2023-05 May Rush

May feels like a mad rush to get plants growing and established before the intense heat in June. We also had the greenhouse to finish.

Greenhouse Preparation

The first task was to put in a drain and pumpout point for the greenhouse so we can better cope with next years spring thaw. Last month the greenhouse had been flooded. I also got to work building the two remaining raised beds from wood, and we filled them.

I started work on a wooden deck for inside the greenhouse, to cover the first third of the greenhouse. We don’t have a potting shed or similar for tools and preparing plants, so the greenhouse is multi-use at the moment.

I hope that as the garden develops there will be less work in May each year as less things need building and adding. My big push this year is to finish all the greenhouse tasks. We also tried out a water-dripper kit to see if we could reduce how much watering we have to do.

The month as a whole is a rush to get all the plant beds ready and to build any new ones. My partner starts all the plants indoors under growlights, and then we moved them to the greenhouse to acclimatise before putting them outside.

A load of manure

We managed to get a manure delivery from a neighbour, which was really great in giving us lots of material to grow with. It had some dung beetle larvae in it which look gigantic.

Other

I had to clear the gravel from our driveway off the farmers field where it had been pushed by the snowplough. In the end the best tool for this was an electric scarifier (garden moss remover for lawns).

There were lots of deer in the field at the start of the month, but I didn’t get to go out much as I was working full time and working in the garden on weekends. It gets a lot more relaxed later in the year.