It was a beautiful sunny day yesterday, one of those cold, wintry, low sun, blue sky, kind of days. Sadly the forecast for the weekend is more gloomy, but mostly dry, so adequate gardening weather ahead. Good job, I have lots to do. Anyhow, time for Six on Saturday. Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday – could be anything! A flower, a plant, a shoot, an emerging bulb, a tool, a job to do, anything at all. Join in!

Here are my Six…

1. Tomato seedlings. I know I know, it is very early to have sown tomato seeds. I just sowed a handful of Sungold seeds, a little experiment. I’ll have to keep the resulting seedlings and plants in the heated bench as it’s too cold at night otherwise. My aim is to get some very early fruit, in June maybe, well ahead of any possibility of getting caught by late blight – I lost my entire crop of tomatos last year, bar 1 cherry tomato. I’ll sow the rest of my tomato seeds soon, possibly this weekend if I am unable to resist.

2. Compost thermometer. This was a Christmas present, I’ve only just got round to trying it out. This reading is from the centre of the new heap I made last weekend using the spent hops I acquired, along with a lot of paper and card. It’s warming up nicely, nearly 30°c when the outside temperature was 6 or 7°c. It should get a lot warmer, well over 50 degrees, as the bacterial process gets going.

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3. Clean plant labels. I get through a lot of these little plastic plant labels. I can usually just write over what was there before once or twice but there’s a limit. I confess I might previously have just binned them and bought nice shiny new ones. Feeling more aware of my plastic use these days, I thought I would try cleaning them. I used a steel pan cleaner, some bleach spray and a bit of elbow grease. It might have been faster to dunk them in meths but I didn’t have any of that to hand. This worked well enough and was at least a warm task.

4. Mixed seeds from HPS. I have squealed about my seed order arriving separately, but thought it worth taking a closer look at these ones. When ordering seeds from the HPS scheme you have the option of adding a free packet of mixed seeds to the order. These are seeds that escaped from their packets at some point. I have no idea what it contains. I have sowed some already, just jumbled up as they came, but have since thought it would be good to separate varieties where possible, in case of differing germination rates.

5. Your basic pansy. Again. Well, why not?

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6. Tulips in a planter. I have bulbs popping up all over the place at the moment, giving me some early clues as to the potential effect of the 1000 or so I now have, between planters, pots and main garden. It will be a couple of months probably before I see any tulip flowers. Looking forward to it immensely.

That’s my Six, what are yours? I bet you can easily find six things to share, and we’d all love a nose! Simple to do, just write your post, add a comment below with a link to your post, and maybe add a link to this blog in yours too. For more details you can see the brief participants guide.

Have a great weekend, and don’t forget to check back in during the day as more links get added by our merry band.

I’ll be back next week with another Six on Saturday.