Hawthorn blossom

 23 March 2021

The weather cleared up dramatically, and went back to being warm and sunny, but best of all, the hawthorn tree by the pond put out a few tentative flower buds.  I have a slim little volume from my Mum called ‘Old Wives’ Tales for Gardeners’ which says that once the hawthorn is in flower, all danger of frost is past.  Well, I don’t know how the hawthorn is supposed to know, or whether it counts in Greece, but we took encouragement from this and started planting out again.

First, Dave fixed some guttering over the wires that run down the side of the house.  Much neater and more protected like this.

These are some nice heritage seeds Amanda and we went halves on, these two, red orache and fennel, I scattered around the trees in the new forest garden beds.  These are perennials and will make good understory plants.

Dave put radishes in the heart bed

After doing some strimming, Dave pointed out that the bank and ground under the old pear tree seems to be the most fertile in the whole garden, so we used the pond liner offcuts to start a weed-suppression mulch ready to develop this area next year.

I got on with clearing the wiggly bed of flowering rocket.  We have more than enough rocket going to seed around the garden, and it was looking very straggly here.  Also, we want to get other things planted in here, so out it all came.

I also found a lot of self-seeded borage starting up in that bed.  We love borage - great ground cover, great for bees, great for mineral accumulating, edible flowers and good mulch.  What’s not to like?  But it is very large, and would quickly overpower the wiggly bed.  It needed relocating.  The smaller plants went into a bucket of rainwater and I took them down the road to our neighbour and fellow-permaculturist,  Amanda

The bigger plants, the ones less likely to survive transplanting, went down to the forest garden beds, hopefully to establish a new colony there to help improve the soil and shade the ground.

The relocated borage - looking a little dispirited, but mostly perked up by the following day.

The nettle plantation by the compost bins was starting to flower, so I took a harvest of leaves to start making nettle tea.

While clearing the wiggly bed, I disturbed some long lost turmeric.  It looked quite healthy and vibrant, so I replanted these tubers - and promptly forgot where!  But if they come up they’ll be easy to spot.