Spring cleaning and planting

As we had such a glorious weekend last week I decided that it was time to start my gardening spring cleaning. My garden is very tiny and most of my plants are grown in pots. That means that come the spring it is time to start thinking about cleaning them.

I am not sure if I am just a little obsessive but I like to give them a good scrub with warm soapy water. Out came the bucket and scrubbing brush and I set to with a few of the pots. And yes I even clean the crocks I use as drainage!

It was good to see them drying in the wonderful sunshine on the path.

This year I have decided to try my hand at growing ranunculus and arum lilies. I have bought both of them as young plants in the past and thought that they would be interesting to try to grow myself. The Internet is so useful and I was able to look up how deep to plant them. I also needed to know what way up to plant the ranunculus. They are very odd little bulbs (they are actually a type of rhizome).

They are like little bunches of bananas and I found out that they needed to be planted with the "bananas" facing down. The lilies were easier as they have "eyes" where they shoot from so obviously these face up.

I was delighted after a few hours to have 2 pots of lilies and 4 pots of ranunculus all potted up. I then put them amongst the sunny south facing border I have and let them settle in. In the background and at the front you can also see my hostas beginning to shoot up. Also the foxgloves are springing to life.

You may also be interested to see how my chilies are doing.

Here they are 2 weeks ago

And here they are at the weekend..I have potted on some of the bigger plants and made some "cloches" out of empty soft drink bottles as they do need to be kept warm until the weather is much hotter here.

So my spring cleaning produced some newly potted bulbs and my planted chili seeds are already decent sized little plants!

Tonight is "The" engagement party and I am just about to start assembling the cake....I shall be back next week to show you how it turned out.
Just to give you a little sneak peak.......

 Have a wonderful weekend enjoying yourselves,

Bye for now,

Jane x