A Desirable Residence

I love to provide lots of habitats for wildlife in my garden, so I couldn't resist this Insect House which I saw in Morrisons. It was only £3, much cheaper than something similar would be in a garden centre. I'd seen a blog post about this very thing a little while ago, but I can't remember now which blog it was on. Morrisons is great for picking up bargains for the garden, I also came home with some pansies which I'll plant up in my hanging baskets. They were £2 for a pack of six quite large, healthy plants, but they were on a buy one get one free offer, so I ended up with twelve plants for £2. They sell a good range of plants and even have very reasonable fruit bushes too. It was a weekend of bargains as I also bought some Puschkinia Libanotica which were reduced by 75% from the garden centre, and also some bright red Geranium plug plants which were half price. I shall grow these on and they'll look lovely in my tall blue pots at each side of the door.

It's been a mainly dry weekend, so we've managed to get more digging done at the allotment, and also some seed sowing done at home. I forgot to mention that the broad beans were planted out a couple of weeks ago. I'd kept them in pots much longer than I would have liked due to the prolonged cold spell, and they were really beginning to suffer. I don't know if they'll give a worthwhile harvest now but I'm not losing anything by trying. They've rallied round a bit since being planted out, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

The tomatoes were potted on yesterday, I chose the best of the seedlings and I've ended up with thirteen plants. Now that a little bit of warmer weather has arrived, I thought it was time to get some more seeds going. I sowed three varieties of cucumber, Fanfare, Mini Munch and Crystal Lemon, and a whole host of brassicas, kale - Dwarf Green Curled, cabbage - Advantage, broccoli - Autumn Spear, broccoli (purple sprouting) - Claret, Swiss chard - Bright Lights, kale - Cavolo de Nero and kohl rabi - Purple Delicacy. I even managed to get some flowers sown, they're usually put to the back of the pile in favour of edibles, but not this year. I sowed heliotrope - Dwarf Marine, dahlia - Mignon Mixed, cosmos - Purity, stock - Ten Week Mixed and the pot marigold seeds kindly sent to me by Flighty from Flighty's Plot - Flighty's Favourites. The potatoes I planted in containers a few weeks ago aren't showing any signs of growth and I'm wondering if they've rotted away in the cold, even though they were swathed in fleece. I only planted a couple of tubers so I won't have lost much if that's what's happened but I planted up some more containers yesterday which should get going soon now that the weather's warmed up a little. It's great to finally get going with everything at last.