A 'Fine Tilth'

The sun is warming the soil and after months of inactivity there are loads of things to get done in the garden and seeds to be planted. Somehow it always catches me unprepared but this year I have achieved that elusive ‘fine tilth’ that the gardening books and seed packets exhort us to create. The problem with gardening on the clay soils of East Anglia is that the soil is often either squidgy mud that sticks to your boots or is baked into lumps and impossible to turn into a tilth of any sort! So how did those old Norfolk ‘bors’ always achieve a fine tilth when sowing their immaculate rows of vegetables?

I guess that growing their own food was an economic necessity so they would have made gardening a number one priority and been out there digging when the conditions were right – unlike me who fits my gardening in around other activities and just hopes to hit lucky when it is time to sow seeds.

Well it worked this time but of course not everything is perfect in the garden – can we have some rain please?

The picture above is a Marsh Marigold in the pond that is the courting ground for many frogs and toads at present - I love the frog chorus late at night!

Buds appearing on my prized Morello Cherry - how many pies this year?

Cucumber seedlings bursting forth - and finally the 'fine tilth' - with onion sets protected from the birds. The picture at the top is of a peach in my greenhouse.