The little moisture we had yesterday was most welcome and hopefully we should see some more this coming weekend! The temperatures are well above 0C degrees except maybe this Friday. After this weekend the days ahead look to be dry sunshine with cloudy periods.

This is the ideal time for sowing root crop seeds such as Carrots, Parsnips, Beetroot, Spinach, Chard and Turnips amongst many others you choose too. A good watering before and after sowing was our strategy because our ground is pretty dry! We sow our round lettuce in trays and then prick out the seedlings for planting later on.

We have discovered that most of our Tulip varieties are infected with a fungal disease, Tulip Fire. Some leaves are twisted and discoloured so we shall lift the lot out of the ground and bin them, the moral is if we want tulips in the garden we should treat them as annuals. Here was I thinking we with our sandy soil can leave the bulbs in year after year, no such luck!

The Apple and Pear trees have had their prune ie. we cut the new shoots back 2/3 to a outward facing bud. The Plums will need to wait until early summer or they could be affected by Silver Leaf where the leaves get a silver sheen to them.

I have been going through the flower borders weeding them and digging out the unwanted spread of plant growth. Also I’ve added more stock fencing hoops as plant supports.

The Ornamental Cherry blossom, the Daphne, the Cardamine, the Dogviolets, the Anenome the Primulas and Celandine are a welcome sight to cheer our most unusual situation of the Coronavirus.