Hello Lovely Gardeners

Well this has been a fun weekend for the team at Yates.  Although there is a wonderful new website for us all to use, there has been a few technical troubles and the team have been frantic all weekend trying to get it back up and running for us.  Fortunately, the bugs in the garden can be taken care of with a quick blast of a spray and it’s taken care of.  Hopefully, this will be the last of the technical problems we see.    Thank you for your patience and we are really sorry for the inconvenience.  If you need to do a few extra posts to catch up, that’s ok because I’ve missed seeing all your gardens so extra will certainly make up for it.

Last weeks cold snap certainly took us by surprise.  It is a good refresher lesson on waiting until the collective wisdom of the ages says it is good to go, rather than take a chance and lose seedlings you have hand raised from a seed to a freak cold weather blast. 

Here are a few tips for planting out the garden:

*   Labour Weekend – and Show Day down south are moveable dates – early some years, late in other years.  It is a guide so use your judgement – if it is still cold, wait a little longer.  It is the first safe planting day – not the only one.   The window for planting is open for several weeks ahead.

*   Begin to harden your seedlings off so they don’t get a shock going from the warm of indoors to the harsh reality of outdoors.

*   If you haven’t already, take time to make sure the beds are well refreshed after last season with weeds removed and enriched with organic material.  Getting this right will reward you over the growing season.

*   Know what your plants need.  Do they grow tall?  Will it climb? Do they need support?   It is always a good idea to put support structures that the plants can grow into before planting the plants.

*   A good soak in Seaweed Tonic will help your plants to grow strong roots and reduce the risk of transplant shock.

*   Plant things with the correct spacing so they don’t crowd each other out as they begin to grow.

*   Protect your seedlings from birds, slugs, snails, cats and small children.

*   Label everything in the garden, you’ll never remember what things are.

*   Watch out for frosts over the next few weeks – they are always a possibility.

Oh, and it is the last week for the Mini Challenge and I have to say you guys have been fabulous.  There has been so much generosity from all of you.  It will certainly be hard to find our winners.  Good luck to everyone.

In my garden – guess what I did…  I sowed my flower seeds!  Finally.  It was such a relief to get it done and some of them are even popping up already.  I think this will work in my favour as by the time they need attention the veggies will be well away in the garden, so I won’t be rushed.  So, if anyone asks, the delay in sowing my flower seeds was intentional!   Wink wink!

I have also transplanted everything that needed it again.  It seems like a bit of a waste of effort with the planting out weekend so close, but it is amazing how much they grow in a week once transplanted into fresh potting mix!   I won’t regret it, even if a moaned a little to myself while doing it!   I still have a collection of babies I am nurturing so it will probably be a few weeks before I can say the garden is fully planted out.  But that’s ok.  And at the other end of the scale there are plants being hardened off.  It feels like a massive operation and all the marching orders are in my head!

I hope you all have a fabulous week and that we get the best weather for the long weekend.

Happy Gardening.

Sarah the Gardener  : o)