What a couple of weekends! It's been all go in the garden. Things have been blossoming, the apple tree,

the blue honeyberry,

the japanese quince,

the peach,

the nectarine,

and even the kale!

I've read somewhere that you can eat kale flowers a bit like broccoli, so I'm definitely going to give that a go.

I also picked up a teeny tiny Morello cherry tree at the local poundsaver, which was only £6. Looking at it, it's going to be a while before we get any cherries off it, but it's perking up the shady side of the garden no end until then (it's the tiny wee twig next to the ivy):

In other thrilling news, we had our first half-homegrown salad this weekend! I gloated for ages. Here it is, in all it's glory (and some of a bag of salad from Sainsburys because it needed eating):

It's got home-sprouted mung beans, cress, pea shoots, baby kale leaves, and the tops of my Egyptian Walking Onion, which are a bit like spring onions. It's also got a dressing made from home-made raspberry vinegar and olive oil, and it's the best thing in the world.

I've never sprouted anything before, or eaten beansprouts hardly at all, and they're lovely! The whole thing was lovely, and I am extremely pleased.

Here are my very healthy looking peashoots (another first!):

And I sowed a huge load of stuff - brassicas, roots and onions mostly - in the long beds, after finally digging in the manure (for the brassicas) and compost (for the roots and onions). I got a polytunnel for Christmas, so that's along one edge, so some of each crop should come earlier than the rest, staggering it nicely I thought - and it's exactly the right length, serendipitously.

I just hope the promised cold snap doesn't kill off all my precious blossoms. Fingers crossed!

Freebies are the best

What a weekend! Went to a garden centre and my resolve almost weakened when I saw all the lovely fruit trees just begging to be bought and taken home (especially the espaliered ones for some reason), but I held firm. And a good thing too, as we ended up filling up the car with rhubarb plants, strawberry plants, and raspberry canes from mom's garden, that she was getting rid of. Yesterday I managed to get them all planted out, and am happily looking forward to a good harvest of raspberries next year, and hopefully strawberries and rhubarb this year.

I also managed to start off some peas for pea shoots indoors, which is very exciting as I've been looking forward to doing this since last week when I read about it. I'm using 'Douce de Provence' peas which are bright pink, although I don't think the actual shoots will be pink, sadly.

I'm so looking forward to starting to harvest my microleaves and pea shoots!

We got to eat my sister's first rhubarb crop of the year, as she very kindly gave it to me. I love rhubarb so much, but I think people make a mistake in stewing it. My favourite simple way of cooking it is to chunk it all up, put it in an oven proof dish with caster sugar (300g sugar to 1kg of rhubarb), and cook for 45mins-1hr at 190 degrees/ gas mark 5. You can then have it with yoghurt/custard/cream etc. I had to buy a copy of delicious magazine this week because of its rhubarb articles, the best recipe is here: http://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/baked-rhubarb-and-orange-cheesecake-2

I think I may be about to be hit by a new obsession...

So. I like salad. In years past I've picked up a couple of those 'designer' salad bags from the supermarket per week, and thought how expensive it is for little bits of different coloured leaves. Last year I had (quite a half-hearted) go at growing lettuce for salad, but I sadly neglected my little leaves and we only had a few salads out of it.

This year I re-read my copy of 'Taste of the Unexpected' and was determined to have fresh salad leaves growing all through the summer, and stick to my good intentions about successional sowing, and actually watering and harvesting them. I decided to have a go at micro leaves (where you sow lots of seeds, indoors, and then harvest when the seedlings are a couple of weeks old - it apparently gives a really fresh, intense flavour, and I've sown some coriander and rocket seeds as my first go at this, and am eagerly awaiting results). I've also put some oriental leaves outside, which are just sprouting, and should make some punchy, peppery salads. Somewhere, on somebody's blog, I read about doing this with pea shoots. I have a huge abundance of peas to sow, donated by relatives, and my garden is very small, so this is a great way of using them up and not just having them sit around for years waiting to be used.

Then, just minutes ago, I read this blog post: http://www.fennelandfern.co.uk/blog/2012/03/10/pea-super/

Not only does it give beautiful, detailed instructions on how to best grow pea shoots for salads indoors, but apparently it's part of a year-round salad leaves challenge. It makes me want to race home from work and sow stuff immediately! Thrilling.

Cress!

I have got a bit over-excited about sowing my seeds. When you find yourself checking on the seeds you sowed a couple of hours ago, tops, to see if they've come up yet you really need to calm down.

Fortunately, the cure is at hand: cress! Cress sprouts really quickly (although not within a couple of hours!) and takes the edge off my hyper-ness about seeds.

In other news: I really love this time of year - all the little buds on the trees, especially magnolias which are my favourite. When I win the lottery we're buying a house with a massive garden and planting magnolias -even though, to the best of my knowledge, you can't eat any part of them. That's how pretty they are.

March Madness

Spring is definitely here, and I can't stop thinking about my plans for the garden this year. I know I've called the blog 'Allotment', but that's how I treat the garden really - I've not got much patience with purely decorative plants, I just want to grow stuff I can eat! Fruit and veg and herbs are usually quite decorative anyway, even without taking into account edible flowers, and the few non-useful plants that have crept in to my garden.

We started gardening last year. We have a long strip along the right-hand side which is more or less filled up with annuals, with some gaps. I've got Jerusalem artichokes, a dwarf apple tree, a blue honeyberry, a small asparagus bed, a Japanese wineberry, an edible fuchsia (which I hope survived the winter, it's looking fairly dead at the moment), gooseberry and red- and white-currant bushes, rhubarb, and a rambling rose. Slotted in-between are going to be a cucumber and a 'Fat Baby' achocha, and, hope of hopes, a melon, all growing up some trellis/netting.

We have a herb bed, which currently has a very healthy rosemary bush, some tired-looking thyme, a flourishing Egyptian walking onion, and a scrubby winter savory. This weekend I sowed dill, pot marigold, and some Viola Heartsease. I've got basil seedlings inside, which might come outside when they've grown more than a millimetre, plus I sowed some chervil in my strawberry planter, which is in a shadier location, which it should prefer.

Next we have what is going to be the brassica bed, and the roots and onions bed. Completely empty right now and badly in need of some manure/compost being dug in. Fairly weed-free so far though. I'm planning sprouting broccoli, two kinds of sprouts (green and red, festive!), oriental leaves, and rat-tailed radishes for the brassica bed; carrots, beetroot and salsify and spring onions for the roots and onions bed.

Further down we've got the patch of overgrown lawn which is going to be transformed into a raspberry bed, and a legumes bed. I've got a huge variety of seed peas (mostly donated to me), and am going to have about 6 different kinds of legumes - I don't believe seed peas last too long, so I'll be growing some indoors like cress for delicious pea tops to use in salad, which I've not done before, and am excited about.

Down at the end we're having sweetcorn and  tall peas growing up a trellis, plus a climbing courgette (Tromboncino) and climbing squash in pots going up the wall. Right by the house I'm going to have four kinds of tomato in pots benefitting from the South-facing wall. I also have a nectarine tree on order (!!!!) which I am thrilled about. I'd like to grow chillis again, but they seem quite a faff, so I thought I'd just ask for a nice chilli plant for my birthday in June. It's been great having a bagfull in the freezer from last year's plants that I can just grab a couple from as and when, I'll definitely do that again instead of messing about trying to preserve or dry the chillis.

On the patio I've got pots of blueberry bushes, Chilean guava and a blackcurrant. I've got a few hanging baskets that I'm going to put flowers and alpine strawberries in.

So far I've got some oriental leaves and radishes just sprouting, and some carrots (companion-planted with Garlic Chives) and lettuces that I'm waiting to germinate. Indoors I've got cress, micro leaves (rocket and coriander), alpine strawberries, nasturtiums and lovage seeds germinating.

I love planning the garden. There are so many things that are going to be new to me this year, and some that I tried last year but didn't work, so I'm hoping for better things this time around, such as the edible fuchsia which had loads of gorgeous flowers, but no fruit, and the sweetcorn which grew about 8inches and then changed its mind.

There's plenty of digging to do, the lawn needs mowing (badly) and the left-hand bed, which is North-facing and so a bit neglected (it has an ivy and a honeysuckle, and that's kind of it) has been really badly encroached upon by the lawn. In time I'm going to grow Sweet Cicely and Angelica over there, and I'm also hoping for a dwarf Morello Cherry, but I have to wait for winter for the first two, and more money for the last one!

My plan for the rest of March is to dig in the manure and compost to the brassica and roots beds, dig over the raspberry and legume beds and carry on sowing! I should have my first crop of the year in about a week - good old cress - to buck me up.