Gooseberries are on the way!
I'm so excited, I’ve got gooseberries coming! I planted two bushes last year; ‘Invicta’, with fruits of a conventional green colour, and 'Xenia', that produces a crop of red-blushed gooseberries with the promise that they're sweet enough to eat straight from the bush. I’m going to thin out half the crop now as I’ve read this will give a longer cropping season and more room for the fruits to grow larger and sweeter.
My lettuce ‘Little Gem’, which I’ve grown from seed for the first time this year, is coming on well and I’ve started to harvest my chives and caraway leaves to add interest to salads. My sister-in-law gave me a mixed planter for Christmas containing marjoram, sage, golden
thyme and beet ‘Bull’s Blood’, an attractive deep red baby salad leaf that I’m starting to harvest now on a cut-andcome-again basis.
Next to the raspberry patch, I’ve weeded and forked out all the rye grass and dandelions that were there to clear a little patch to plant flowers. I’ve called it my phlox bed but there's also a line of cephalophora ‘Pineapples’ at the front, which I’ve grown in the greenhouse from Garden News free seeds.
Also in the greenhouse ready to plant out are sweet peas and calendula ‘Lemon Cream’ (also from GN free seeds). Not quite ready are caraway, and more from GN free seeds – wallflowers ‘Tom Thumb’, zinnia ‘Scabious Flowered Mix’ and Malcolmia maritima (Virginia stock). I’m trialling some new bamboo reusable seed trays to cut back on plastic usage. I bought them from the local garden centre. Flowering in my garden now are standard fuchsia ‘Euro Princess', a white hebe and alliums, not to mention the wisteria, weigela and clematis that make up the trellis that screens off the top of the garden and decking area from the road. I've trained them into a pretty arch so I can access my very own secret garden!