It looks like we will be having another lovely week of sunny and overcast days. Monday is to be our warmest day with a temperature of 18 C degrees, then cooling down to Friday with a temperature of 13 C degrees with showers pretty much all day with sunny spells. Winds are mostly from a southerly direction.

As you can imagine the forecast of last week did not materialize concerning the rain which never came, so I gave the Rhododendrons a good watering and hopefully the flowering of these shrubs will be prolonged.

We have started the no-dig method with our vegetable plots. We sowed our chosen 5 Carrot varieties and the Parsnip seeds only to discover that our plots were totally covered with annual Poppy seedlings!! The Carrot and Parsnip seedlings could hardly be seen!! So we  came to the decision to hoe the whole plot for two days running and then sow the seeds once again. We certainly learnt our lesson which is to lightly dig in the home-grown compost and wait to see if any “weed” seedlings germinate, hoe the plot and then sow the vegetable seeds. The no-dig method does work in the beds where we plant out young vegetable plants which we have grown on, such as Broccoli or Cabbage plants. We can always hoe in between the young plants.

After another dry and windy week we are starting to water our vegetable plots with the sprinkler. The Brassicas need another week to 10 days to grow in their pots before we will plant them out into their final position.

Needless to say I am still weeding and hoeing this week and thanks to the good spell I can say I am conquering the weeds! My eyes are drawn especially to the Hairy Bitter Cress, it is amazing how after weeding one such area I can go back and find another handful! The more I find the happier I am!

The garden is still dressed in the Spring colours and the birds are singing away, I could not be in a happier place. Enjoy your garden!