Ravendale House

Today was a typical Easter Sunday, grey and damp with tomorrow’s forecast being little better. Good old Bank Holiday weather, along with death and taxes, it’s just about the only thing you can rely on.

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I’ve finally realised that in a garden of this size there is no room for passengers. (It’s only taken me 10 years!) As a result I now expect my plants to look after themselves to some extent and not expect the mollycoddling they might have enjoyed in the past.

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Frantic bitter lemon drinking and a rummage in the dark recesses of the garage have provided some more Schweppes cloches, so today I planted out 12 cauliflowers. My idea is to leave them about a week so their roots can get established and them I’ll remove the cloches and cross my (green) fingers, as they certainly are a bit wimpy looking.

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Today at last I planted some things outside. I started with the more robust plants, red onions and spring onions (grown from seed), and then moved on to the plants that will have the protection of a Schweppes cloche, namely the peas and cauliflowers, also grown from seed. Well that’s what I intended to do, but I ran out of cloches and energy by the time I’d planted the onions and 64 peas.

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The hardening off process is well underway now. Each morning before breakfast I get the small plants out of the conservatory and place them on the table and chairs in front of the house. Each evening I put them back again. I’m just itching to get them planted out.

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Here’s a question. Is it better to weed one bed thoroughly or two beds less thoroughly? I’ve been gardening for years now and I still don’t know the answer.

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My plant of the day, in fact my favourite plant of any day, is Primula Vulgaris, the common primrose.

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Today started grey and damp, but ended up quite bright and breezy, so I spent the afternoon weeding the flower bed that runs along the back of the house.

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Today it didn’t warm up until about 3pm, so I was a bit late getting going, but when I did get going I made a start on weeding flower bed 4. Now flower bed 4 is the worst of the flower beds (apart from flower bed 5 which I’ve already abandoned). I’ve never really ‘bottomed’ it, if you know what I mean, though it does have plenty of potential.

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Today I weeded flower bed 1, no really, I actually did weed flower bed 1, and then I went on to weed under the old apple trees, and one of the raspberry beds. After that I’d had enough.

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