My March gardening day

Yesterday, with sunny weather forecast, I decided to take the day off to garden.

It was actually cold and grey, but my order of trees had arrived, so I had to clean the pots and transplant my new lemon, olive and lime trees. In my collection of old Italian favourites, which started last year with the fig tree, only the persimmon is now missing, which I am going to order shortly - I will try and grow it in a pot for the first few years, as I do not have the space in my garden right now. I love kaki fruit, and you need only one plant as the fruit is parthenocarpic (it grows without fertilisation of the flower). Oh, and uva fragola, what we call "American" grapes whose correct English name is actually Concord and that its Latin name is Vitis lambrusca - you can suck or squeeze the grapes out of their skins: delicious... But that will have to wait, although I see that Seeds of Italy sell that too and I am sooo tempted...

Anyway, then I went to the allotment and planted the Jerusalem artichokes, besides clearing another of the soft fruits bed. There's much digging and clearing still to be done, and one of my magazine suggests the clearing work should be completed by the end of the month.

As a bonus for going out in the miserable weather, I found a very strange twisting leaf, apparently from a bulb, growing on the path among all sorts of rubble. I pulled it out and transplanted it in a place where it will not be trodden upon: the bulb is orange, starts oval but grows to a funny irregular shape and is all wrinkly, never seen before. Hope it's not a weed. Certainly it looks stunning.

And at home I found an envelope with my Garden Organic experiments waiting for me. I will grow lettuce within protection of an anti-slug cardboard barrier, a spinach tree and look out for butterflies on flowers.

Now let me go and finish my flower and seeds summaries for the horticulture assignment.