Tea or Coffee?

Busy days are here, things are finally start to peep through the soil. We've had some fun with mice in the greenhouse stealing all of my seed from runner beans to habanero, we think the cats have finally scared them off but on the lookout and everything is doubly protected now.

After watching 'How to Grow Your Own Drugs' I was again inspired to try my hand at something a bit different and ordered some tea and coffee seeds from the interweb.

The tea seeds needed soaking for 24 hours first, I kept them in a muslin to weigh them down.

Or they float a lot. This apparently means the seeds aren't as viable as they could be, but that's the interweb for you.

Plant each seed with the eye horizontal

Cover with an inch of compost

The coffee seeds were also soaked for 24 hours.

So I could remove the casing from the seed to enable it to grow.

Then planted into smaller pots but at the same depth as the tea.

These were then placed in warmth on my bedroom windowsill as it's a pretty stable temp up there. They can take several months to germinate so these are an infuriating project for an impatient gardener like me ;)

We took a break to make some more mead. This batch is an all honey recipe and is absolutely divine.

The vinometer says this one is around 8.5%. I'll do a proper detailed post on this at some point soon.

Hops are going crazy again. Such quick growth makes up for slowmoes like the tea and coffee ;)

My wisteria has lots of lovely green growth popping up

Blueberries look like they're going to do well this year.

My whitecurrant is really kicking off. I need to make sure we have plenty of netting for this year!

My little morello cherry looks very busy :)

Leaves uncurling on my apple tree

New shoots coming through on the Loganberry

Flowering comfrey

The Camellia in the back garden, the blooms are over so quickly.

Beautiful while they're here though.

Abi taking a break on a new little seat for potting on, it was a telephone table and chair that we were gifted from freecycle.

The Camellia in the front garden seems to have longer lasting blooms

My magnolia in full glory

The top of this needs trimming this year

The olive tree in it's new place this year, surrounded by the Goji bushes.

The herb bed showing lots of signs of life

Planting the leftover potatoes into tubs.

Phew, busy busy busy :)