My May Garden Update And Some Future Plans

Reaching into warmer weather now, I have noticed the sudden abundance of weeds and dry plants in my garden! All hands on deck for weeding and mowing the lawn. Today I am sharing with you some of my recent changes in the garden and a few plans for the future.

 

Stratified seeds:

Around November last year I sowed some tree seeds that I collected from my local parks and forests. Yesterday I picked up all the pots in my seedling bed, gave it a good weed, re-sorted everything, and dug them back in.

My most successful seeds so far are the apples, damsons, rosehips, and horse chestnut.

 

How do I weed between seedlings?:

Seedlings can be tricky to weed, I have yanked out nice plants by accident. If iI’m not 100% sure if something is a friend or foe, i will just leaf (leave) it until it grows a bit more. I find that I mostly have grass and herb robert growing in pots so it is fairly easy to weed them.

Trimming back brambles and other aggressive plants:

Brambles, blackthorn, nettles, cleavers and milk thistle are my top targets in the garden, so annoying to step on or catch on your arm! 

I reserve a few small patches to grow wild just for pollinators. Everything else gets the cut.

Starting seeds outside:

So far it has just been turnip and spring onion seeds as a little experiment. The turnips have just started to grow their true leaves and the spring onion has just sprouted through the coco coir.

I poked four holes into an old ready meal container, dug it into one of my beds and covered it with a glass pane. Seems to work okay!

In my lean to, i have been practicing with the kitchen roll method which is wrapping the seeds with damp kitchen roll and leaving them to sprout. All of them have sprouted so I have planted them - but I didn't think it would work so I didn’t label them.

Future plans:

• Taking in some juniper trees - a colleague at work will be moving away and can’t take his 20 trees with him. I’m going to do some research and see if I can take them for him. It will save space at work, and I’ll be able to keep a better eye on them
• Bonsai attempts - I still have quite a few oak trees from when I grew a bunch of acorns in this post. Some of them are a bit small, a good size for a bonsai!
• Grow some more mushrooms - I enjoyed my kit from Merryhill Mushrooms last year, so this year i will try growing from liquid culture syringes. Then possibly try my hand at bonsai fungi

And that’s all! Let me know if you have any juniper advice, or if you have a particular idea you would like to see from me.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post,

Nate