First few lettuces sprouting already.
Water achimenes (need top-dressing).
Cut back clematis tangutica to 2nd wire (≈1m high). Needs more wires.
Prune new cherry tree to 2 side branches for fan training. Paint everything with pruning paint.
White camellia flower buds are largely brown, probably frosted. Will have to fleece it next winter.
Re-sow lettuce and kohlrabi, as they have not done well with Tanya while we were away. No sign of broad beans or carrots yet.
Sow broad bean Aquadulce and carrot Amsterdam 2 Sweetheart, both under fleece. Harvest last lettuce.
Divide the right-hand clump of large grass (pheasant’s tail), put half a bit further back, and the other half in a large pot – quite splendid. Pot up some of its seedlings.
Divide African violet. Re-pot cactuses from work.
Move a self-sown feather grass from veg patch to the border.
Viburnum Dawn is flowering, but above the top of the fence, so not very visible, and not many flowers, tips of main branches only.
Trim back some of the penstemons, and the golden glass (must get its name written down one day, before the label gets lost… Found it (isn’t RHS great!) – Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’), which is beginning to shoot. Would like to divide it, too.
Take all the old soil out of the Japanese Wineberry planting hole, spread over the lawn by the back gate (to raise level) and re-seed. Enlarge planting hole, plant cherry, backfill with compost-rich soil from courgette part of the veg patch. Not pruned yet (only remove the branch pointing into the fence).
Move a couple of stencilled geraniums to the back of the Japanese holly. Chuck a couple more into the hedge. Move all sedum clumps away from the edge of the flowerbed.
First few lettuce seedlings. Unwins seed order has arrived – new toys!
Sow half-tray (20 cells) kohlrabi Blusta (1 per cell) in propagator. Honesty and Welsh poppies have gone outside in unheated tray with lid.
Take leeks out the propagator – lots have come up now. Sow half-tray (12 cells) lettuce Pinokkio (winter), 2 per cell. Honesty still not showing, and only a couple of poppies, so will move them out to free up space.
Mix flowers of sulphur (≈50-100g?) with remains of ericaceous compost (to bind the powder) and spread on blueberry, small camellia and azalea out front.
Finish off bottom green stripe on fence.
Plant out Japanese holly – it had not put any new roots down into the pot. Re-pot Stargazer Lily (peat-free compost and FBB), put 2 out the front, behind the Japanese holly.
Clear and dig over vegetable patch. All day.