This weekend has been a really productive one so far with plenty done in the garden.

Saturday

During the week I got my delivery of trees and berry bushes, oh and 4 variates of potato with their own grow pods. So that meant my weekends fait was sealed with a lot of hard work in the garden and a trip to BnQ / Wilkinson to stock up on yet more compost, blood, fish and bone and not forgetting some more large pots for the berry bushes.

First thing that I did was was put all the trees in water to reactivate the roots which takes around 4- 6 hours and then the same again for the berry bushes.

While the bushes and trees soak away, I got all the pots in place. and put rocks and crockery in the berry bushes pots and the citrus trees pots to aid in drainage. All the pots apart from the citrus trees had their pots filled 1/4 full with compost. Then we added a handful of fish and bone powder to the compost to aid the growth / support our new additions. Next step might need two people to get the trees and bushes upright. Hold the tree in place and Add more compost to the pots shaking the trees and bushes gently to get the compost in every little area under the plants roots. Keep poring it in till nearly at the top and firm the compost down so there is a 2inch gap at the top of the pot. Back to the citrus trees, well they are slightly different. They need to have a mixture of 50% top soil and 50% ericaceous compost. In the same way you did the other trees, 1/4 full, place, hold, fill, firm. Last job is to water them like mad. Make sure that you do this a few litres at a time and let the water drain down and out the drainage holes! Its so important in the first two years of a trees life to water it every other day till soaking wet as trees are surprisingly thirsty bugger.

So thats my step by step Saturday afternoon. You may have noticed from the pictures below that I have invested in watering pods, they are great way to slow water multiple pots! the only issue I have is the length of the child hoses as they are only 1 metre long and this could do with doubling but I imagine this is a deliberate thing to make you buy more pods! which I will be doing so from that point of view its successful for a certain party, not me by the way.

Sunday

Today saw slightly less work but a few important changes. During a hectic Mothers day I made a little pit stop in to my local Asda, I picked up 30 eggs and 50 small party glasses and 50 pint party plastic glasses (clear not white plastic glasses). So why am I telling you about my shopping? Well this is why, the eggs we are not really interested in but the lovely cardboard they sit in. I will be using that to place the potatoes on for chitting, shitting as I kept saying for a while, its meant to be said like chhhhhhitting but hey, I like shitting, sounds funny. Chitting is basically allowing nice potatoes to go wrinkly and then start producing lovely shoots which will be what grows into a lovely bush one end and roots for which more pots grow on the other end. The potatoes must be left in a cool light place but not in direct sunlight. This should be done two weeks or so before planting in the pods or the ground. I will be using grow pods and will give more details on how they work later on when I actually start planting them in the pods.

The plastic cups are for my new idea, I was wondering how I could move little fragile seedlings to their own pots with out loosing alot of them due to extreme temperature changes! So I got normal sized and pint sized cups that are clear to go on top to act as propagator lids. They fit well, the bigger ones sit just inside the pots and for the very small 3inch pots they sit on the rim which is not ideal but to be honest they are good enough for what we want. Don’t forget when moving the seedlings if possible get the soil in the pots with the cups on top a few days before you transfer the seedlings. Doing this will mean that the seedling moves into nice warm soil. Just make sure you give it a watering the night before so its not to dry and when the seedling is in place give it another watering to help it bed in.

Once home, I placed the potatoes up in the spare room, chucked the cups on to our pots and did some watering indoors and out. Next up was to plant our new strawberry plugs. They need to be placed into the ground leaving about 10 inches around each plug for them to grow into that space. once planted chuck down a good helping of blood, fish and bone then watered them in really well so that they have a great start. I soaked my plugs in water for a couple of minutes before planting to get their roots nice and hydrated and wide awake, which should help them to establish them selfs nice and fast. Last job was to water all the bushes and trees again, as a rule I will do it every other day but they are new to their pots so I wanted to make sure they got a really good start and two days of soaking should help them no end, over watering is bad but if you have set up good drainage they will be fine as the excess just runs away.

Tasks for this week

Well this week I need to get some more of the little seedlings out of the propagators and into the mini pots. They are hard work and need some sunlight to make sure they get the best start after being moved. So I want to do that process in the morning one day when working from home. Thats called lunch break, I do the best things with my spare time. Actually I would swap lunch for doing my seedlings as its actually quite relaxing to spend some time thinking about other stuff other than work. Then either at the weekend or in the evening I am going to dig in my watering system so it waters the ground and not the fences like last year. Another task for the weekend is to think about planting some seeds straight outside into the propagator tunnel and in the greenhouse. March and April are busy months for the green fingered people of this country.

Pictures from this weeks growth and activities

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