March Monday Madness!

What? It’s a month since I started blogging? Really?

Mondays with an M.

Last week was misery Monday but it turned out not as bad as all that.

In growing and gardening terms, March is a mad month. My Grow your Own App lit up yesterday with 45 tasks for the month.

Blimey! You’re kidding!

March is the focus for a huge number of things. There’s a list of seedlings to start off that includes brassicas and early peas.

Mad March it is then!

My chitted potatoes are also crying out for attention.

The fruit trees need feeding and weeding.

The weird thing is it’s exciting. Even though there’s a massive list of jobs there’s sparking optimism all around.

The tomato and chilli seeds that I started last month are doing well. I’ve got some red and yellow ones ready for transplant into bigger pots!

The asparagus plants I bought last week are trying to escape from the packet.

The garlic and onions we planted in October are looking pretty enthusiastic.

The aforementioned fruit bushes and trees have plenty of buds. The bees are ready to visit them too.

But the broad beans, I crave every spring, that we planted back in October, are still not in view.

But I can still take heart from the tiny strawberry buds that I spotted yesterday and the witch hazel that’s beginning to bloom in our back yard. While the catkins covering the nut trees in the front are nodding sagely in the wind. Sneaky wild garlic is sprouting around the blueberry bushes.

To spur me on even further there’s daffodils and crocuses too. The globe artichokes have survived the mild winter covered up.

So how is reading this useful to other people?

I’m intending to make my blog helpful relevant so while all this sounds lovely where’s the benefit?

I guess it’s inspirational but we got our allotment as late as May about eight years ago. At that point we had very little idea what we were doing and what worked.

However, the good news is that we had a good year and a great harvest. We tried a lot of things and we had success and failure. It’s been something that we have found regularly since the beginning.

We grow stuff, we try to grow stuff, we grow what we like and we have a lot of fun and a lot that works.

So that’s what I like about March; it’s time to do it all again!