds I must re-seed.

The first beds of potatoes have been planted but of course their shoots have not appeared - I've put plastic sheet cloches over two beds of earlies, Sharpe's Express, , to help bring them on. I combine incorporating over-wintered green manure with planting their sets. As a planting trench is made it's systematically re-filled with the topmost slice of that bed replete with all it's weeds, the sets are embedded in a layer of sieved compost sandwiched between layers of this weedy fill then the lot topped off with the next spit of clean soil. I do much the same for sweet corn, squashes and runner beans as these are all crops able to use freshly decomposing material at their roots.

The outdoor apricots have finished blooming and the peaches, plums and cherries are picking up, the pears also have fat buds soon to break. No sign of the bluebell flowers yet, but Hyacinths, daffodils and snowflakes are still blooming and the tulips are gorgeous, I reflex their petals to make huge saucer blooms for the twins.

the back porch with the Muscat Hamburg (photo from last year, later in the season)

Back under cover I've wallflowers for cutting however the tomatoes and still seem behind expectations, still they'll succeed eventually. The first sweetcorn seedlings are soon to be moved into buckets of compost and cropped under cover as a super early treat.

The forced pots of strawberries, a real favourite, have small green fruits and masses more flowers - they've never looked better, but forced gooseberries are scant and small so far. (I think I've over-cropped previous years and must start new plants to give these ones a rest.)

The tubs of top fruits are taking more watering now as their canopies fill out, the first batch of grapes likewise as their shoots are now approaching the point (between three to five leaves from where the bud broke, if there's no truss of flowers there then there will be none) when I thin the shoots to five or so to each 'head'. My oldest vine, a Muscat Hamburg, in my plastic roofed back porch is most advanced and already showing flower-trusses, but outdoors other vines have barely swollen their growth buds yet. Over-all it's a good start this spring, and ducks are nesting near my pond whilst my hens are still sitting, so maybe it will now be ducklings as well as chicks for Easter.