Friday 26 March 2010

Earth Hour

On Saturday 27th March at 8.30pm local time people across the planet are being encouraged to turn off their lights for an hour.

Earth Hour is a very visual support for action on climate change and reducing energy usage. Individuals, organisations, companies and Governments are getting involved and it's estimated 1 billion people will turn off their lights.

Have a look at the Earth Hour website for some great videos and ideas for Earth Hour: http://earthhour.wwf.org.uk/

Monday 15 March 2010

Spring has arrived...hopefully!

At last the temperature has crept up to the dizzy heights of 10 or 12C, without any wind chill! A beautiful day today, barely a breath of wind all day and proper t-shirt and shorts weather. However because it was a clear starlit sky last night there was a ground frost this morning. Hopefully nothing to trouble the crops under fleece.

This is one of the carrot fields - first lot under fleece, sown in mid Feb have germinated and need weeding, the next rows (not yet under fleece) were sown last week and should be up before the end of the month.

Early potatoes are poking up, rhubarb is unfurling, asparagus is looking lively and the glasshouse is filling up with seed trays with green shoots in!

There's always a danger of falling behind before you've started at this time of year, with so much to do. With cultivations,
sowing, planting and weeding to do the list of jobs is as long as my arm.

Oh, and there's there a polytunnel to put up and cover, 700 strawberries and 150 blackcurrants to plant. Better stop typing and get on with it.

Some nice photos from the morning commute to work to finish with...

Tuesday 2 March 2010

The season gets going

I always think that I don't really get busy growing until mid March - but in reality it's much more like mid January! Recently I've been planting early spuds, sowing carrots, oats, wheat and phacelia outside. In the glasshouse lots of salad crops, leafy crops, flowers, herbs and polytunnel crops have been sown.

The temperature outside varies from a quite pleasant 10C to a much less pleasant wind chill of 3 or 4C; however it feels like spring is just round the corner and everything will burst in to life.

This is a photo from Sunday when it really did fell warm in the sun - could almost pass as a summer's day!