We are just at the start of our second full growing season in the limery. Last year saw amazing successes with sweet peppers (capsicum) and a fairly healthy tomato crop (the last of which have on just ripened up in their box!). Now I’m starting to nurture this year’s crops (including at least one new one) and some of the carnivores are beginning to wake up…
As always, we are doing our best to reuse… the writing on the milk carton plant labels from last year has been cleaned off with meths, the padded packaging from around the new chicken feeder looks like it will make cosy trays for seedlings, none of the plant pots are new, we water the seedlings from a plastic milk bottle with a perforated lid and my dad’s propagator is doing it’s stuff for yet another year. Only the seed compost, seed potatoes and the seeds are new (in fact some of the seeds are from last year, plus we overwintered the pepper plants).
I do love the promise that spring holds.
The Snail of Happiness 
coppicelearner
/ March 13, 2017I have got the heated bench in the grrenhouse warmed up and on Friday filled my improvised modules with potting compost which is now also warming. Hopefully I will have time to start sowing some seeds this afternoon. Like you everyhing possible is re-used and mostly made from rubbish. My ‘modules’ are short lengths of recycled waste pipe left over when we redid the kitchen and bathroom and probiotic drink bottles with the bottoms cut off all standing in mushroom punnets and everything is washed and re-used each year – they are at least 8 years old!
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Laurie Graves
/ March 13, 2017So lovely to see what you are starting. Right now in Maine, all we have is the promise of spring as a blizzard is slated to blow up the East Coast. Ah, spring in New England 😉
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The Snail of Happiness
/ March 13, 2017I saw some pictures from NY state on the BBC website today – looks like things are pretty wintery for you all still.
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Laurie Graves
/ March 13, 2017Very wintery indeed! But also very common for March in Maine. When spring comes, it arrives in a rush, knowing it doesn’t have as much time as it does in other states. That just makes it all the more beautiful and precious.
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Pat
/ March 13, 2017Last week felt like summer, last night it snowed. Spring is the greatest gift nature gives us. 🙂
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The Snail of Happiness
/ March 13, 2017Thankfully, the limery moderates the extremes! I’m happy today, though, because we are having a bit of sunshine.
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Tanglewood Knots
/ March 13, 2017I’m bracing for the blizzard here in Connecticut too! My poor daffodils were just popping up last week! Mother nature likes to mess around with us New Englanders! I do love seeing everyone else’s sprouts bursting out of the soil though!!
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The Snail of Happiness
/ March 13, 2017I hope your daffodils survive, but I suspect they might be completely flattened. Here, it’s just damp and warmish, thanks to The Gulf Stream.
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cambridgearomatherapy
/ March 13, 2017No mention of the limes! Our tree has managed in the kedar greenhouse with no heating and another random citrus that we were given a few years ago which has yet to fruit has survived outside next to the house! Such are winters these days! Six of my 10 planted chilli variaties have germinated so far and a couple have been overwintered inside. I really need to check the Latin names of them before next winter and work out which ones are annuals and which ones I can keep going over winter. Butternuts also germinated and potatoes going in this week.
And will be going to a meeting in Hinkley on Thursday, due to finish around 3-3.30 if you are free!
Dave
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The Snail of Happiness
/ March 13, 2017Oh, the lime tree is fine, but fruit set seems to be limited – maybe it was repotting that did it!
I think you want Ann for your Hinckley trip… it’s a bit far from west Wales!!
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Murtagh's Meadow
/ March 13, 2017Happy growing!
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The Snail of Happiness
/ March 13, 2017I do like this time of the year!
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katechiconi
/ March 13, 2017I like how your recycling rolls around with the seasons too. One case where the same old same old is a jolly good thing. I’m simply standing back and admiring the volunteers this year; a courgette on the compost heap, my perennial capsicums, out again for the third year running, and a couple of non-edibles: an elephant ear taro baby and the petrea vine in a tub I’ve removed from the patio because it was sending roots down between the pavers and starting to choke the gutter at the top. I chopped it back to a stump, and in a week, it’s *covered* in new green shoots again. Unstoppable, that’s Nature 🙂
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The Snail of Happiness
/ March 14, 2017Wonderful – I love the randomness of volunteers. Gardening just naturally lends itself to reuse and revitalisation (like your vine)… I wish it was taught more in schools.
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katechiconi
/ March 14, 2017Here, vegie growing is increasingly taught in kindy and primary schools to help children understand where their food comes from. Then in secondary school, especially the rural ones, there are ‘ag. school’ classes, where the basics of animal husbandry and arable farming are taught, complete with cattle, sheep, poultry, etc. It gives children a good grounding, and I haven’t seen it anywhere else.
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The Snail of Happiness
/ March 14, 2017Wow – that’s brilliant… they get to know where there food comes from and what goes into producing it.
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katechiconi
/ March 14, 2017Exactly, and they can see animal breeding in action, deliver lambs and calves, learn how to ‘show’ pedigree animals, learn about bees and pollination. It’s a brilliant system, and one I think other countries should adopt.
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arlingwoman
/ March 14, 2017I love all the pictures. They speak to what’s to come. I can almost smell the limery–I love the scent of greenhouses. Happy growing!
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davidprosser
/ March 14, 2017I hope you have bumper crops of everything this year showing just how successful the limery is.
xxx Huge Hugs xxx
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Andrew
/ March 14, 2017I hope you’re enjoying the promise of Spring around the corner. I’m definitely looking forward to the posts this year of all the things you’re harvesting. Me, well, I’m going to have 2 feet of snow to clear later this afternoon….. Not quite the early Spring I had hoped for unfortunately.
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The Snail of Happiness
/ March 14, 2017oh, I saw your forecast… hope you can get out!
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Born To Organize
/ March 15, 2017Everything looks lush and green. I do love spring and all those fresh beginnings.
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The Belmont Rooster
/ May 5, 2017LOOKS GREAT!!!
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