A Garden Update as the Seasons Change
Signs of my Yorkshire garden coming back to life as spring arrives
I have more or less neglected my garden over the winter here in Yorkshire, England. Apart from harvesting occasional chard and kale leaves and preparing a couple of beds for some new bare-root raspberry canes, my gardening efforts have been confined to growing salad leaves and microgreens indoors.
As usual the thought of sorting out all those containers seems daunting when the weather is still cold and wet. But then, very suddenly, we get a few warmer sunny days and my enthusiasm returns with a bang.
And venturing out into the garden, I see signs of change everywhere.
The first daffodils have started to flower.
The heather plants in the containers with my blueberry bushes have been flowering for over a month now, much appreciated by early bees. And now the blueberry bushes themselves have lots of leaves and buds appearing.
The strawberry plants in my raised planter are looking well with some fresh green leaves appearing, and the chives have lovely fresh green growth. Many other strawberry plants in bowls around the garden are also looking good.
My chard plants are responding to the longer days and becoming more productive. I will sow some more soon because these are biennial plants, and will go to seed when the weather gets hot. Until then they should provide plenty of lovely green leaves for cooking.
Various bowls of salad leaves that have been sitting dormant in the greenhouse over winter are suddenly bursting into life and producing tasty new leaves.
I also have containers with onions and garlic that have been standing over winter, and they are all looking great.
Less successful were the broad bean plants I set in containers last autumn - all but one have died. The previous winter they survived very well and produced plenty of pods, but the pods had very few beans. Perhaps broad beans are just not well suited to container growing.
There are lots of other signs of spring too. Wrens, robins, great tits and blackbirds singing, a brimstone butterfly flying by, ladybirds on a container rim and hedgehog droppings on the lawn.
Less welcome visitors were found when I emptied one of my containers and found lots of vine weevil larvae. I will buy nematode treatments later in the spring, but the soil is still too cold for them to be effective.
Of course the seasonal transition is never straightforward, and below freezing temperatures are predicted for the next couple of nights. But it is nice to know that the garden is waking up and the main growing season is not too far away.
I will be away for the last week of March, so I will be setting many of this year’s seeds a bit later than usual. When I get back in early April it will be all systems go with sowing tomatoes, French beans, runner beans, courgettes, chard and many more. It will be very interesting to see whether this later sowing is actually better in the long run.
Meanwhile I have sown a few chillies and aubergines / eggplants in the house and they have germinated and are growing happily under various grow lights.
Watch out for future updates, and do make the most of the sunny spring days when they appear!
Wonderful! I'm wondering - what type of blueberry plants do you combine w your heather? I think I'll try heather in pots here in New England where it's just starting to warm up. I love your garden - my witch hazel is in full bloom.