gajumaru

This is me writing about something that isn't weaning! It's also not about the biggest thing on my mind atm, but that's still processing. So meanwhile, have a soothing entry about plants.

Our garden here is big. I'm talking 2.3 acres. We have two big lawns one behind the other, with shrubs around the edges and inbetween, which the landlord wants us to look after, and then beyond those there's a sort of wilder paddocky orchardy bit, which we are allowed to do what we want with. Then alongside the main garden there's a steep coombe which runs down to the tiny rural road that goes alongside the wood. The coombe has been used as a horse paddock in the past, but the landlord didn't want to maintain the fences and the horses kept getting out, so now it's being rewilded. It's all extremely gorgeous, and also frankly a bit intimidating. Our housemate A has spent a lot of time befriending the landscape, clearing brambles and poking into corners, and their excitement has made it all seem very enticing. I've been pretty swamped with parenting and work over the winter, but I love gardening, and I very much wanted to make use of the amazing space and opportunity we have here.

So A and I hatched a plan, and we (well, almost entirely A) dug over a large vegetable plot in the rear paddock. There's a family of deer that come into the garden (a lot of the shrubs are chewed bare up to deer height) so we needed to fence it. We considered building an enclosure out of poles and chicken wire, but it would have been seriously pricey - like several hundred quid. But then we found a couple of broken metal event fences behind a pile of rubbish and realised if we had a few more of them, those would be perfect. A found a carnie who'd sell us four for twenty quid each, so now we have a deer proofed vegetable plot, with a gate and paths through it, about the size of an allotment. The soil has been dug over a bunch of times, we've dug compost and blood and bone into it, and we've been waiting for the last frost before I transplant baby plants into it. We had a run of cold nights recently, including a day of late snow, so it's good I wasn't more keen and hadn't planted stuff out yet. This week we've finally had some mornings without frost, and so this weekend I was planning to plant stuff out.

But wait. I can't plant stuff out yet. I haven't hardened them off. That would have involved being organised and starting hardening them off two weeks ago. So now I have a dilemma.

In late March, my mum came to stay for a sneaky couple of nights. She'd had both her jabs by then, she'd just retired from her NHS job, and she was dying to see us and E. She brought a pack of lateral flow tests with her (this was before we'd got into the habit of ordering them for the house - or perhaps before they were freely available) and we all tested when she arrived and distanced for an hour to confirm the negative results. It was delightful to see her, and on one sunny afternoon she, me and E all spent the afternoon outside in the garden planting seeds. It was such a joyful, relaxing few hours.

She and my dad had sent me a bumper pack of seeds for Christmas - a jiffy bag bulging with tiny baggies each one containing a sample of seeds for some sort of vegetable or herb. There were dozens and dozens of them, and we planted as many as we could. For the last month they've been soaking up sun in the conservatory. Night weaning did a number on me, and although I kept them watered I didn't managed to thin them out in time, so a lot of them got very leggy. Nonetheless I have some beans shooting up, and more (planted more recently) just emerging; courgettes coming on strong, and lots of teeny cucumber, radishes, beetroot, carrot, lettuce, rutabaga, kale, spinach, chard, broccoli, pak choi and other yummy green things, including a couple of big tubs of mixed herbs (although only the sorrel and rocket have come through so far, no sign of the basil at all.) There's also one pumpkin plant that's germinated so far, which tbh is probably enough unless I want the whole veg patch to be pumpkin. Although I guess if we end up with more they could always take their chance outside the deer cage.

Today I took everything outside, put the tall beans in a sheltered spot out of the wind, and spent a couple of hour thinning and transplanting seedlings. With the really tangled ones, I did a mixture of snipping the smallest ones in each module, teasing them apart and potting them all up, and potting up the whole cluster with a view to snipping the ones that suffer most from the transplanting. We'll see how they get on. A lot of them are long and spindly, but I'm hoping that being less crowded will help. I can also maybe blow a fan in the conservatory which I've heard might help. Meanwhile I've rotated the pots and put them in the sunniest spots. I'm going to try to remember to harden everything off over the next two weeks, so I can plant them all out in the veg plot before they get too huge. Although maybe I should leave the ones that got potted up today indoors for a couple of days so I don't stress them too much?

There are six bean which were planted earlier in March which are already tall enough to need supports. They were just about staying upright until I took them outside, and then the wind blew them over and they started reaching for each other. I brought them in at bedtime and will take them out again in the morning. I don't think it's a good idea to leave them another week before planting them outside though - they're getting too big, and once I need to stake them, I know it'll be almost impossible to transplant them without breaking them. So I think I'll plant them out tomorrow and they'll just have to take their chances. There are lots more beans coming along behind them, so if these don't survive it's not the end of the world.

I've had some lowkey anxiety going on the last couple of days about the aforementioned Stuff I'm Processing. Playing with plants was just so effective at soothing my nervous system. I love getting dirt under my fingernails, focusing on keeping the tiny babies alive, tuned into the sensations of sun and soil and water, pulling stones out of the earth, delicately handling the fragile root balls and patting them into their pots like I'm tucking them up in bed. It is so pleasing. I'm a haphazard gardener, tending towards flurries of activity interspersed with neglect, and I've never really had a proper schedule or done much planning in advance. But I love it, and I'm glad to be putting some plants in the ground tomorrow. It's my first time growing things in a real life vegetable plot - all my previous growing has been in containers. I hope they thrive.

My seeds arrived! I've been so excited and impatient. We got a red post office card and I wondered if it was them; when I tried to book redelivery on Wednesday the next available slot was Tuesday next week, so I walked to the sorting office with E in a sling to collect them. Hoped E would have a nice nap. But they didn't, and when I got there the sorting office was closed with a sign up saying they only open 7-11am now. So the whole hour's walk was kind of pointless. Good exercise I guess, and it's been beautifully sunny all week.

So I booked redelivery for my parcel for Tuesday. And then my seeds arrived today! So I don't know what the parcel is, but yay seeds!

I've been looking up all the plants I want to grow and making a note file of what each of them prefers and how much space they need in their final spacing. It's a lot of info, and I'm a bit intimidated. I might make a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are reassuring.

( My garden plan so far )

( Adventures in Obtaining Topsoil )

Anyway, that's all for the future. I need some plants first. Today my seeds arrived and I was finally able to start sowing, and it feels GREAT. I'm using our conservatory as a greenhouse because it's got a plastic roof and is super warm in there. Today I sowed kohlrabi, tatsoi, spinach, lettuce, basil, Thai basil, sorrel, dill and coriander. I'm just planting coriander seeds from the cupboard and hoping for the best, as there weren't any to buy.

I'm trying to be judicious about how many seeds I plant - I don't want to end up with dozens of plants I don't have space for, but I do want to have a good chance of getting a strong plant, so I've planted 6-10 seeds of most things even if I'll only end up with space for 1 or 2. I'll be re-sowing the herbs and salad all summer so I want to keep some seeds back for that.

Tomorrow I'm planning the squash and beans and chard and cabbage. I can't wait to have little seedlings!

I put a picnic blanket and some toys out for E on the patio, and they totally happily played while I worked. They did eat some soil, which was expected. And they were insistent on crawling over to what I was doing and getting their little hands in it, so I had to bodily remove them and give them something else to play with several times. It was more demanding than gardening without a baby, but also surprisingly successful! I do dread them getting to the stage where they want to grab and eat the seedlings. I think I might have to keep things off the ground and out of reach as much as possible if they're roaming around like that again.