Not much to report on lately, so here are a few pictures from our early 2018 Gardening Bore efforts.
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| Reliable rhubarb. |
By the way, isn’t rhubarb just the best word? Try bellowing it when someone says something you disagree with. ‘RHUBARB!’ It will put them right off their stride. As well as being a useful word, it’s also the easiest thing we grow in the veg garden. Up it pops every spring, regardless of what mayhem the moles have been wreaking around it. Good old rhubarb.
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| Tomato seedlings toughening up outside. |
As it’s quite warm at the moment, our tomato seedlings are starting to adjust to life outside (albeit with a plastic covering at night). We’re going to try and be restrained this year and not grow 70 gazillion plants. But then, we say that every year…
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| Wonky asparagus. Because, apparently, everything in our garden has to be wonky. |
We’ve been watching the asparagus bed with baited breath and I think tomorrow we’ll be picking our first portion. Still smug about it.
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| Chives lining the edge of the salad bed. |
We do meet some funny people out here. An English guy once asked me and Rob if we’d ‘heard of chives’, like he was the only person in the world who knew about them. Three years later we still repeat it whenever we pass our chives in the garden. ‘Hey Rob, have you heard of chives?’ I’ll say. ‘Er, yes, I have,’ he’ll reply.
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| Perennials starting to come through. |
The flower borders are coming up nicely. Although we have so much weeding to do here it makes me want to hide under the duvet.
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| Gladioli sprouting in water. |
We’re forcing our 70 (no, honestly) gladioli bulbs in water this year and it seems to be working. Saves forcing them in mountains of compost, which is great.
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| We’re going to enjoy these. We’ve waited long enough. |
Finally, and I’m really excited about this, our little tiny twig of a lemon tree that we bought for 10 leva three years ago is about to offer up its very first lemons. That’s our gin and tonics sorted for a while!
A lemon tree, my dear Watson! I am very impressed by the citrus surplus that you are about to have, Claire. Lemons usually cost a fortune in Bulgaria. Did you bring your lemon tree into the house during the winter? Or did it somehow survive in the wonky polytunnel?
What about the asparagus? Does it really take FOUR years before they start producing a good crop of spears? Any special asparagus tips? (My apologies – no pun intended!)
We are STILL in China, but I have now had my last-ever parents' meeting and it is only 67 days until I finish my teaching career and retire from the classroom. We fly out from Hong Kong on the 18th June and finally, finally arrive in Bulgaria on the 19th. Let's hope our house in Kalotina and our apartment in VT are still there!
Hi Simon, yes, we brought the lemon tree into the house for the winter. It's getting big now, so it's a precarious move, but it won't survive outside.
And, yes, it really did take us four years to go from sowing asparagus seeds to harvesting lots of spears (before that, we harvested the odd spear but were wary of exhausting the young plants). Just be patient with it. Once they're established, it's one of the easiest crops in the garden and we'll probably be reaping the rewards for around 20 years. Worth the wait if you ask me.
Best of luck for your return to Bulgaria. Not long now!