Potatoes now planted in the lawn beds



Brrr, the coldest March in 50 years has ended and now it's April... and still cold. Have got some photos of birds visiting the garden for food though with my new camera.





Blue Tits love the peanut feeder





The Collared Doves visit every day



The Robin is now a regular visitor





Plans to plant out seedlings at the end of March have had to be put on hold because of the cold. However I decided to go ahead and plant the early potatoes anyway, in the hope that by putting a black sheet over them, the soil will be kept reasonably warm and the frosts will be over by the time they come up through the soil in about a week or two. It's a risk, but if it stays cold I'll just have to invest in more cloches or a polytunnel! I've also put black sheets over the two new raised beds in order to kill off the grass, which will make digging easier.

Potatoes going in, planted 27 in all.

There are also some radishes, spinach and salad leaves growing quite slowly outside at present, due to the cold. Indoors the beans and peas have gotten quite big on the window and the Electric daisies and Quinoa have germinated. Now that it's April, there's a whole load of seeds to plant but I'm going to have to wait until we get some April temperatures!

Beans and peas waiting to be planted out

Ah well. To keep the seedlings healthy in their limited space, I've been watering them with left over tea bags, including camomile tea which is useful for limiting fungal growth (a common problem indoors with limited air flow). They seem quite healthy anyway.

During the snowy weather last week, one of our shrubs in the side garden snapped under the weight of the snow and was in a poor state, so Gavin pruned it right back and did the same to the overgrown evergreen next to it. This helped open up some space and we discovered a tree by the fence that we didn't even know we had! It was good to do this as overgrown shrubs really crowd out the light in a small garden.





This picture shows the scruffy corner where one of the overgrown shrubs had snapped in half and took a nosedive.



 And this shows the area after a some serious pruning. There's the new tree in the corner, not clear in the photo as it's quite slender and without leaves. Not sure what it is yet, but will identify it when it comes into leaf. This area could also have potential for growing some more of our edible crops, though as it's east facing it'd have to be plants that don't mind some shade.

Writing this has reminded me that I need to move some of my seedlings out of the propagators now, as they need more space.
Let's hope it gets warmer soon!