May Bank holiday

It goes without saying that not all the bank holiday was good weather. Sunday has given us a frost, enough to turn the leaves on may of the plants, thank goodness we put all the tender stock under cover. The Basil however is destroyed.
Today, Monday is so cold it feels more like a march day certainly not conducive to buy bedding plants, oh well there is always next year.

The week ahead

At long last it looks like a week when the weather may be on our side. The forast is to become quite a bit warmer and drier, maybe even double digit figures.
With a bit of sun on our backs we have have a bit more confidence in bringing in more stock to sell.
At the end of the week our Early spring leaflet gets distributed, so look out for some offers on exciting gardening products, but act fast as this is very much time limited.

Website updates

Working this weekend and suffering from lack of trade due to cold wet weather has at least allowed me time to get up to date with our website, www.fairweathers.co.uk. We are currently working on getting a section on our site for visitors to find out more about local attractions and events along with what else Beaulieu can offer. It is somewhat surprising that the Beaulieu villiage website has not been kept up to speed at least we can fill that gap for visitors and hopefully attract others to the area.
We had a meeting on Saturday with some of the Learning garden team to set out for next year a range of drop-in courses on vegetable gardening. Our intention is to provide simple workshops on a regular basis where visitors can come along and learn some practical advice on grwoing veg in their own garden or allotement. These will consist of about a 10-15min talk followed by practical experience so that the theory can be put into practice.
We will be posting details of the program up opn the website once we have finalised it, places will be however limited and if you wnat to come along we suggest an early booking. These workshops will be FREE but if you want a more detailed and thorough course we are aiming to offer these later in the year. There will a charge for these but we can assure you that your money will be well spent.

Weekend weather change

Saturday and the weather has changed. Why is it when the weekend comes along and people can get out into the garden the weather does a change for the worse. This morning in the garden centre it started to sleet. We are setting out our Christmas tree area for the first trees are due in from Scotland on Wednesday, we are expecting them to be covered with snow, how very festive.

Sowing now

Even though the weather has taken a turn for the worse, night temperatures here have fallen to a chilly -2C, and believe you and me that feels cold to us soft southerners, and even to the point that last Monday we had a hail storm that coated the ground white for a while, there are plenty of jobs to get done in the garden.
In the learning garden we are planting out garlic and red onion sets along with sowing a nice early crop of Aquadulce broad beans.
Clearing off the dead foliage of crops like pumpkins and marrows etc that have succumbed to the ravages of cold nights has opened up great areas of bare soil just waiting to be dug over and restocked with manure ready for the next crops.