Planting today

A couple of weeks ago I placed a pretty large order online for seeds and seedlings as well as one or two other gardening items. It's been very cold here, and I didn't expect to receive any live plants until the spring, but I wasn't too surprised when packets of seeds, potato growing bags, and a window ledge planter arrived.

Here it is, newly planted up with lettuce, basil and spinach. I'm hoping I'll be able to start picking these for salads within the next few weeks.

I wasn't even too surprised when potatoes arrived today, because they do need some time left out so that they can do their 'chitting' thing, which is to start their shoots off before they're planted in the ground.
Here they are sitting in empty egg cartons on a window ledge in the conservatory. The ones on the left are called Sarpo Mira, and they're organic and late croppers. The ones on the right are called Kifli, and they're early croppers. So I'm hoping I won't have to buy any potatoes for the whole of the summer this year.

I was really surprised to receive some perennial flowering plants that I'd ordered for my flower beds. They came with instructions to plant immediately into 5-inch pots. When I went out to get some compost to plant them in, it was completely frozen, so I had to chip lumps of compost into a bucket and bring it inside and leave it till the next day before I could plant them. They were planted a couple of days ago, and seem to like their new pots.

One of the things I ordered was a tree. I hope it doesn't arrive too soon, because the ground is still frozen.