A New year begins- 2009 on the allotment

Today was my first visit this year to the lottie. I had to go and see if the garlic and sweet-peas were ok in the unheated greenhouse. I hadn't watered them for well over a week and it would be a shame to lose them after all the attention I had previously given them. I am pleased to say that although they were a bit dried out they were absolutely fine and growing like crazy even in this freezing weather. I only hope I haven't done them any harm by using the very cold water ( it had ice in the bottle !) that was in the greenhouse, I think they are quite tough by now though.

This is the garlic grown in the ground it's hardly grown, but it's possibly going to be bigger bulbs as the cold apparently is good for them, and the other photo is the ones I planted in the greenhouse.

The garlic in the ground hasn't done half as well as the one's I planted in the greenhouse I am experimenting to see just how well the end growing results will be.

If the sweet-peas carry on growing so well I shall have flowers to pick earlier than I did last year. This is also an experiment as I grew them in the

spring last year, these were planted in the autumn.

These little watering tops are wonderful

I can recommend these little watering tops, if you haven't already got some treat yourself as they are reasonably cheap, fit onto a normal plastic "spring water" bottle and are so good for watering in the greenhouse or home. They don't drown the seedlings and are better than a clumsy watering can. Most garden centres have them, if not they can be ordered from the "Harrods" garden catalogue but that will be more expensive as they charge postage. Link below :

http://www.harrodhorticultural.com/HarrodSite/pages/home/default.asp

and here is a photo: