This time last year my garden had only a hint of colour from a few daffodils and bluebells. This year its a completely different story thanks to my autumn plug plants from Gardening Direct. Each day I get so excited when I go out into the garden, there are flowers which are getting bigger and better and others where new colours are emerging. And the flower that I am really waiting to show it self is almost there.

Last Autumn I planted 5 Ice Cream Tulips (pictured on the left) from Gardening Direct into one of my pots and I have been patiently waiting ever since. Tulips are my all time favorite flower and when combined with a name like Ice Cream it just makes me smile. We are now so close to seeing whether or not this flower leaves up to its name, but judging on what it looks like at the moment I don’t think that it will disappoint.

Not only have I learnt heaps and bounds this past year but my confidence and love for gardening has increased ten fold. I am not an expert gardener by any stretch of the imagination but the difference is that I will certainly have a go at trying new things. The seeds I saved from last years sunflowers were planted 10 days ago and have germinated and are already in need of being repotted – I had a little help from my daughter with the planting so there are quite a few pots with 6 or 7 shoots in. Before starting this blog and getting involved in gardening, would I have known you could save your sunflower seeds for planting the following year? If I had I would have been doing it already!

Theses pictures were taken from my garden yesterday and from left to right are; Tulip Ice Cream, Tulip Rembrandt Mix, my first strawberry flower (planted last year), newly planted cauliflower plug plant (with hyacinth city of harlem and pansy spring dawn in the pot behind).

It’s been a busy week of planting, planting and more planting and I now have a very full and happy greenhouse.

I am a bit of a lawn lover and did the first cut last week, I absolutely love the sound around the neighbourhood of all the mowers coming out of their winter storage for the first time and doing the first cut. It is one of those things, along with the smell of the first bar-be-que that really makes me feel summer is not too far away.

In an ideal world I would prefer to have more lawn than beds as there is nothing nicer than watching the kids playing in the garden kicking a football around. So I quite surprised myself last week when I started digging a small vegetable patch near to the fence.

Since starting this blog a year ago as a novice gardener, my enthusiasm for gardening has been transformed to the point that I am now digging up my precious lawn in the name of vegetables. But where else would I be able to home my runner beans, beetroot and salad onions?

I’m feeling a lot more organised in the garden after the beautiful sunny weekend we have just had. My growhouse is getting fuller by the day with the plug plants that keep arriving. Yesterday saw the arrival of mixed lettuce leaves and lettuce little gems from the all year round vegetable collection, 40 plug plants are now eagerly sat in the kitchen waiting to be re-homed.  

Although time consuming, I am so far very happy with the newspaper pots that I have been making, they certainly make it easier for me to fit more plants into the grow house as they are smaller than the plastic pots I used last year.  

After last years recommendation from the gardener in the west with planting sweetcorn into empty toilet rolls I have made some tall newspaper pots and planted some sweetcorn seeds. For the past two years I have been planting my sweetcorn in an old metal dustbin which worked really well in the first year, especially when I added my courgette plants to the bin too. Last year unfortunately though, my sweetcorn produced nothing and the handful of courgettes I got was barely enough to cover more than a few meals. Looking back I think this was mainly due to a lack of nutrients in the compost as naively I used the same compost from the previous year and added nothing to it – I have learnt so much through these sorts of failings that despite the zero crop of last year the lessons learned may hopefully help towards achieving a good crop for this year’s harvest. I have some farmyard manure to add to the soil this year which I am hoping will replenish the nutrients sufficiently.

My herb collection that I got from Gardening Direct last year was fantastic and regularly used. This year I am going to have a go at growing from seed some basil, coriander, chives and parsley to see if I have as much success. I have taken note of the hints on how to grow herbs from the website (see garden advice – how to grow) and will be sowing the seeds in a soil based compost such as John Innes no 3. I’ll let you know how I get on!

I have finally got out into the garden and to say that I was feeling a little bit daunted would be an understatement.

Having been away for the Easter break I cannot believe how much the grass appears to have grown in my absence. The violas and pansies have also suddenly come into their own. It seems that overnight my drab garden has regained its colour once again.

 The reason I am suddenly feeling a bit daunted is that April is here and there just seems so much to do. Most of the plug plants I got last week have been planted into their newspaper pots, however I still need to plant the potatoes and sow some sweetcorn.

 I am going to have another go at tomatoes this year despite last years unripe crop and I also need to start sowing the sunflower seeds that I collected from last years flowers.

 So all in all a busy few days are ahead, lucky for me I hear the weather is going to be kind.

 As I write this, 120 Lobelia Fountain Mix have just turned up in the post!