April 7, 2008...3:12 pm
What a difference a day makes
The weather towards the end of last week was beautiful, perfect for gardening but not according to the lunar calendar. On Thursday night I was back in Liverpool – no, I didn’t dance to Joy Division – but when I returned home Friday afternoon, we, well, Jon, got to work putting layers of chipped bark mulch onto the rose garden and spreading top soil on the vegetable patch.
Although the forecast was for snow, Saturday was another lovely day, cold in the shade but quite warm in the sun. Also, the Moon was in Pisces which meant it was a good day for planting. After I fed the roses and fruit trees, I had the onerous tasks of ‘managing’ the seed packets and keeping Megan off the patch whilst Jon just staked the string guidelines and planted some drills of leeks, spring onions, lettuce (Little Gem and Salad Bowl), early carrots and early potatoes. I also had creative responsibility for the slug traps - 1 pint plastic milk bottles with a slit cut into the side. By then it was getting rather cold once the sun dipped below the treeline so we left the fourth quadrant until it was an auspicious day for planting onions and shallots.
Sunday morning was a different story. We finally got the snow they had threatened the previous day (I’d backed Snowy Morning in the Grand National on the strength of it. Typical!) so we planned a gardening-free day and took the dogs for a walk. The snow melted quickly, however the forecast at 4 pm now predicted frost overnight so Jon had to drag himself away from the log fire to dig out the protective horticultural fleece for the potatoes. We’d installed the mini propagators over the lettuce the previous day so we thought that they should be okay. Our veg patch currently looks like this:
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