Garden at the beginning of April 2012

OK, I'm a teensy weensy bit late with Garden at the Beginning of April - it's 21st today! Oops. We had some friends over to see the garden last week, which meant I got less time to be online doing blogging things.

Things are brightening up a bit - the Aubrieta is flowering along the edge of the raised bed and more bulbs are in evidence.

 I'm very impressed with the purple variegated tulips I planted last year - they're called Blueberry Ripple.

And this is a Dicentra I got on special offer at Homebase - it soon made itself at home and started flowering like mad. I love the shape of the flowers.

I've made some little paper pots out of newspaper to plant seeds in - the idea is that they biodegrade when you plant them out in the ground so the roots aren't disturbed by transplantation. They're very easy to make.

 And the apple trees are full of blossom! I keep a record of what I do in the garden each weekend and looking back, a year ago it was 25°C - bit of a contrast with today, which was 11°C! I am also amused by the torrential downpours we've been having ever since the hosepipe ban started. The garden is looking very happy with it. I was looking less happy when I got soaked on the way to the station one morning.

I've been exploring some gardening resources online. I already used the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) website  - has some useful tips, but I'm not a member so there's a limit to what I can access. I've also joined the Gardeners' World website, which has a forum a bit like Ravelry and videos of how to do things (you have to watch adverts too). Incidentally, the OH has been buying me Gardeners' World magazine for a year now and it is SO MUCH better value than any of the British knitting magazines - for a start it costs less, and it actually has quite a bit of content, articles, how to do things.
And there is always just googling for things. I found this blog post helpful, good pictures of how to prick out Amaranthus seedlings as I wasn't sure if mine were big enough. How on earth did anyone learn to garden and/or knit before the internet?!