I’ve been putting some of my trays outside in an effort to stop them running off and getting leggy indoors. Yesterday’s cold air was too much for my tomatoes though and suddenly they looked very sorry for themselves. I brought them in and put them under the lights, but they didn’t really recover.

I’ve resown all the ones where the droopy leaves stuck to my finger when I ran it underneath the  leaf. Some looked a bit sad, but didn’t stick to me, so I’m giving them a few days to prove themselves indoors. I shouldn’t have put them out in such cold air when they were so small.

The broccoli in the same tray might go leggy again indoors, but if it does, I’ll just resow again in separate pots so they can do their own thing. I have lots of seed.

I made a start on digging the grass out of the mint, but ultimately decided that I won’t put the mint back. The grass on the other side is couch grass, so it’ll only come back. There were also a number of hawthorn seedlings in there, with cress and so on. I’ve got the bulbs I dug up in a temporary pot at home while I decide what to do with them. There’s more to dig up, but this is a good start and the rest will need more careful extraction.

I’ve had a look at the elder and I’m hopeful it might be coming back to life. The black buds seem to have little red dots on them now.

In the afternoon I did some seed replacing and sowing. I’ve resown the broccoli and cosmos, as they’d shot off. I’ve also redone one Ferline and one sweetcorn, as they’d not appeared. Other things are growing quite well. The trays that are outside are starting to wake up too.

I’ve now sown:

• a tray of French Marigold (my seed!)
• 4 x Mars pumpkins
• 3 x Jack Be Little

All the beans will be done next week, once I’ve fetched the root trainer from the shed. Then that’s  pretty much everything sown until we’re into the direct sowing.

When I got to the plot this morning, there was a mystery hole in Bed 3, which I refilled. One geum flower was almost open in the triangle too. One pear blossom is open, but the apple tree has a way to go yet.

I weeded all along the trellis bed and filled in the field vole holes. The one everlasting pea I was concerned about is actually still there and coming back to life, so hopefully it will recover and not be burrowed through again. The purple loosestrife is coming back really nicely.

I took out more grass and cress, and some lemon balm along the right and in the triangle. I can see signs of the bear’s breeches coming back. A number of calendulas have been pulled up as they were completely dead after a few years of pretending to be perennial. So I will definitely sow some replacements.

I stopped when I got to the mint. It’s sprouted at ground level, but you can see how overrun it is with grass at this point. The mint in the front bed is nothing like this. So I think it’s time to dig this up. What mint survives can stay, but all these weeds need to be stopped before they get even worse.

Still no sign of life from the stalks, but look at that over-wintered cornflower!

Good Friday and time for some gardening at last. Having had a bit of a rake through my Normandy oak leaves, I found a lot of twigs and sprouting acorns, which confirmed the need to mow them. Mum and I mowed the content of all the bags and we’ll repack them in new sacks at the plot. The leaves have already done some good decomposition, so it might only be a year before the leaf mould is ready to use.

Before I could sow seeds I needed to make my compost mix. I hydrated the coir, mixing two blocks with half a bag of peat-free compost. I think it’s made a pretty good mix of material and nutrients. This amount was enough for more than 6 trays.

I’ve now sown:

3 x Cucumber – Burpless Tasty Green
2 x Courgette – Soleil
3 x Uchiki kuri
4 x Broccoli – Tenderstem
9 x Sweetcorn
3 x Cherry tomato – Gold nugget
4 x Plum tomato – Roma
5 x Tomato – Ferline

8 x Dwarf sunflowers
10 x Nasturtium – Orchid Flame
10 x Zinnia – Jazz
40 x Morning glory (2 per cell)
4 x Cosmos – Peppermint rock
4 x Rudbeckia – Chocolate orange (last chance to see if these will ever germinate)
8 x Snapdragons – Sachmo
5 x Malope
15 x Cornflowers (hardy)
5 x Californian poppies (hardy)

I managed to weed the whole ledge today. There was lots of cress and grass, but they’d rooted into the compost mulch, which meant that they came up really easily. Hurray for the autumn mulching! I’ve tried to fill in a few field vole holes, but they’ve not done too much here.

The thrift is really quite big now and even has one or two flower buds. They’re looking a bit brown in the middle though, so I need to keep an eye on them. I’m going to need some filler plants, but the sweet williams should be good again.

I’ve finally dug up the old thyme from under the apple. I’d just started to cut it up for the compost heap when C and V  took it off my hands for their struggling herb garden. I’ve got one more bag of wood chips, which I can put under the tree, but it would be best to cover this bit first.

There are quite a number of field vole holes along my trellis boundary. They came right up under one of my everlasting peas last year and now it looks like that plant has died. I still want a pea here, so I might look at putting a new one in the ground in a bottomless pot so that it at least has  side protection from tunnelling. The field voles are cute, but I’m in charge here.

Another dead plant. I’ve been meaning to pull up this one by the orange geum in the triangle for a few weeks. I finally did today and promptly found that it has tiny green bumps at the bottom, like dahlia eyes. I can’t see what it was from old photos, so I’ve replanted it and will give it another chance.

This hyssop also needs some attention. It’s too leggy and so I need to find out if I can give it a tough haircut, or if I need to give up and do something else here.

I took the old plans off the shed wall when I left and found a whole community of woodlice on the wall behind the one in the plastic cover.

The first weeding visit of the year. The ground’s still pretty wet underfoot, but weeding is ok. Grass is starting to wake up first of course, so I need to get hold of it before it runs wild.

The delphiniums are starting to wake up, sprouting next to their old stalks. I need to find out when to cut down the old stalk, in case they start growing at silly angles around it.

I weeded all of Bed 3, pulling up all the dead flax. Hopefully it’s dropped seed everywhere, better than I ever could with its seeds. The rest is yarrow, poppy and a few calendula.

I also managed to weed most of the front border. I’ve a feeling that the yellow perennials are just dead stalks, stuck firmly in the ground, but it’s ok to leave them there while I don’t have anything to replace them.

We did the pear tree first. The ridiculous bottom branch has finally come off too – not all the way, but back to the point where it changes direction. Some other branches have been shortened and anything that was pointing inward has come off. We’re trying to open up the middle. Some of the branches look a little close still, but I’ll give them a year to see how they grow.

I think we’ve done good renovation work on the tree this year, aiming to remove no more than 25% of it.

• A big branch at the top, which I noticed left after last year’s pruning, has now gone
• A long bottom branch has been cut off. It went downwards from the start, and which was part of what was being leaned on by the stake.
• The middle of the goblet shape has really opened up. We took off anything pointing inwards or downwards.
• Vertical stalks inside the goblet have been chopped.
• We took about a third off the longest vertical branches at the top of tree, cutting above buds that pointed outwards.

There are now several places where we could throw a pigeon through the tree. Next year we can look for anything that’s reacted over-vigorously, anything else pointing the wrong way, any branches overfilling the open goblet shape. Some branches that have curved upwards on the back fence side may need to be removed or shortened next year.

I did a bucketful of cutting down as well, where lots of plants have died back and have new growth at the bottom. The flax has finally given up, but I don’t know how much it will have self-seeded. The yarrow is starting to wake up and there’s even some flower on it. I’ve no idea if the donated perennials in the front bed have survived. They’ve looked like dead sticks this entire time, but are still firmly in the ground, so I’ll give them more time.

I made my first proper visit of the year to the allotment today to make a start on the pruning – it’s about to be March! I only made a few cuts and spent an awful lot of time standing back and looking at the tree. On one such perusal I noticed movement in my peripheral vision and saw this little field vole poking its head out of one of the many holes along the boundary. Ultimately it came out to see me and wasn’t too timid at all. I wonder if I’ll see more of them this year.

One of the big problems with the apple tree has been its lean, exacerbated by the stake pushing on this branch. I wondered about taking the branch back to the trunk, but it would likely make a bit of a hole at the front. For now, I’ve removed the stake and hope to gradually persuade the tree to stand up a little.

I took a little off the back and shortened a very long branch out the front that gets in the way of walking/mowing. That’s now gone back to the bed boundary.

More research tonight and then more cutting tomorrow.

The allotment was still wet, but there was only a tiny bit of standing water in the corners of the middle bed. I was able to give it a gentle dig over to pull out the weeds, but it was pretty sloppy. Bed 9 was easier to weed and everything had already been edged, so at that point we were ready to compost and cover. The last 3 bags of compost worked out perfectly, so that’s all done.

The obelisk is in the shed for winter. It’ll probably manage next year, but perhaps head to the compost bin after that. I’ve brought home my seeds and seed pots, plus all the plant labels, so it’s all at home for reference. Now to start planning all the different vegetables for next year.

Final harvest today – all the carrots are now up and I’ve cut the last few leaves of chard. The carrots were a bit of a mixed bag, but not too bad.

Since the middle of the allotment was very squidgy and partly underwater, there wasn’t much to do. I was able to edge the higher bed though, so it wasn’t a completely wasted trip.

One of the gladiolus stems by the trellis had fallen down, but seems to have revealed a new stem on its way. Let’s see if they’re all blind next year again!