Almost a drought. Seed sowing.

Camelia now in bloom.

It is now eleven days without rain! must almost be a record, the days are warm, clear sky's and real sunshine but the night time temperatures plummet -3 to -4 with heavy frosts, this is good for the land however, drying it out and the frosts breaking up large clods of soil making it light and friable, just right to plant seeds when the soil warms up. The parsnip seed is now  planted, the frost will help their germination and the first seed trays are now completed.

 It takes time to sow seeds in seed modules, I plant just one seed per cell, it's fine with the larger seeds such as peas and beans, they are easy to pick up with tweezers but when it comes to the small seeds, unless you have very good eyesight, it is hard on the eyes , as the seeds are too small to use tweezers on I use a flat very thin bladed veg knife, it is quite easy to get just one seed on the knife if the seeds are in the palm of my hand. I plant this way for several reasons, seed is quite expensive so you save by not wasting seed, I don't like pricking out, to me it is a waste of seed, I also think seedlings do better if you don't have to disturb them. However I do plant several seeds per module with sweet peas, they seem to do quite well when you plant them out in small clumps. The trays are now in the mini green house, with some trays in the heated propagator. This seed sowing  will now be a monthly job until June. All our root veg seed is planted directly into the garden, root veg do not like to have their roots disturbed. The main crop potatoes are now being chitted, ready to plant out towards the end of March.

First peach bloom.

The peach tree now has two blooms out with many more to come, so fingers crossed on getting some peaches this year.

Two Indian runner , one Muskovy duck eggs.

Our Indian runner ducks have just started laying, it nice to have a blue egg for a change, I do wonder what a bird thinks, (if they do think), the first time they lay an egg, it must be a very weird experence.

Roast duck and four veg, entirely home produced.