Bees are Buzzing!

There can be no doubt now that Spring has arrived in London! Seeds are popping up in the greenhouse and green things are growing at a rate of knots. I was so pleased to see a large number of honey bees on the blossom on my Victoria plum tree. The tree is absolutely smothered in blossom this year, let's hope that it doesn't all get frosted off like it did last year. I was delighted just to watch all these bees flying from one blossom to another. There are also a number of butterflies around too. I have seen more butterflies in the last 2 weeks than I saw the whole of last Summer.
The new potato in my greenhouse is putting on a growth spurt at the moment too. This one is International Kidney (Jersey Royal) saved from last year. I haven't had to buy any seed potato this year, I am going to see if my own saved tubers work just as well. This week I managed to sow all my potatoes in the open, International Kidney and Sarpo Axona. The latter is a main crop potato which is resistant to blight. We had such an awful Summer last year and I was hit badly by blight on the allotment.
The tomato plants are just romping away too. The greenhouse gets up to a fair temperature in these warm Spring days, I have taken the plants outside for a while to start hardening them off. Some have done much better than others. Star performers have to be Ildi and Great Wall of China. Unfortunately the Chocolate Cherry and Black Cherry tomatoes have been poor to germinate and still only small plants. Let's give them time and encouragement.
I build a tall wigwam of bamboo poles today, and planted out my Purple Podded Peas. You can see here that although they were started out in loo rolls as root trainers, the roots are well developed way below them. I have put loads of compost into the soil and they will be well away now.
I dug a big hole and filled it with loads of compost. Now all I need do is keep the slugs and the pigeons away!