Spring is tempting me. When the sun is out, it’s glorious and the warmth is invigorating. The trouble is, we’ve been plagued by clouds and even sleet last Saturday. But I’ve been trying to plough on (not literally) and continue to make even the smallest steps of progress on my little urban garden patch I call The Smallest Smallholding.
The area between the kitchen door at the back of the house and the garden gate is fairly redundant at the moment, but in summer (and especially now we’ve been keeping the hedge height down), it can be a bit of a sun trap at certain times of the day. A bit of bare wall had become a dumping ground for old disused pots and bricks, so I decided to rip out the perennial weeds and try to smarten it up a bit.
With the short brick wall behind it the warms up in the sunshine, I thought it would be the perfect spot for putting a mini container garden. Something a bit closer to the kitchen, and something to bring a bit of life and cheer to the rambling mess outside the conservatory.
I started this mini side project a couple of weeks ago, using some old slates and bricks to create a shelf to keep the ants out of the pots. I began by collecting up all the sad and neglected old pots, and began planting in some lettuce plugs but this weekend I decided to add a few flowering herbs in (anything for the bees is fine by me), for both fragrance and colour. I might even get around to using the herbs in the kitchen this year! I also found a lovely compact lavender that I’ve not come across before called ‘Lady Lavender’, which has now been potted up in an old terracotta pot and added to my growing container garden collection.
Feeling a bit fancy free, I indulged myself with two 95p ‘Cambridge Favourite’ strawberry plants – breaking the bank, right? – which I need to pot on. I am considering pooling my pennies together and getting a few more and pulling out the old terracotta strawberry container, but I’ve not had a huge amount of success with it in the past since I’m fairly forgetful when it comes to watering. But this year, you never know. I’ll just have to see if I’m up to it since everything is becoming much more of an effort as I pass the 22 week mark in my pregnancy.
I’ll just have to keep ploughing on as I best I can (and remember to water).