A successful foray to the Garden Centre

I walked into a bargain at the local Garden Centre this morning. On Monday I looked at some organic poultry manure pellets for £6.99 a tub, and decide they were a bit dear...then at Busy Bees this morning I saw the same stuff at "buy one for £7.49 get an extra one for 1p"! So I got two!

Moving through the shop I also saw some grape vines for £9.99 each. DH has always fancied having a vineyard, so I got him two! LOL I have no idea where we will put them; preferably somewhere where Freddie can't cock his leg all over them, so most likely at the back of the Kitchen Garden.

One is "Muscat de Something or Other" (white), the other is "Boskoops Glory" (a dark coloured grape). I shall be googling later for some advice.

DH mowed the back lawn today, so the asparagus bed is now mulched.

I finger weeded two more beds in the back garden this afternoon.

And I ordered a load of manure for the plot. It will be coming Sunday afternoon....so guess what I'll be doing Sunday afternoon....shovelling! It looks like I'll be having more than the 1/3 of the load I'd been planning. Someone else wants some manure, but not a whole load....so I'll have half that load, and a 1/3 of the other....so almost a whole load for my plot. It will carry on the good work started last year.

Last night I was at a loss as to what to read to send me to sleep, so I found my copy of "The 3000 Mile Garden" to read again. This was an Anniversary present from DH about 15 years ago. It is time I read it again. If anyone hasn't read it, it is a book of letters between Roger Phillips and Leslie Land (a lady gardener in Upstate New York, US) comparing notes about the vast differences in gardening techniques and the problems faced in each of their gardens. The UK writer was the chief gardener for one of the London gardens...Eccleston Square. His descriptions of that are wonderful. The NY Garden is the total opposite. Covered in snow for months on end, then baked in the sun for a few months. A good read. (It is where I first read about Brandywine tomatoes.)