I’ve had a really busy week, sowing loads of seeds for my garden

and helping other kids to plant seeds at a stall I ran at a local park event.

Our garden

At home, me and my Dad started off the peas and leeks and potted on some plants we had been given by our gardening buddies. We always plant peas in toilet rolls (although we have planted some direct into the beds); it allows the roots to grow straight and long and become established and #WinWin the toilet roll itself is biodegradable. Peas are one of the crops we have always had the most success with, which is a good job ‘cos I love them!

We have also sown some leek and courgette seeds in pots and the shallots, red and yellow onions and parsnips have gone straight in the raised beds.

We’ll be earthing the potatoes in the next few weeks and planting some carrot seeds too

Perfect Pumpkin

One of my followers, Neil, kindly harvested his own pumpkin seeds and sent me some last autumn. Sarah helped me plant these at the community garden and explained how to best plant them, by placing the seed on its side and watering regularly, telling me to not soak the soil if it’s already wet, as this can lead to rot. Cheers Neil !

Sunflowers

I planted some sunflower seeds too. A few years ago I won a competition for the tallest sunflower; at 72″ I had to stand on a ladder to measure it. Sunflowers are great to plant with small kids as their seeds are quite big, they grow quick and once the flower head starts to die off, they make a great food source for garden birds

George’s Marvellous Makes….

So, I joined Operation Farm in their Enchanted Garden workshops at a Spring Family Fun Day in the local park. I had my very own gazebo and took charge of how I wanted it to look. Each kid made their own paper plant pot, filled it with compost and planted a pea or courgette seed. I told them how to look after them in the coming months. I also gave them a packet of the RHS Campaign for School Gardening ‘Perfect for Pollinators’ seeds.

I really enjoyed running my own stall, at one point it was so busy I had to ask people to form a queue!

Greenman

My Dad’s friend, Floyd bought us this fantastic Greenman, which my Dad has hung amongst the ivy – may he watch over our garden this spring and bring us a great harvest !

Cheers Floyd!

Green Fingered News

Me and my Dad have done loads of work on our garden recently, including more work on the pond. We have been working on the stones around the shallow areas and planting some water plants. I’ll blog about that soon, but it looks crackin’

We’ve had some really windy weather and a late frost caused a bit of damage for some of the new growth on plants like the Japanese maple and the mahonia. For once there hasn’t been much rain, so we’ve been doing a fair bit of  watering too.

I’ve done some filming for the RHS website this week; I was interviewed by RHS Garden Magazine Editor, Chris Young and he asked me all about my role as an Ambassador. One of my next blogs will be all about the ‘making of’ the film, ready for when it goes live. It was a great experience and the film crew were fab

After all that hard work, it was time to R.E.L.A.X. and that’s just what I did, with my mate, Dec in Bakewell. We took the GoPro and filmed the shark sized trout in the river – I won’t bore you with the 29 minutes of footage !!!

Lovin’ the sun today – did you manage to get out in your garden!!