The vegetable garden in early spring

Humming with happiness. I do so love a neat vegetable garden.  Mainly because it just doesn’t last.

My paths are perfect, the red pots (thank you Chris) are out of their winter bubble wrap and looking rather fetching.

I have mulch in all the right places.  And a stack of bags of new mulch poised to be added to the beds when the crops go in.

The crops are still in the potting shed of course. It is only mid April. And in fact I spent the day ducking some rather playful hail showers.

I managed to get as far as placing a tray of broad beans and peas on the paths near where I want to plant them.

But I never managed to get them in.

Instead I had all sorts of distractions in the form of propagations in the potting shed.

I’ve been gripped by the notion that I need lots and lots of new plants for an autumn project.

So I twinkled about cutting nepeta, ballota, rosemary, santolina and sedums and then sprinting into the shed and potting them up.

I’ve save all the thrilling pictures for another day.

Instead here is an action shot of the task I want to do first thing tomorrow.  I need to cut back all this rocket which is flowering like mad all over the potager.

It has been a fun addition to my flower bouquets all last week. And I find it a handy snack every time I beetle past.

But really it needs cutting back. I will probably save one plant so it will do as good a job self seeding all over the garden as it has the last two years.

I do so love plants that do the job for themselves.

And ones that have come through the winter without too much trouble.

These chard are perilously close to bolting, but I have found if I chop the poised but not quite bolting tops I can get at least another month of leaves out of each plant.

And it gives me the perfect menu planning solution. I’m eating tops.