Despite our usual New Year optimism for the gardening year ahead, an unexpected combination of care duties, hospital treatment and Covid, meant that we are having a very slow start to our spring at The Secret Acre.
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January tends to get a bad rap as a month.
We blame Pilot for letting the rot set in when they sang in their 1975 No1 hit single “January, sick and tired, you’ve been hanging on me”.
But as Josephine Nuese, author of The Country Garden pointed out, gardening really begins in January, with the dream. So come last year’s cold snap, or this year’s unseasonably mild weather, we kind of quite like January here at The Secret Acre.
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We’re currently busy with the annual planting out now that the risk of frost has passed.
There was some unusually late frost here last week that had us dashing out for several nights to fleece the young potatoes. The first time we’ve ever had to do this, as climate change driven weather extremes continue to build. Continue reading
The arrival of spring once again heralds the start of another year of seed sowing here at The Secret Acre.
As always at this time of the year, I like to remind people of this little favourite video clip that perfectly explains nature!
And for this year, here (below) is a second little clip of our first tray of new 2020 seeds. Continue reading
Thanks to the mid-spring Easter sunshine, it almost feels like we are on track with our planting plans this year.
Already Emma’s seeds in the greenhouse are shooting up.
The New Year barely seems to have got underway, before the occasionally feel of a Spring like day arrives, and the veg growers cycle begins again.
For us at The Secret Acre that usually means the chitting potatoes gets underway, the rotated veg bed plan is drawn up and the new seed order arrives. Continue reading
April was unusually warm and dry, ensuring Spring arrived with a vengeance, underlining the timeless wonder of it all.
At The Secret Acre it proved a busy month recycling, creating new borders, as well as cutting the grass, planting the potatoes, planting extra successional broad beans and onions, and bottling the last of the cider. Continue reading
Today is officially the first day of spring, if you’re a northern hemisphere type of person that is.
Of course the early signs of spring have been popping up everywhere already, but today the sun has done its stuff, at 10.28am to be precise if you were in the UK. Continue reading
The Secret Acre 