Welcome to 2009!

A cold start to the year - it is freezing outside. Literally. It was -1 Celsius at 1400 today. Average temperatures this time of year are more like 6 degrees apparently. The light, sandy soil in our back garden is frozen solid, as is a couple of the pots in the coldframe next to the house. It is that cold. No chance of any Winter digging on the heavy, clay plot this weekend, unfortunately. No sowing yet either. That's for next weekend. There are onions, shallots and leeks to sow. And sweet peas.

I did start off the potato chitting today (see below). Hopefully these won't freeze in the lean-to and I have put them the right way up. I'll check on their progress in a couple of weeks.



In the last day or two, my friend and neighbour chopped down 7 conifer hedges in her front garden and she was planning on shredding the branches and taking them down to the tip. Of course, I have asked her if I could take the shreddings instead for mulching on the plot (after letting them compost down a bit first in black bags). I helped out this morning trying to start the shredding. I wasn't much use as my toes froze after just an hour. My main contribution was reading the instructions for her shredder to work out why it kept stopping. A lot of the hedge clippings could be chopped with secateurs but it'll take a long while to get through it. A few sessions in the warm in front of the TV with a nice glass of wine should do it if my neighbour doesn't master the shredder. It could make all the difference to the heavy clay soil on some of the beds.

Looking back to Christmas 2008, the real hits from the plot were the parsnips (mammoth as some of them were) and horseradish. I used the horseradish to make some smoked mackeral pate and it went down very well over New Year.