A slow January in the garden

Like everyone else in the UK I am fed up with the rain. It has turned the garden into a squelching mess. I won't be put off though. Its time to start planting. 

I hear a lot of you shouting.. It's too early, but I have discovered over the past two years living here, I can plant a good 6 weeks before the dates shown on the back of packets. We live in a strange little micro climate.. and although we still get the winds, it just never seems to get very cold. The heating has barely been on this winter. I know I may be jumping the gun, but I can't wait. 

So it was chilli's first, I wrote about them last blog and they are already up and growing,

rows of them. But it wasn't enough so I now have a second propagator full as well. 

Lovely healthy looking plants they are as well.  I shall be out in the greenhouse this afternoon starting some of the perennial flowers I have acquired over the winter, and talking acquisition, I appear to over indulged my love of seed buying. I counted the packs the other day and found I may have inadvertently purchased over 100 different new seed packs . Oops that is going to take a lot of squeezing to get them all in. I shall try though! This is just a few of them.

Last week saw the first round of the 2014 Seedy Penpals Scheme. I was paired with Carl who runs the scheme.. No pressure then. I thought for a while about what I would send and decided on a selection of unusual Squash seeds that I bought from Rareseeds in the USA and some of my home collected chilli, amongst other things. I also cheated a little.

The scheme came about, because Carl was involved in a foodie swapping group and he thought it would be a good thing to do with seeds as well. Anyway, I was aware from his blog that he loves anything foodie, so I sent him some of my home dried Chilli flakes and also a jar of dried peppers. I hope to see that he has used them in one of his unusual curing recipes.

I love to share flowers, but Carl said he didn't grow annuals, so I squeezed in a few Dahlia tubers that I got from Georgie at Common Farm Flowers. 

Off it all went to Wales. I think that Carl was pleased with his parcel, I am looking forward to seeing what he does with the stuff he grows. Visit Carls website for some really interesting recipes. www.carllegge.com

So nothing much else to write about on the growing front yet. Out and about the recent windy spell has caused some amazing damage to trees in the New Forest, On a recent walk I took these pictures, and this was a tiny number of the badly damaged trees we saw on route. I can't imagine how strong the wind gust must have been to simply snap off the top of trees. 

Gibson of course was in doggy heaven... Sticks everywhere, he didn't know where to start

But as usual he was happy to stop and pose for the camera. 

Thats it for now, hope you all have a great few weeks ahead and get some seeds in .