The plan this week was to tidy up on my little patio area and get some more seeds sown, both vegetables and flowers. This is going to have to change I think!

There have been builders at our apartment complex since January, doing work on the outside of the whole building. They have recently started doing the work they need to do on our section of the building and are starting to make more of a mess on the patio than there was already! I can’t really moan I don’t think as we knew it would be happening around now.

This means that I have decided to not bother sowing any more seeds of any kind until the builders have done their work. As I don’t want all this builders detritus in my pots where I’m trying to grow food, especially where the plants will likely get damaged anyway, there isn’t any point trying.

Instead, I will remove all the pots I’ve used to grow veg/flowers from the patio area, remove all the old growing media from them and give them a really good wash. With the pots that have my mandarin and avocado trees in them, they will have to stay where they are. They aren’t productive in terms of food anyway. They are also still green and growing so that will have to do until August when the builders have finished whatever it is they are doing!

Before the pots come out again from August, the patio can get a proper clean and a power wash too and, by then, I will have a good plan of how I’m going to tackle my summer growing. I’ll also have some potting on to do-including several cacti and succulents, but that is a late winter job to do, not an early winter one.

While I’ve been given an enforced winter off from gardening, I’m hoping that I’ll have more enthusiasm again and actually get a good plan going, rather than just making it up as I go along!

Come on August I say as the builders are bloody noisy and annoying!