Six on Saturday 21-03-2020

With all the chaos out there, there was a real danger that the official start of Spring would pass unnoticed. but notice it I did, and so should you.  Spring has sprung!  The garden will make leaps forward, the slow to emerge shoots will accelerate as the soil warms up and light levels improve.  It’s my favourite time of year in the garden, apart from all the other favourites.  It’s time for a springtime Six on Saturday.  Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday.  Could be anything – a flower, a pest, a weed, a project, a favourite tool, anything at all. Join in!

Here are my Six for this week.

1 – Tulip ‘poco loco’.  I think that translates roughtly as “a little bit crazy”, which it certainly is right now.  These are my first “out” tulips. I have other buds, but these are the first to bask in the sunshine.

2 – Pallet Buster.  I’ve wanted one of these for a while. A particularly difficult to dismember pallet was the trigger last weekend – I just couldn’t be bothered to continue the struggle. I gave this gadget it a quick spin last night, it really does make quick work of it.  The prongs go under the slat you want to remove, either side of the cross-member, then good old leverage is all that’s required.   The nails ease out, the wood is undamaged, there is very little effing & jeffing.  £25 well spent.

3 – Tropaeolum tuberosum ‘Ken Aslet’.  You may recall that a few months back I was putting these to bed for the winter after being sent them by Brigitte off that Twitter.  I potted them up a couple of weeks ago and was beginning to fear my winter storage regime had killed them off. But no! I spotted a new shoot.  Ken here is a climber, should get to 2-2.5m and flower from early summer on.

4 – Onions, lots of onions.  I bought a load of sets back in October, having got annoyed with serial failures trying to grow from seed.  They have been in modules in the greenhouse over the winter, but now it’s time for them to make room.  I planted them 9 to a square, and they take up almost a whole raised bed.  I expect some will be duds, but hopefully I will have a plentiful supply of onions by summer time.

5 – The name’s Weed. Bindweed.  It doesn’t matter how successful I think I’ve been at digging it up, there is always more the following year.   I will spend time this weekend attacking it with my weapon of choice, the hand fork.

6 – Eleagnus ‘Quicksilver’.  This started life as a cutting, taken 3 or 4 years ago.  It didn’t do a lot for the first couple of years, but now it is a couple of feet high, three maybe. It can get quite large, but responds well to a hard prune, allegedly.   I’ll let it grow for this year and see what happens.

Those are my Six, what are yours?  If you’d like to join in you can publish your Six post and pop a link to it in the comments below. If you also mention my blog in yours that would be super duper. For more details you can read the brief participant guide.

I hope you can get out in the garden, the weather looks set fair here and I have pallets to dismantle!

Stay safe.

I’ll be back next weekend for another #SixOnSaturday.