Our Polytunnel and Garden in April

This year I would like to try a monthly snapshot of our Polytunnel and Outside Garden and how it changes every month.

During the winter the Polytunnel was empty and I really missed having fresh greens to pick every day. I started growing a few seeds in February and March and finally the first garden beds are filling up with life again.

In the Polytunnel

lettuce and broad bean plants growing in polytunnel bed

This is my fullest garden bed so far. I love to have so much lettuce again and try to pick a handful of leaves for my lunch every day. In between the lettuce I have a few broad bean plants with lots of flowers. There are lots of bumble bees visiting trying to squeeze themselves into the tight flowers.

Behind the beans there are more lettuce plants, a few young plants of rainbow chard and four strong pea plants climbing up some sticks. They should be getting flowers soon too.

Here is another picture of my mixed lettuce. Aren’t they just so lush and fresh looking?!

different types of lettuce growing in a bed

I also have some Kohlrabi, Beetroot and French Climbing Beans growing in another bed but I didn’t take a picture because they don’t look so impressive yet.

These are my young cherry tomato plants. I grew them from seed inside the house but they are nearly ready to be planted out into the Polytunnel. I’m currently preparing the beds for them. These are yellow cherry tomatoes but I might get some red ones from the garden center soon. My last courgette seeds failed so I’m going to cheat and buy some plants from the garden center too. Soon.

The Outside Garden

I’m trying to grow peas in front of this fence and our boys just raked lots of summer flower seeds into the soil next to the peas, so hopefully they will take off and turn this into a colourful garden patch.

Behind the fence are our rhubarb plants and lots of weeds. But I love rhubarb. We just planted it there a few years ago and it has been coming back year after year without fail. I’ve been eating rhubarb for over a month now. I’m glad to say that I finally have a good few rhubarb recipes that most of us like. An easy rhubarb cake and a tasty oat bake which can be a healthy dessert or a nutritious breakfast.

I also planted a few broad beans, beetroot and chard but they are still tiny.

In the background you can see some black currant bushes which I propagated from our other currant bushed, which are…

In the Orchard

The Orchard is full of apple trees that don’t produce a single apple and full of fruit bushes (black and red currants, gooseberries, blueberries and raspberries) which mostly feed the local birds. But we want to focus on our fruit a bit more this year and try to get a crop.

That might prove difficult as our chickens also live in the orchard but we’ll see.

spring garden with cherry tree and gorse bush

At least we have plenty of cherry blossoms on the tree we planted for our daughter many years ago (and which also gave this blog its name).

So these are some parts of our garden in mid spring. Come and join me for another polytunnel and garden tour at the end of May. To finish off my spring garden post here is a picture of our rooster Pompus Pomponello. He is still very young (only hatched last July) but since our old rooster got taken by the fox a few weeks ago he is now the only rooster left. I’m not sure if he is ready for his new responsibilities. Haha.