Sprouting, Repotting and Scaring the Birds

There hasn’t been a huge amount to be done in the garden lately, and we have accepted that a lot of our plans that we wanted to do for this year, are probably going to be projects for next year now, apart from the odd thing here and there.

Tony has made a second planter for herbs that was made to fit in between the pipe and back door, and matches the larger one he made the other week. Its not filled yet, but we will fill them with herbs that not only can be used in cooking but are natural bug repellents.

Today I decided some of the sweetcorn needed re-potting. I left the smaller ones in the seed tray, and re-potted the ones that were further along.

The roots were starting to appear out of the bottom of the seed tray so thought it time to give them a bit more room to grow, but it is still a bit to early to plant them out. So not wanting to risk killing them off I popped them in some pots.

Using some pots I had already filled with compost, I added some powdered egg shells and some tea leaves (which we always keep), and carefully transplanted the seedlings into the bigger pots.

I also tried to rescue some of the peppers. The seedlings that I had started and planted out are near enough gone now. The ones in the raised beds have either died from the cold or mostly taken or dug up by the birds. Because I had so many seedlings to start with, there were some left that I kept in a basket of compost not having any where else to put them. These were still surviving fairly well. So I chose 3 of the strongest looking ones to re-pot and keep inside in the window, and hopefully manage to grow. I may yet choose some more to keep indoors. Soon the house will look more like a green house.

As I mentioned before about the birds, they do like to peck, dig, eat and generally destroy what we’ve planted, we did put some netting over some of the raised beds, but I decided a scarecrow might work to deter them from the garden. It did work for a few days, but they have gotten brave again. There are definitely less than there were though. So here is my not much effort scarecrow.

In other news, the Pear tree has FINALLY, after a very worrying God knows how many weeks since we had it delivered, started to get green tips ready to grow some leaves. I had doubts that it was going to be OK.

We have a few things sprouting now, Herbs, carrots, sprouts, lettuce and peas. Unfortunately the cauliflowers didn’t survive, but I have put a few more seeds down just incase they decide to grow like the broccoli has which is doing really well. The onions don’t seem to be doing much, but we will see.