Busy in the Potager

Yesterday started sunny and bright, if a touch windy, so I decided to take advantage of the sunshine and do a bit of work in the potager. Dear Jeeves came along to lend me a paw every now and again.
I planted some leeks,
harvested a few winter leeks,
checked on my garlic that I put in last November, and yes they are coming oop.
The onions I planted last year are wearing perky green Mohawks,
and the bay leaf in the potager has escaped the harsh winter (minus 15 C/ + 5 F) with just a touch of frost damage.
The flat leaved parsley seems to have survived the cold winter too and tasted very good in the soup I made later.
I removed all the strawberry plants from the strawberry bed and chucked away the old plants and planted up the new shoots in the new beds. In the old bed I bunged in much of the bulbs that were flowering in my kitchen, kitchen garden earlier this year.
There's no need to throw away bulbs that have flowered inside the house once they've finished. You can just put them in the garden and they will delight you with their flowers for years to come.
In the former strawberry bed I prepared the soil (lots of compost) and I've sown baby leaf, the classic Italian mix. If, like me, you love nibbling salad leaves then this is the mix for you. You don't need much space, 1 square meter will do nicely. It's the pick and come again sort, my favourite, as it provides you with an almost endless supply of salad leaves.
Here's the new bed I've planted up with strawberries, edged with forget-me-not seedlings. They pop up all over my potager and I use them to edge the beds so they provide the ornamental part of my potager in spring.
And here I've tucked my strawberries in so that they are all nice and comfy. It's a bit of a shock to the system for a plant to be transplanted so they need a little pampering the first few weeks.
In one of my cold frames I've planted 4 endives and 4 red oak leaf lettuces, the big lettuce you see on the left is the last one of a batch I'd sown at the end of last year. It's not ready to harvest yet, but will be in a few weeks' time.
At the mo it's mostly crocuses and snowdrops that provide a bit of colour in my potager. First we had mainly yellow ones in flower but overnight the purple ones decided to join the party and showed up in full force.
While pottering about I discovered that the primula's are starting to flower too. It won't be long now before many more flowers will join in the Spring chorus.

I'm very glad that I took advantage of the good weather yesterday because today it's pouring down, again! If you are following me on Twitter then by now you'll have a pretty good idea of how often it rains here.

copyright 2009 Y.E.W. Heuzen

Gardens are places where we can connect with the weather, the season and the natural rhythms of plants and animals.
Montagu Don, My Roots, 2005