Ready, steady, GO!

Well, it's been a long time coming, but today I actually did something gardening related, now we've recovered slightly from the shock to our systems that was having a little baby in the house.

I spent an hour or so pottering around our local gardening centre this afternoon, and made a few purchases. Earlier this evening I laid out some potatoes to chit (Pentland Crown maincrop and Anya salad potatoes), sowed some broad beans (Masterpiece Green Longpod) into rootrainers, and some leeks (Autumn Poristo), basil (Sweet Genovese) and rocket into seed trays.

So they're all sitting in our enclosed balcony, getting any sunlight that might come their way over the next few weeks. Fingers crossed!

Whilst at the garden centre I bought some onion sets (Stuttgarter and Red Baron) and some other seeds for later use: Tomato Marmande, that gives irregular 'Mediterranean style' fruits, parsnip F1 Albion, butternut squash Avalon F1 and pumpkin Jack Be Little that apparently gives lots of mini pumpkins around 3-4 inches in diameter, which sounds interesting!

I also had some garden centre vouchers left over from Xmas, so bought myself a new stainless steel fork with a lovely oiled wooden handle, as my current (cheapo) one is past it's best. I also got a free pair of anvil cut secateurs thrown in! Nice.

Hopefully in the next few weeks, weather permitting, I'll be able to get down to the plot and clear away the weeds that will have poked their heads above ground, and get some parsnips and maybe the onion sets into the ground.

As an aside, after visiting the garden centre we didn't want to go home directly, so took advantage of our recently-bought National Trust membership and popped in to Ham House gardens near Richmond. The house doesn't open until the end of March, but the gardens were a nice surprise (and the tea room was very welcome as it was so cold!). I've lived in the area for over 10 years and never visited before. The grounds were obviously a bit bare at the moment, but the kitchen garden especially shows promise for later in the year.