Pinch punch it's the first of the month ... March

Well the days have flown by .. I'm told the older you get the quicker they fly by .. ever heard of Methuseala ( sp )

I now I have a shed load of seedlings that have germinated ... it's far quicker in the ground up vermiculite than any commercially available growth medium for seeds.

I've used discarded machine drink dispenser plastic cups and made a couple of small holes in the outer edge of the base to allow me to stand the cups in water to allow the vermiculite to draw up what it want by capillery action.. it is an amazing sight to see the colour change floor across the top granules when they get wet from below .. try it and you'll also be amazed and in awe.



Doing it in cups has allowed me to easily sow four of five cabbages / cauli spring greens etc at a time .

One great advantage of the white plastic cups is that I was able to write on the cup in black china graph what was going to be in it once I'd 3/4 filled the cup with ground down to ( used the wifes food processor )3 mm ( ish ) sized vermiculite from 1/3 - 1/2 inch sized chips .


Most of the seedlings that have come through in a single week were put out into the unheated glass house this lunch time to green up and get a bit of hardening before they get planted out into the grid squares towards the end of the coming week if the weather fairs up and stops raining .



I'm having a frantic time trying to get all the stuff to make enough lines for the 1 foot grids without having to buy stuff in specifically for it. looks like I'm going to have several different colours and several different materials for the first year or so.



The front garden is breaking into colour like a teenagers face with bad acne .

All those mystery plants Alison & Munchkin purchased that I put inthe front gardens three weeks or so ago have now flowered /recovered .. .... it turns out the daffodils were all dwarf ones , about four inches high .

All the dehydrated primula the got have now recovered and are in georgous bloom.

Because this is my first year using just MM that has been with commercial composts and not normal enriched /improved garden soil I've used a belt and braces approach by using a liberal dose of fish ,blood and bone meal fertilizer in each bed ..... the flower colours are stunningly vibrant .

I chose this route because I discovered the " Horse of Troy " is a live and well , I say this because the two lots of six 30 kg bags of composted horse manure and composted farm manure both had several lumps of wood an inch thick by 3 inch long ( I suspect they had been using all sorts of crap with a bit of animal manure and composted it most likely using treated liquid human sewage to activate the heaps . The so called composted horse manure was still with the cobbles of the dung present in every bag ....some composting i can tell you , for it should have all broken down

I dread to think how diluted the compost nutrients was against the genuine home made stuff.





This month is also the time when many of us will be starting to sow out doors ...my advice is to used Mel's suggestion in his All New Square Foot Gardening ( 2006 version ) and sow inside in vermiculite .

Do this till theh last frost date has passed ,in my mind do it always in vermiculite as there are very few plants that will not transplant other than root crops like carrots , swede ,beet root and parsnips .

Previously I've managed to sucessfully transplant turnips and koh lrabi when everyone told me " It can't be done "



Making my own composted animal dung & straw bedding based material as per Mel's reccommendations for the vital replenishments when crops are harvested is now in full swing .

I should have a couple of cubic metres by the end of March that originally came for straw , wood shavings, saw dust , a bit of hay , wood pulp , horses, sheep , pigs, cows , chickens, turkey' , geese , rabbits , hamsters ,guinea pigs and a few ducks

Tomorrow I'm hoping to turn over the contents of several of the seven big Dalek bins s and remix them into fewer bins as the inital contents are now something like only 50% of the original volumes .



My veg only bin of kitchen veg trimmings , fruit bits , chopped up non glossy paper & used kitchen roll plus old plants less any roots that had /have garden soil on them never gets full as it is always rotting down . It's only about ten inches deep at this present time .



The wormery has now sparkled from the seven brandling worms I initially put in it at the end of January .. checking it on Thursday last there are something like nine big fat brandlings , quite a few very tiny worms and easily visable several eggs .



I've also found a source of stable muck less than a mile from my home which is quite handy for I was doing 18 mile or more round trips before to a couple of places that ran only horses.

The flower garden is also ready for lots of bulbs corms and tubers to be plantes especially if you choose the prennial ones .

Alison & I have planted over two thousand in the last three weeks .. still a few more to go that are sitting out in the office in deep vermicluiite chips till it warms up towards the end of maech .. it is getting a bit crowded inn the eight front garden beds though .. I hope I've left enough space for a few hundred annuals and half hardy annuals.



That's all for now folks ..enjoy your busy month .

you have been busy. Thats the kick in the behind I needed lol off to work