Geranium seedlings

Last weekend i visited my local garden centre just really to have a look around for ideas than actually buy anything as by this time of the year i m mostly organised with vegetable and flower seeds so there's not a great deal i want.

I tend to sew my own seed as i find buying plants expensive.

However i did buy 2 pots of geranium seedling, 20 in each, 

all huddled together and needing to be pricked out into individual small pots. I felt at £2.99 a pot they were not a bad price for the money.

So they are now all potted up and in my porch waiting for the warmer weather to arrive.

Just thought i'd throw my Amaryllis in to show you all. 

.

All Set And Ready To Go

Well I'm ready and all set to go, just waiting for the warmer weather to arrive.

Had a bit of trouble though this year with my potato seed . I have for many years now bought Desiree from my allotment society and have usually had a good crop, but on harvesting them last year i lost half the crop to blight.

Not being deterred by this i ordered Desiree again this year, but when the seed arrived all three 2.5kg  bags had a rotten potato in each bag. No way was i going to put them in my soil, so i went to my local garden centre and chose six different varieties all desease resistant.

I wonder if it was just a bad year for that variety so hopefully i will have better luck this year using different seed.  

New Year New Growth

Things are starting to happen in the vegetable plot.

In late November last year i planted some broad bean seeds and to my delight they are just starting to grow. Its amazing how they can grow in our wintry conditions.

I usually wait until the early spring to sew them, but my last crop of broad beans was such a disaster with an infestation black fly i thought I'd got nothing to loose.

I don't like to use any insecticides or pesticides on my plot so have to rely on mother nature to do her best.

The only things that benefited from the black fly were are the ants. They tried to do their best to keep them down, but the black fly got the better of them and took over the plants completely gradually suffocating the new growth to death .

Here they are the little darlings protected with wire baskets just in case the birds decided to have a feast on them.