What a fantastic week it’s been for gardening, I’m having to hold myself back from planting everything out too early. At this point my homemade cold frame and temporary greenhouse is bursting at the seams (literally unfortunately). I love seeing everything looking so vibrant and full of so much promise, I can totally forget about slugs, snails, and the challenges to come!

My growing space consists of a small vegetable garden at home with a patio area covered in pots, cold frame and temporary greenhouse, and an allotment down the road shared with friends Kerstin and Tony. With my husband being at home so much at present he’s done a great job adding two more raised beds to the veg garden and building a fantastic tomato planter.

The allotment was taken on in October, it was covered in grass and raspberries plants which had spread like weeds, so needed a great deal of work to get ready for the growing season. We separated the plot into 6 5x3m beds, 3 for Kerstin and Tony and 3 for me, and it was a great relief that I didn’t have to do it all alone. I designated one of my beds to soft fruit so left half the raspberry plants and planted the other half with blackberries, a gooseberry and 2 honeyberries which I had never heard of before but fancied giving a go (isn’t that the great thing about having more space?). I enlisted the husband to put wiring down one side and have started training a loganberry and a tayberry along it. The other beds were turned over and covered in a weed proof matting over winter and then dug over at the start of spring.

There is still a lot of work to do to get the beds into really good condition but the soil looks fertile so I feel like a good start has been made. So for the time being most of the work is taking place at home preparing for planting out next month. I’ve so far started lettuce, rocket, climbing beans, dwarf beans, peas, mangetout, kale, sprouts, cucumber, courgette, corn, carrots, leeks, beetroot, radish, broad beans and parsnips. I also had dreams of a space for cut flowers, but I think I might have already overextended myself!

More about Lucy...
Lucy is part of the fantastic Heritage Seed Library team, working hard to grow and preserve seed varieties that are no longer available so that our members can enjoy growing them at home. Raising two young children, Lucy is keen to grown an array of fruit and vegetables to become more sustainable and to encourage her children to get involved in growing.

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