Snow in April! - Walnut Kitchen Garden

Well that was the most extraordinary Easter weather weekend I’ve ever known! Talk about extremes. Hot sunshine, then only the third time I ever remember snow in April!

Good Friday, was a beautiful sunny day, you certainly needed sun screen on. There was a little chill in the air, but good gardening weather for the time of year.

Easter Saturday, it got so hot in the afternoon I resorted to shorts and bare arms. It was so hot in the greenhouse that I had to move my potting tray outside to work.

Easter Sunday, another lovely sunny day quite hot again, but only if you were sheltered from the cool breeze. Back in the greenhouse!

Easter Monday, noticeably much colder. I’d just got togged up (maximum layers) ready to go outside when, a few snowflakes started to fall, followed by a full on snow storm! Fortunately it didn’t last long and with the ground being so warm it just melted away. The sun came out and I spent quite a bit of time outside, but it was jolly cold.

Tuesday morning, as I write this it is white over, freezing and trying to snow again.

I know the weather man said this was a possibility but…. It was so hot a couple of days ago. I don’t know what my garden and the wildlife in it are making of it.

Next doors hedgehog woke up last week and I’m jolly sure he’s wishing he’d slept for another fortnight!

The birds have been collecting nesting material from all around me in the garden, I hope they’ve insulated well!

I found a tiny newt under a board in the building site part of the garden, it was so still I wondered if it had been squashed. I picked it up and carried it up to the pond, it just sat in my hand quite happily. I popped it under some foliage and later when I checked it had gone. Hopefully it won’t eat too many of my tadpoles.

Some of my beetroot seeds had germinated. This morning they’re probably wishing they hadn’t with a layer of snow and hailstones on them.

I pricked out my tomatoes on Saturday and fortunately they seem perfectly happy in the unheated greenhouse.

Pricking out in the sunshine

Pak Choi are incredibly easy to grow and so versatile. I mainly grow them for salad. A month ago I sowed some in a seed tray. If you sow them thinly enough, you can just leave them in there and pick them as baby leaf salad.

I tend to prick them out into individual pots and did so at the weekend (outside).

Most of them I leave in the greenhouse and use as larger salad leaves. Some I plant out into the raised vegetable beds to let them mature into large plants for cooking with.

First of the spring harvest

Despite the weird weather we’ve started to harvest a few crops this week, the first asparagus of the season. The first salad in the form of spinach grown over winter in the greenhouse and the first rhubarb.

A few weeks ago I covered a couple of the rhubarb crowns with chimney pots. Luckily they were left over from renovating our last house and are now perfect rhubarb forcers. At the first sign of buds forming, we pop the pots over and cover with a quarry tile. In no time at all you can see the leaves peeping out of the top.

This is called forcing, it which means you get some rhubarb earlier than the rest. It also leads to beautiful tender, bright pink stems.

We simply stew it in its own juices and have it with honey and yogurt for breakfast. Yummy yummy!

Planting early potatoes

I also planted my seed potatoes. I always grow them in reusable bags, as they are so much easier to harvest.

This is my second year growing ’Arran Pilot’. My mum always talked about her father growing that variety and how delicious they were. Finally last year (before the craziness began) I was walking around the garden centre, I spotted ‘Arran Pilot’ seed potatoes. I was over the moon to be growing the same as my granddad. Mum was right, they are delicious.