A lot of work for as yet largely invisible results

The last couple of weekends, I've been out planting seeds in the garden and in pots. There's not a lot to show for it yet in the garden, though.

After hours of weed removal, compost spreading and seed sowing, all you can really see is bare ground. The lovely large and healthy line of chard on the right is from last year and is fairly soon going to have to go to make way for this year's crop in my crop-rotation scheme. It's got until June when I'll need the space for tomatoes. I've planted all of my root vegetable, alliums and lettuce and about half my brassicas. It took much longer than I was expecting as well, possibly due to excessive optimism on my part. I've largely been remembering to water too, but there are no signs of life yet.

The only first shoots of growth from this year's outdoor sowing are in my legumes. I've finally planted out the broad beans. I start them off in pots, as my experience says that there's nothing my slugs and snails like better than the first broad bean leaves and the pots put them off. This week, though, I deemed them large enough to risk the open ground.

My mangetout are coming up too:

I grow mangetout instead of peas because my peas tend to get pea moths and quickly become inedible. This doesn't affect the mangetout stage and also you don't have to shell mangetout, which is a definite bonus. These could theoretically have gone straight in the ground. I've never noticed a particular snail problem with these. But I don't yet have room, as I'm still harvesting my purple sprouting broccoli, which is taking up the space they will eventually fill. Initially I was disappointed with the purple sprouting broccoli as a plant, but I think that was simply because I didn't realise how long I was going to have to wait for it. It's been producing for about a month or so now and I've had a decent amount of veg from it that tastes every bit as good and tender as the shop-bought stuff. The trick is to keep harvesting, then it keeps coming. Oh, and also to kill the bugs if your plant gets an infestation.

I'm also growing additional seedlings both indoors and in the greenhouse. The ones in the picture are my kohl rabi. I've got tomatoes, chillies and peppers coming up indoors.

The other things that have been growing already have had little to do with this year's planting and more to do with lucky decision-making in previous years. My raspberries are pushing up new shoots. I love them so much. They grow like weeds, produce a huge amount of fruit and only need me to pick the fruit, cut them back at the end of the year and dig them up and gift them to friends when they stray out of their allotted area. Oh, and a bit of weeding around them too I suppose, although they can easily compete with my weeds if I don't bother. Best food plant ever.

The climbing white roses planted along our back fence have produced a ton of leaves and new growth. They've definitely survived being planted in the shade and have grown so tall that parts of them now enjoy full sun.

And our new red climbing rose to climb all over the house is also looking like it's settled in happily too, with the arrival of plentiful new leaves.

Overall, the gardening year has well and truly started, but it'll be a while before I see the fruits of quite a lot of my labours.