An easy recipe for a vegetable bed, and the best cherry blossom

My top easy vegetables to sow right now. Plus: we take a look at cherry blossom, and there's a big reveal as the show garden is finally built...and judged

Mar 23, 2024

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As there are lots of images, this may be too long for email - don’t worry, it isn’t an endless read in itself! - so please do have a look at it in your browser/app instead

We’ve just had the Vernal Equinox, the first day of Spring, so a very, very Happy Spring to you. Here’s to some very, very happy garden days:

Prunus x yedoensis in Cambridge University Botanic Gardens. Photo: Howard Rice/GAP Photos

Park your naked bottom on the soil. If it doesn’t feel too cold, then it’s time to sow.

A lot of us will finally have had a glimmer of sun here and there, and I know you’ll be just itching to get outside and do something, after all those rainy indoorsy days of poring over plant catalogues and making plans.

Now is the time. The soil is warm enough in my garden in the southeast of the UK, and more importantly, it’s less soggy than a week ago, so I’ll be able to get into my raised beds at least.

It’s sowing time

- indeed, it feels as if the soil is warm enough. If you’re wondering whether it’s the right time to get those seeds in, you’ll know the right moment when you see tiny little weed seeds through the garden germinating and starting to pop up. There are a couple of other time-tested and trusted ways of seeing if the soil is warm enough: I remember someone testing the warmth of the soil with their bare elbow in the way you’d test a baby’s bathwater.

But even better than that, you could go for the good old farmer’s method of parking your naked bottom on the soil. If it doesn’t feel too cold on your derrière, then it’s time to sow.

So let’s get out there, shall we?

… let’s continue to garden gently, garden kindly, in a way that makes us feel good. Let’s congratulate ourselves on what we’ve learned over the winter hibernation, and let’s get out there and garden, at the speed that works best for you. You might achieve one thing, you might achieve a dozen: whichever it is, you’ll have been outside and been in the light and in with Nature. That’s guaranteed to make you feel better.

Reading your messages on Chat and Notes, it really has become so clear that The Gardening Mind community is a truly wide-ranging one, not just geographically, but also in terms of interest and experience.

We’re made up of readers new to gardens as well as people who have gardened pretty much forever, professionals, amateurs, second-careerers and people who are thinking about dipping a toe or two in. I absolutely love how you’re all so supportive of each other - thank you, and long may it continue.

Here’s a quick guide to some of the things you can find here:

I regularly host Zooms for paid subscribers where I explain to you how to find your way around The Gardening Mind. Here’s next week’s Zoom for your diaries:
‘Finding your way around The Gardening Mind and how to use Substack’ on Tuesday 26th March at 6pm UK time.
Feel free to come and join us for 30 minutes of my showing you around TGM- it’s an excuse for a get-together! The link this meeting is at the end of this post
Over on the Chat, we’re also having a potato Chit-along here - do please come and join in this daft conversation - I’d love to know your opinions on chitting. I’m about to call an end to this season’s chitting chit-chat as I’m going to getting my potatoes in the ground, but do post yours on the Chat whenever you feel like it!
And, don’t forget Sunday’s regular Show Us Your Plots on the Chat . This weekly feature tends to get photos from all over the world of gardens of all types, shapes and sizes. Private gardens, public gardens, community gardens, window boxes and doorsteps. Wherever you are in the world, do show us what your garden is looking like - we’d love to see - and we’re not judgemental! All-comers from everywhere are welcome.

How to Garden is back, and we celebrate as the cherry blossom begins:

This week, for those of you who have joined us on your gardening journey and are here to become more familiar with the basics, I’m sure you’re itching to get outside and do something. So I’m delivering an instant vegetable bed recipe to you. As ever, there’s something for everyone, and just because they’re easy, it doesn’t mean that they should be ignored. As I’ve commented previously, think of the perfect roast chicken or the foolproof pasta with tomato sauce recipe that students are sent off to university with. The simple ones are sometimes the best.
I’ll be showing you which seeds I’ve chosen for my veg beds, and I’m sharing a super-easy veg bed planting recipe with you.
The cherry blossom has come at the same time as a lot of the magnolias, and I’ve put together the next in my seasonal blossom selections to share with you. Look out for #cherryblossomwatch on the Chat, too
Paid subscribers will also be getting some very important show garden news, hot off the press. Not only do we have photos of the finished show garden, but also the all-important medal news. How did we do? Well….. read on to find out more.

And what else will I be doing in my own garden this week? Well, after last week’s magnolia feature, I couldn’t resist placing my own order for one, and then it turned that I couldn’t resist ordering more than one. And so it is that three magnolias have arrived from the Aladdin’s Cave of Magnolias that is Burncoose Nurseries. Now I’ve just got to work out where to put them.

Remember, if you’re new to The Gardening Mind, and you’re wondering where on earth to start with it all and how to find everything, do go and have a poke-around here.

Let’s start by getting back to basics, with this month’s How to Garden.

Previously, you’ve got your head around soil and compost here: You’ve also looked at how to sow seeds, and the essential utensils of a garden toolbox here:

If you’re looking at all of this and thinking you need to plan your garden before any planting, , have a look at the Small Garden Design series - I’d urge you to look at this before leaping into a flowerbed. But if you’ve already got a flowerbed sitting there, here’s a link to two foolproof flowerbed recipes.

Right, let’s get down to business:

Back to avoiding that glut: think about the veg you eat every day, and grow a lot of that. What’s the veg you eat once or twice a week? Grow quite a bit of that. And what do you like every so often? Have a bit of that.

The sun is out; you’ve established, by whichever preferred method, that it’s warm enough to sow. You’ll have somewhere to plant these seeds, and if you don’t you could always whizz up a couple of raised beds - I explain a really easy method for building these here.