Some of my germinating seeds are coming on well too.  Stupidly when I laid out the pots I muddled some of them up – so now I don’t know which is which of courgettes and pumpkin – plus I have three mystery plants which may be basil and may be peppers.  I suppose I will find out later on (as the Bible says – ‘by their fruits you shall know them’).

I’ve also nearly finished section 2 of the vegetable garden – and I have enough stones for a large rockery.

Although the weather was ok all day – we went to Glasgow in the afternoon and came back about 10pm.  By the time we got to Arrochar the snow was coming on thickly and approaching the Rest and be Thankful the visibility and road surface were very poor.  We slowly made our way over the top of the Hell’s Glen pass and home, but it was a bit dicey at times and we were certainly thankful for having a Land Rover.  No idea what the weather will have done to the new plantings, but this would not be a good time for it to turn very cold.

So spring is starting to be here and it is time to start gardening in earnest.  Over the last few weeks I have got the polytunnel more or less ready, with several raised beds filled with a mixture of the new topsoil and homemade compost.

I’ve planted broccoli, cauliflowers, onions, potatoes, leeks, sprouts and garlic in the tunnel, and in the greenhouse I have tomatoes, peppers and chillies growing in a heated propagator (don’t tell the cats but there may be some catnip hiding in there as well).

So now I need to do the hard work and get an out door vegetable patch dug because there is no way that I can grow anything like enough of our staples indoors.  So I measured out the area I am going to prepare and pegged it out with string.  It is 9 yards long by 4.5 wide and is going to be divided into four smaller patches for the four different rotations of crop.  I was thinking about having paths between the plots done in stone paving – but after reading how complicated it sounds to lay it – I am going to go for bark paths with tree trunk ‘stepping stones’ for the time being.  Below was progress by end of day two – I have done most of the first section…

Looking at the picture I can see that if the gardening doesn’t work out, it will give a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘where the bodies are buried’.

So work permitting, the plan is to get all four sections done by half way through March, by which time the soil should have warmed up enough to transplant some of the seedlings out of the tunnel.