I have a jungle!

Well, here we are, another two weeks gone and goodness, what have we here! The sun room's resembling a jungle!



Three of the four beans in this pot have reached the top of the canes, the fourth one was a late addition, planted a couple of weeks ago and is about half way up.





The tomatoes are now 3' high and all have two or three trusses on, one truss even has flowers. We were putting them out in the daytime to harden off and bringing them in at night but last week, despite the most glorious sunshine, the wind was very cold and it affected some of the leaves so we're keeping them inside for now.


The three red pepper plants on the window sill have now been repotted into their final large pots and are looking very happy. In front of them, on the little bench (we bought two shoe racks from Asda, £5 each, perfect for putting the trays on!) there are, in the black tray, two cherry tomato seedlings I've grown waiting to go into their permanent pots, the poppy seedlings we've kept inside for now (the ones we planted out are doing OK), plus five leek seedlings I've grown (one didn't make it) waiting to be potted on. To the right, on the small green trays, are the African marigolds I've grown from seed, very healthy but again got a bit of "wind burn" when we tried to harden them off last week. They're fine and we'll plant them out in the next week or two. In front of those, in the two black trays, are the petunia, verbena and nepeta plug plants we bought from the garden centre last week. They're waiting to go outside into their pots but again it's still a little early. We also have some begonia and trailing lobelia bought yesterday ready to go out into tubs.

There's plenty going on outside. The primroses have now finished flowering and are obviously very happy from the amount of fresh new leaf growth.



My little azalea (Mother's Day present last year) is in full bloom and looking gorgeous!




The two hostas have come on a bundle in a fortnight:

It's quite surprising that they're almost at the same stage as normally the one in the top photo is quite a bit later than the other.




The rhubarb's doing well but as Paul split the crowns this year we can only pull two or three sticks, we must wait until next year before we can harvest it properly - that's really sad as Paul was looking forward to rhubarb crumble!


The paeony's doing well, as is the tall lobelia behind, and the bluebells in the pot started to flower a few days ago.




Miraculously the arum lily seems to be recovering well from the frost damage, not sure if it will give us such a good show as last year but at least it's still alive! Lesson learned - protect from frost if we have another winter as bad as this one.

You can just about make out the two red sprout seedlings I planted out this week. Apparently they prefer a shady spot and in front of the fence is the shadiest place in the garden.


The potatoes have been working hard and I've had to earth them up every few days. Today I earthed them up for the last time and as the soil's at the top of the pot I can now leave them to just grow.


Parsnips and carrots in these two tubs. The tub in the top picture had seeds directly sown into it a couple of weeks ago. The tub in the second picture has parsnip seedlings grown on in the sun room and carrot seeds planted directly this week.


I managed to catch Paul while he was clearing out the fence planters, he's taken out the daffodil bulbs and we can get them ready for summer planting. I'm not good at balancing on the little wall to reach the planters, it was hard enough for him!