Temporary Staging Shuffle

I am grateful for a house after years of married life in flats.  Now I have more rooms and furniture than I ever imagined but less space outdoors. So just as in our maisonette I learnt to move stuff around, pull out sofa beds for guests etc,  so now in a small garden we have become adept at temporary staging.  

On our allotments we had a shed, two greenhouses - one large, one small - and any amount of staging; scrounged freestanding metal racks or wooden shelves constructed and tacked to the side of the shed by my husband.  I could sow cabbages or leeks in large plant pots, pretty sure that rain would fall, the sun would shine and they would germinate in the open air usually unmolested by pests.  And my husband could grow almost as many tomatoes as he wished under glass.

Here we have one small greenhouse and one potting shed.  So begins the 'staging shuffle' whereby we start in the shed (to avoid the pesky mice that ate our first batch of broad beans) and then move young plants to the back pavers in front of the greenhouse.  This being the north-west, where temperatures fall overnight, the plants are then put to bed in the shed until the next sunny period, by no means the following day of the week.  This process of hardening off, as gardeners term it, continues until the plants are strong enough to survive in the raised beds.  Our broad beans are now planted out; our runner beans are still shuffling backwards and forwards.  Our overwintered geraniums are on display at the front, risky but necessary as we have been promised some additional tomatoes for the greenhouse, and we also have sunflowers, sweet williams and hollyhocks plus fennel and dill in the potting shed, not to mention the squashes and coriander on our bay windowsill.  Once up, most these will go from the shed to the greenhouse and only take the sun on the pavers if appropriate.  Our planter at the front is ready for the winter squash and summer weather.

We sow according to our capacity.  It's smaller-scale and painstaking.  Plants need more care here and more protection from animals and the elements.  We have the time to give it.