Although the weather is conspiring against us, as Martyn described in his post, we did manage some gardening last week.

It may not seem very spring-like to us but the fruit trees are raring to go. I am a bit concerned though that the plum trees don’t appear to have many flower buds. I hope the bullfinches haven’t snaffled them.

On Sunday, we made our first plot visit in March. We should really be planting our potatoes, but the conditions are not really suitable so we need to be patient. Fortunately, we have beds prepared once the weather improves. Fingers crossed that everything isn’t too soggy by that stage. At this rate due to delays, we will have a hectic time playing catch up to look forward to. Have you noticed that we gardeners always seem to have a spanner thrown into the works to enforce a reality check when we think that we were really making good progress?

I did manage a little planting. There were some gaps in our autumn onion bed where sets hadn’t survived. Martyn had popped some left over sets in planting cells in the greenhouse so that we could try planting them out if this was the case so I planted these on Sunday. Whether they grow or not is anyone’s guess – we will see.

Martyn, strimmed some of the grass and mulched the autumn raspberries with manure. The rhubarb bed was given the same treatment. One of the rhubarb plants – Poulsons Pride – is growing well but the clumps of Timperley Early will still be the first to be ready to harvest.

 I trimmed some of the gooseberries that are growing up a wire fence. The photos don’t really show it, but I cut quite a lot out.

I decided the dig up the parsnips that remained in the ground. To be honest we had given up on them, as most that we tried harvesting had hardly grown any root. In the event, I was pleasantly surprised and found that some roots were a usable size. In fact one was huge.

I also managed to ‘harvest’ a bunch of daffodils. I picked them in bud and they soon opened up when popped in a vase in the house. They have a lovely perfume which tends to be overlooked outdoors but inside it fills the room.

As well as managing some work on the allotment we did a bit of pruning and tidying in the garden. Martyn, cut back some fruit trees behind the greenhouse and I pruned the roses.

I also cut the cornus stems down to the ground to encourage the new growth that will produce the coloured stems later in the year.

We did manage our usual walks and we also had a trip to the vet for Ruby’s annual vaccination and health check. Happily everything was OK although she wasn’t impressed by the kennel cough vaccine which involves the vaccine being sprayed up her nose. I don’t think I’d be too keen on that either.

That’s all for this week so as always stay safe, stay well and stay warm.

This week I am linking to Harvest Monday on Dave’s Our Happy Acres blog. Dave gardens in the US and it’s always interesting to share notes with gardeners in a different part of the world.