My Garden Right Now

Latest post from MARKSVEGPLOT – a blog about food and gardening in England”

I’m writing this post specifically in order to participate in Michelle Chapman’s meme called #mygardenrightnow. If you want to know the full story behind this, I’ll let Michelle explain… The gist of it though is that lots of gardeners, and garden bloggers in particular, are linking up with posts about how their garden looks in March – which in most cases is definitely not the lush, bountiful cornucopia the August brings!

My garden at present is heavily dominated by bare soil:

My raised beds don’t look very exciting just now, but they have been topped-up with homemade compost and raked over, all ready to go whenever it becomes warm enough to start sowing and planting. Likewise, I have 16 big containers filled with soil, ready to plant my potatoes in. Some of them are lucky enough to be ensconced in plastic greenhouses which will hopefully be helping the soil to warm a bit.

The only significant food plant in the garden right now is the Purple Sprouting Broccoli, which is ready for harvesting at last – in fact I plan to cut the first few spears of it tomorrow:

Down one side of my garden (unfortunately facing North) I have a brick wall, and up against it I have made a border filled with shrubs, Hellebores and bulbs:

Most of my Hellebores are ones grown from seeds sent to me by friends, with a few grown from purchased plug-plants. They are mostly not yet very big, but they get bigger each year and some of them are very nice now:

This dark one is from seeds sent to me by Elaine Rickett, who many of you will know via her blog Rosebank Diaries. Thanks, Elaine!

Everyone has “Tete a Tete” daffodils, don’t they? Most of mine are planted in little clumps in the aforementioned border and elsewhere:

I have more bulbs – plus over-Wintered herbs – in a number of pots, awaiting their turn to show off.

Sheltering in the lee of my big new wooden coldframe are several pots of perennial herbs. This one is Greek Oregano, which is now growing quite strongly again.

So, there’s not a lot to see yet, but it won’t be long before my garden starts filling up again. I have potatoes chitting, Leeks, onion sets and seeds growing away in the coldframe; Broad Bean plants coming along in one of the plastic greenhouses, chilli seeds in the airing-cupboard and seedlings under the Growlights, root-divisions of herbaceous perennials waiting to take their places in the border… It may not be very evident to the non-gardener, but my plot is actually bursting with potential! I can hardly wait for the weather to warm up.

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