I will be honest – it has been a long time since I did a Six on Saturday post. I used to do them weekly, but admittedly fell out of the habit and it has actually been almost two years since my last one way back in June 2019 (seems a lifetime ago). However, I do tend to have a lot of things going on across work and the allotment and so on, so I thought it might be time to dip my toe back into the water. And the Six on Saturday presents a great opportunity to give short updates as to what has been going on. Lets get cracking…..

1. I lead on propagation at my work and that means I have to sow a lot of seeds and grow a lot of plants. That means flowers for the formal gardens and vegetables for the walled garden. The total is in the thousands. It is always a satisfying sight to see those seedlings poking their heads into view. Here are some recently-sown cabbage and kale seedlings.

2. Unfortunately the allotment spent a fair bit of time underwater over the last few months. You can read about that in another blog post here. It meant that the ground only dried out to the point you can set foot on it recently. And now I am left with a lot of weeds to get through in order to get those beds into shape. It will be a slow process but a challenge I am willing to face – I have started the clearing and I’ll just keep telling myself it’ll be worth it in the end.

3. It is great to see a lot of colour in our front garden at home. We have primulas and crocuses that are looking fantastic and, after a drab winter, it invigorates the spirit to see such bright specimens bringing the feeling of Spring to the fore.

4. There is a lot of parkland around my work, a good few hundred acres. One main task this week was to repair the wooden guards around the avenue of lime trees stretching away from the property. The trees are about 10-12 years old and the guards get damaged by the weather and also the cows or sheep that reside regularly in the field. It was a lot of guards to check, a lot of wood to remove and replace, but at times the weather was sunny (although not when the picture was taken) and it was nice to be out in the parkland.

5. I sow the broad beans at work in Spring and they, along with the onions, are one of the first things sown each year. Thankfully they have grown well and are looking promising, waiting for the time to come when they are planted out in the walled garden. They are always the first thing planted too each year actually. These are types ‘Ratio’ and ‘Super Aquadulce’. The latter aren’t for Hanbury Hall, they are for our sister property Rosedene – a 19th century Chartist cottage which has a small orchard and walled garden.

6: I have mentioned propagation a few times on this page, so thought I would end it with a picture of what is currently on my heated bench. The vast majority of this was all sown this week, with the plug trays growing around 240 plants (I think one has a bit larger cells and is more around the 140 plants mark) and lots of seed trays with various flowers and vegetables. It was a big sowing week this week, in fact for the quantity of plants required from this sowing it is the largest of the season.