Notes from the garden - February

A testament to how mild the winter has been this year - I have actual notes from the garden (or at least, the greenhouse) to share. My first seeds got off to such a fine start in the electric propagator in our kitchen earlier this month that I've already had to pot the whole lot on. I've seedlings of:

• Tomato Roma
• Tomato Black Cherry
• Tomato Marmande
• Tomato Rose de Berne
• Broad Bean Express

Indeed, the weather has been so spring-like this last week that I have, perhaps foolishly, put these seedlings straight into the (unheated) greenhouse. We'll see if they survive....

I may have gone a little overboad on the tomatoes this year (these first seedlings are four of seven varieties in total and I've already got 9 seedlings of each type...), but we eat so many (and the baby loves them too) that I thought I'd just grow as many as possible and put them in both the greenhouse and outside in some nice pots that still don't have regular homes/plants.

There's rather a lot to do in the garden - tidying beds, crops to harvest (spring greens, kale, leeks and a bit of slightly scabby cabbage), strawberries to feed, sticky bands to go up on the fruit trees (a bit late, but better late than maggoty fruits!), the posts and wiring for the raspberry supports need redoing, we need additional supports in place for the grapevines and our established apples, there will be pruning of the new fruit trees we planted in the autumn coming up, and of course, the sowing, potting on and planting out of all of this year's crops. Good grief! Why am I still sitting here?!! Well, because it's February and it's already getting dark, of course!