Early Spring surprises

I must say that I haven't been in our garden since November when I spent one week preparing it for winter, so I had my concerns when I decided last week that I should find some time to start with Spring cleaning. I guess I sound like a bad gardener now, but there are many things happening in our lives at the moment and I had to set my priorities so that I don't get crazy. However, it looks like our garden understands that and is very kind to us. I was expecting a disaster, and I was surprised to see that it was actually not too bad. It was quite good! Let me take you around!

I didn't plant lamb's lettuce in autumn, but we could still harvest some. How is that possible? Last winter, I planted many crops in our greenhouse, and apparently they self-seeded. Lamb's lettuce is a winter crop, so it came out after I cleaned the garden. Some of them bolted, and hence I expect another batch next year - how cheap and efficient.

I learned that carrots are a two year crop, so I let some of them in the ground over winter to see what would happen. Although mice tasted many of them, I could still harvest a decent amount, and there will be some carrot soup in our household in a few days.

Kale didn't look good last year, so I kept it in the ground, and thought it would rot. I was surprised to see that it's flourishing instead. I left a bit, took the rest home and incorporated it in a pasta dish a few days ago.

I planted endive lettuce in November in our raised bed. I covered it with thick bubble wrap, and based on my experience I was convinced to find many plants in spring. I checked the progress few times and they were doing very well. Imagine my surprise when we removed the bubble wrap and I only saw one lettuce head and plenty holes! Somebody stole the rest! It's impossible that it was eaten by mice because our raised bed is isolated, so they can't get it. I have no idea who could have done it, but I hope that it was somebody in need as then I could understand it.

I planted radishes as we suddenly had some place, covered the raised again with the bubble wrap and will check if they sprouted in a few days.

I'm not a big fan of hellebores, and I just can't get rid of them. Every year, I take out as many roots as possible, but they keep coming back. You might ask why I don't like them because they are beautiful, right? They bloom too early in the year, so we don't really enjoy them, and they spread like crazy taking over too much space. They also have large leaves and flowers like to hide under them, so in the end you only see them when you remove the leaves. It's too much work for literally no pleasure. I hope that one day I will be able to get rid of them completely. I took some of them home and they only lasted 3 days in a vase, so no points for them there either.

When they tell you that you buy a one year crop (for your area), but you see that it survived winter you are very happy, right? We didn't enjoy our Southernwood also known as 'Cola herb' a lot, and I'm so happy that it came back. It smells exactly like Coke, so it's perfect for summer lemonades.

Gooseberries are slowly waking up. This type that we have is juicy, sweet and not so tangy which I love. It grew a lot in a year, and I'm excited to see if we get more fruit too.

'Female' Sea buckthorn looks great too. This bush is bearing fruit, and I'm happy it's growing well as I would love to finally get some berries. The 'male' bush is not this far yet, so we'll see how it goes as it's needed to pollinate the flowers. You need both of them, and I hope that the other one will survive.

Rhubarb is slowly coming out from its winter sleep. It starts slowly, but then the growth speeds up and in a month we will be able to enjoy chunky, juicy Rhubarb stalks. As usually, I will share most of them with our friends as this place seems to be the Rhubarb paradise and we always get much much more than we need.

My green manure is growing well. I planted it way too late and was not sure if it would come out. It's some sort of grain, and I have no idea how fast it will grow as it's the first time that I have used it.

We have a large rosemary bush that is growing out of control, and I finally found some time to prune it a bit. This is only the small part that I removed. You can't really see that I pruned it at all.

Our perennial flowers are waking up too. Primroses are all over the garden. They are short lived perennials, but they spread by seeds so quickly that every year we have multiple times more of them than the year before.

Irises are there too!

There are tiny flowers all over the garden. Glory-of-the-snow flowers spread slowly, and I'm happy to see more and more every year.

Baby daffodils are coming too. It's a dwarf variety and they reach not more than 10-15 cm.

Tulips are another flowers that are multiplying each year. Every time I weed, I accidentally destroy some bulbs, but they keep spreading like there was no tomorrow.

We didn't prune Forsythia last year, and it grew a lot. We will prune it when it stops flowering otherwise it will take over other plants. We would take these yellow branches home and put them in a vase for Easter decoration. However, Easter is in April this year, so we will have to plan for another decoration because they'll be gone by then.

Viburnum is such a wonderful fragrant flowering bush. It's a pity that it starts flowering very early in the year. Our garden is not at our house, so we don't enjoy it so much because we are simply not there.

This is the result of our spring cleaning. We still have a lot to do, but we cleaned the most important areas already. We were too lazy to go twice to the garbage containers, so we loaded our barrow far above its capacity.

It took us all Sunday to clean those rosemary sprigs and separate the good ones from the old ones. I was planning to make some syrup, but looking at the quantity I might have to prepare rosemary water and oil for my hair treatment too. It doesn't look like much on this photo, but let's look at another perspective below...

Well, I have no idea what I'm going to do with it considering that there is still tons of rosemary in our garden, and this is a 4 litres bowl. Any ideas are welcome at this point 😊

Gardening has always given me a lot of energy (and 'all body' pain), and I can't wait when the days will get a bit warmer, so that I can fully immerse in this activity again.

See you next time...