The potting shed - the tea is on, come in for a natter.

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It's nearly April... So far in my ickles plastic greenhouse - aka the four tier tardis - I've got tomatillos, tomatos, leeks, beetroot, peas, parsnips, green cauliflowers and some flowers, sweet peas and nasturtiums.

I planted my spuds and more rows of broad beans. Still got the onion sets and garlic to put in.

I've pruned my new apple tree and gooseberry bushes, dumped potash on the goosegogs and currants and mulched with compost.

I've also potashed my peonies in the hope of better show than last year.

What have you been up to?

pourmeanotherglass - exciting about the allotment! we are like you - done a few bits in a small garden and now have space to get serious (in our case we moved to the country!) My DH bought me a book called The Low Maintenance Vegetable Garden and I really like it as it explains which things are fairly simple to grow and gives suggestions of how to do them and why. Ideal for us - novices with a 3 year old and baby so can only snatch small amounts of time in the veg plot. She does most of things from small plants or seeds that you can sow straight in the soil rather than worrying about propagation and planting on and picking the best seedlings etc. I figured this way it's a bit more expensive but you get used to growing and then I can deal with seeds later when I'm more confident and have more time and more able helpers!

This weekend we put in more strawberry plants - now have 8 - and created a small herb area with mint, dill, chives, thyme, sage and oregano. In addition, we have a whole edging border of rosemary and lavender in the front garden, and are trying to rescue my bay tree in a bigger pot but I think it has gone :(

Anyone had any success with coriander? We use masses of the stuff as we cook Thai and Indian at least 2 or 3 times a week. It just strikes me as trickier than the hardy herbs, but wondering if putting it in a big trough in our south facing front garden would be worthwhile. Can it be grown in the same planter as basil?

Duchess - I'm desperate for rain between the hours of 8pm and 8am, but loving this sunshine too much to wish for full day deluges :)

thanks tortilla - I'll look that one up on Amazon. Our girls are aged 6 and 8 - they will probably be keen to help at first, and will always enjoy the planting and harvesting bit, but probably won't have any patience for weeding, and I expect the novelty will wear off. I'm thinking I may try to get them to write a diary of what they plant and then when it comes up - the older one is quite keen to get her 'brownie gardener' badge

We tried Coriander the very first year we had a garden - we grew it in pots from seed, it germinated and grew fine, but it tends to go to seed very quickly so you need to watch it and keep picking the flowers off.

Hello, room in the potting shed for one more?

I've just started picking salad leaves and ate our first radish of the year yesterday. Yum yum. The broad beans and spuds are growing well in small raised beds and I've got tomato, basil, runner bean and cucumber seedlings perched on windowsills here and there. I sowed purple sprouting broc and dwarf kale yeaterday. I love this time of year when things are going well and there hasn't been time for any major catastrophes yet!

Oh, and my lovely new cordon apple trees are blossoming beautifully. Anyone know if it's ok to let them fruit in their furst year, or should I remove and fruit that set?

at blossoming cordons. I have just espalliered our two new baby apple trees (well, a month ago) and seemed to have killed the Falstaff in the process. Kames Grieve is flowering its little mishapen heart out, though.

BBB I don;t think you let them fruit in the first season. I was going to ket mine flower and then remove anything that sets. All the growth needs to concentrate to the root this year, I believe.

I have transfered two pot bound climbers into soil - a Virginia Creeper and a Honeysuckle and don't seemed to have killed them. Yet.

James Greive

Sigh

Do any of you know anything about apple trees, I've got two very well established trees in my garden, they were mature when we bought the house 10 years ago. Every year they give us fruit, however this year something is wrong. One tree appears to be completely dead, no buds, no blossom. The other tree has blossom but very few leaves, it's very strange. Do you have any idea what could be wrong with them?

We had a very mild winter here so not like in the UK and also quite a dry winter although the water table in the ground in the ground stayed quite high (I live in a flood zone so monitor water levels obsessively from November onwards).

Do you think there's anything I can do to save the tree that's got some blossom?

Sorry no idea on the apple trees. Next door just had to cut down one of theirs as it was v old & didn't come back to life.

What is it with apple trees? We have two old ones - last year one had loads of fruit, the other had about 3 apples. This year the good one has barely any blossom, the rubbish one is looking unbelievably beautiful! No idea what is going on.

just signed the tenancy agreement on the allotment - but may not get the paperwork back in time to start over the bank holiday weekend.

While I wait, i've just put some French Bean seeds in pots on my windowsill, and I've bought a goosebery bush and a blackcurrant bush.

I'm hoping to plant potatoes next week as my first job on the allotment. There aren't many weeds, but I thnik the clay soil will need breaking up a bit. So a question for the experts - do you normally dig a big trench, or just little holes. Also, as I haven't any lovely home made compost yet, and it's too late to dig in fresh manure, what do you recommend digging in? A big bag of something from the garden centre or allotment stores? compost or manure? - Do I need to use growmore or something similar as well?

Gardening ladies could I take your advice on some flowers please. I have a very large ornamental urn that has just been sitting on my patio for years, this year I would like to give it a wash with the power hose and I imagine filling it with earth and having some flowers cascading out of it. The urn itself is about 1m 20cm high so they've got a good distance to drop.

If anybody can recommend some appropriate flowers to me a gardening novice I would be very appreciative.

Not v good on flowers I'm afraid. Do you want annuals or perennial?

We've put the gojis in & planted asparagus peas this afternoon. Lots of weeding going on. All the fruit are flowering & the trees look fab covered in blossom.

Going to a wilkos tomorrow to stock up on supplies, then the plant stall& a seed/plant swap on Sunday

Pourmeanotherglass - in your position I would dig in some well rotted manure or compost - both are available from garden centres and DIY sheds. Compost adds nutrients but I tend to think of it as added fibre - necessary in a healthy diet or soil. It will help to break up the soil - especially good if you are heavy clay soil. If the soil is qhite heavy

In addition I would add poultry manure - it is organic and cheap (£5 for 10kg from Wilkinsons).

Dig in plenty of organic matter and you will be amazed by how much your soil improves. By next year you will hardly recognise it.

Some thoughts on things you can start now - courgettes, outdoor tomatoes, french beans, peas, runner beans, onions. All of these can be started in paper pots and then put them in the ground when it is available.

From experience fruit is really worthwhile. I have about 80 strawberry plants. Last year we bought no strawberries, we are still working our way through the strawberry jam I made plus we made a few gallons of strawberry wine!

Dont just stop with blackcurrants, you can also grow red, white and pink currants, raspberries etc.

Congratulations by the way!

Mind if I have a sit down?

I have been sweating cobs in the greenhouse and on the allotment. Good grief it is only April and yesterday I put 200 litres of water onto the allotment (I know this because I filled the water butt and emptied it again). Unless it happens to bucket down tonight I will be doing the same thing again tomorrow.

Another sweaty one in need of a cuppa here. Weeding our veg patch. It is made up of soil that was created in a huge rubbish heap that the previous owners added to over the years. It was a huge mass of rubble on top, but beautiful top soil underneath. Unfortunately, it is beautiful top soil with lots of weeds in it... I've just weeded the but of my bed that is going to have sweetcorn, courgettes, peas etc. in but I won't be planting them until mid May as we're on holiday from next Sunday. So I weeded and have now covered it with thick black fabricky weed stuff and weighted that down in the hope that I don't need to do a huge amount when we get back and can get planting.

Off to feed the baby and then hand her over to dad and brother in the paddling pool while I try to dig up a hideous weedy bramble. I will have earned my bbq tonight!

Anyone got tips on what to do with slightly sickly looking blackcurrants? We moved two about 6 weeks ago during the big garden renovation and a few of the leaves have started to go yellow. Not sure if it is just a requirement for water, or if it something more worrying given they've been recently transplanted.

My celeriac plants seem to have taken really well, and by all accounts they're difficult to mess up and can just be left until needed in late autumn/winter so I'd recommend those for your allotment pourmeanotherglass

Tortilla - yellowy leaves on blackcurrants. Hmmm my thoughts would be feed, water and mulch. Blackcurrants have a fairly shallow root system I believe so it is possible they just need a bit of TLC to help them settle in.

I hope you have a lovely holiday.

Tortilla - have a nice holiday...

Alicia - This one's nice... erysimum in there, cordyline for structure, purple sage and whatever else purple you like. Surfinia petunias can go a long way... I like purple... can you tell?
Oh and I would put some polystyrene packing beads in the bottom of your urn before you put the compost in, otherwise it's going to be really heavy!

I've got to go up the lottie today and water! I can't believe it's been so dry. My BiL was saying he's had 50 dry days in Worcester and we can't be far off that here. We were a plague house last week and I couldn't go out so my plot suffered considerably!

Thanks that is a nice idea for the urn, I can definitely work along those lines.

It's been a lovely BH weekend here, I seem to spend all my time weeding. We've filled up the new raised bed we built last week with salad stuff and herbs, next year I need to plan a bigger veg patch.

All this outdoor work is giving me a lovely tan, I can't believe it's this hot in April.

I was chatting to my neighbour (a very old French farmer) and he was planting out all his seeds in his massive vegetable patch in front of my house and I asked him about water as I seem to spend lots of my time watering things - he doesn't bother watering them and they just seem to grow. I know we have a very high water table here, but it hasn't rained since January, I can't believe his stuff grows as well as it does.

Alicia - was reading something just yesterday which said if you water little and often it encourages shallow root growth and then they need more water. Whereas if you give them a lot of water less frequently then they grow longer roots to search for more water and then ultimately need even less watering.

So apart from when things are fruiting like strawberries and tomatoes and cucumbers you can water fairly infrequently - maybe once a week for brassicas or roots if it's been sunny or only showery rain - and can probably be guided by whether they are looking wilted or not.

No idea yet if that is true - although I hope so because I shudder at how much water you can use in the garden. My ILs are the sort of people hwo water about 3 times a day and it just seems so very wasteful to get a few tomatoes. So I'm all for being miserly with the water. Will report back at the end of the summer on whether it has worked!

Last year we mainly did the greenhouses as we were on a hosepope ban. We did eventually have a v wet summer though

Who said about celeriac? Do you get plants or seeds? I have seeds

Anyone do sweet potatos?

Hi all,

My allotment needs some serious weeding this weekend. My broad beans & peas are doing really well, spuds are coming up and the fruit bushes & strawbs look as though they are doing well. Onions & parsnips are struggling along in the heat and I'm also harvesting my first asparagus (waited 3 years for this, so am very excited about it). But I'm well behind with planting and preparing for runner and french beans, sweetcorn, brocolli (if it's purple sprouting you don't need many plants by the way, I usually grow 6-8 and have tons), rest of brassicas, carrots, spinach etc etc.

I reckon it's probably a bit late for celeriac this year. It likes a long growing season and I usually plant mine in Feb putting them into individual pots when big enough to handle and planting outside after the frosts. They are currently sturdy looking plantlets in a shady corner of the greenhouse. You might get away with starting them off now, but they probably wouldn't get very big before winter. Agree they're great to eat right through the winter though.

If I get plants they should be ok then?

We need a big weeding session too

If you can find celeriac plants then yes, should be fine (not sure where you buy them though). Next year though grow from seed - they are easy, just follow instructions on packet.

Can I come in? I've got my own plastic chair and some chocolate chip cookies.

Anyone a potato expert? I've got Maris pipers in their own little cardboard home which are growing at a rate of knots. Cover the shoots with compost one day,next day the buggers have broken surface and are staring at me defiantly - is this normal??

Apart from the Maris Triffids we've got a greengage, a few decent strawberry plants, and three remaining sweetcorn plants. We also started off cucumbers and carrots but any sprouting seedlings have been lost among the weeds...

I spent a good hour yesterday pruning my bush with secateurs.. It was so long it was hanging over the neighbours' hedge... also it's full of blackfly..

Hello?

Can I ask two quick questions?

1. Why can't I grow cornflowers? Apparently they are 'great for kids' on the pack but every time I plant them, nada, zip, not a friggin thing happens. WHY?

2. I've grown some salad leaves. Now I am going to eat my salad leaves (radical I know). Do I just pull them off and leave the plant in there or plant new seeds for the next lot. I'm not sure how this salad leaf business works.

Thanks.

Ok, I lied. I have one more question...

3. My peas are coming up beautifully. How do I support them (other than encouraging them to follow their dreams etc) and do they need netting?