Greenhouse Year - April 2012

I've been inspired to make a contribution to a meme on the Patient Gardener's blog monitoring monthly progress in the greenhouse.  I'm a bit late with my submission as it's usually completed on 20th of the month, but here goes...

Due to the time of year and the rainy weather I've been spending a lot of time under glass (or in my case polycarbonate) over the past few weeks. 

Following a good day or two of tidying up the remnants of last year's tomato, chilli and cucumber plants I put together a potting bench that I actually purchased in 2010.  It's taken me all this time to assemble the bench due to the time taken to put togther the greenhouse...the saga starts here.

Anyway, after the great cleanup I set about planting seeds with gusto and now have a number of small plants growing on in the greenhouse including: cauliflower, All the Year Round; runner bean, Butler; kohl rabi; artichoke, Green Globe; tomatoes, Moneymaker, Yellow Stuffer, Principe Borghese; lettuce, Little Gem; aubergine...the list goes on.

baby peas

and broad beans

A few weeks ago I planted pea and broad bean seeds in modules and after a few days hardening off planted these little plantlets in the kitchen garden beds last Sunday.  They have so far had to weather sunshine, light and heavy rain showers and halestorms!  However they seem to be standing up well and I had to get them out of the greenhouse as I was running out of room.

Talking about lack of space, yesterday I transplanted forty-five leek seedings from small modules to root trainers.  These take up much more room than the modules so where to put them?  I don't have a coldframe yet (it's on the Handyman's construction list) but there was a bit of room under a tent cloche where I've been nurturing early carrots in one of the raised beds.  So the containers of leeks in root trainers are nestling between the rows of baby carrots until the weather gets a bit more predictable, then I'll lift them out and stand them between the back of the greenhouse and the oil tank until the time comes to plant them in one of the raised beds.

So not content with all the seedling filling the greenhouse and the plethora of seeds yet to be planted; borlotto beans, winter squash, more runner beans; I purchased eight sweetcorn plants from the local plant nursery yesterday.  They need to stay in the greenhouse for a couple of weeks before planting out in May unless...if space really is a problem I can plant them out covered with bottle cloches for a little protection.  I'm going to interplant the sweetcorn with the Little Gem lettuces - an experiment for me.

Every year at this time I think I should take a couple of weeks holiday from work as there is so much to do and enjoy doing, but then I'm not sure two weeks would be enough!