This is me re-starting my blog so I can keep track of what works and what doesn’t and to share that with others who may be interested. I’ve subscribed to a few vlogs that are useful (more on those another time) but don’t see so many blogs these days. Perhaps I am looking in the wrong place but sometimes, i.e. when my bandwidth or battery is low, I just want to read something and look at static images. Ol’ skool.
It has been a wet and soggy few days. Typical for Christmas in the SE of England it seems. Yesterday was dry though so I spent 3 hours on the plot. I had expected to feel overwhelmed but the long-handled 3-prong cultivator made quick work of a quick weeding of Bed 2 and some of Bed 4. I’ve left most of the weeds on the surface of the soil for a change - normally I’d put them in a compost bin.
Unfortunately, the Winter brassicas have not faired very well given the hard freeze we had earlier in December. 3-4 of the purple sprouting broccoli had spongy and/or broken stems so I pulled these out to cut my losses. Four remain. Sprouts are appearing on the Brussels sprouts but in low numbers given the shortness of the stems. I pulled out the other brassicas in Bed 1 except for the two remaining, dwarf curly green kale plants. They don’t quite have enough to pick yet but hopefully they will have in spring. Two Tuscan kale plants remain upstanding in Bed 4 and could perhaps stand a picking at the weekend.
While I was there, Mark popped by and we assisted me in digging up a clump of rhubarb for dividing. I replanted a couple of small bits and bagged up several larger clumps to give to my dad. I saved a couple of even smaller pieces to take home for planted in the shady bed. Mark’s advice was to leave the clumps out in the weather but a quick look online suggested to me that this was only really needed to enforce a period of cold. Given the recent hard frost, I didn’t feel this was necessary. Plus, I don’t trust myself to remember to replant them at that right time or for the weather to be good at the point of replanting. Before leaving, I spread over a bag of compost that I had taken from one of the bins at least a couple of months ago.
It was lovely to see the small fruit bushes starting to bud - a reminder of things to come. I found a bag of leaves so spread those around the base of the bushes to make it harder for the weeds to re-sprout. I dug up some Jerusalem artichokes and a couple of leeks before heading home with those plus the rhubarb. Both leeks had allium leaf miner larvae on them. I has suspected this was behind the poor performance of leeks and onions in the past few years so useful to see it up close. I’ve read it is becoming prevalent in the SE. I am already ‘diarising’ the placement of mesh over any allium crops in March-May and Aug-Oct to given the alliums some sort of chance. I may also deploy nematodes. My current plan is to plant all alliums at the top end of Bed 1 to make this easier. That is where I planted the garlic a month or so ago (and there are shoots appearing in one of the 2 rows of these).
Back at home, I did a stock-take of seeds and wrote a short list of those I need. I happened to pop by a local garden centre to bought most of those. I missed Zinnias though so that can be a treat for another time.
I also planned sowing dates for most of the fruit and veg. Based on the lunar calendar as well, first sowings will be on Feb 25th although I have a small number of English Bluebell seeds from my mum’s funeral to sow so I might get those in this month. That doesn’t count as impatience - they are special. That is my story and I am sticking to it.
That gives me a few weekends to get ready for the new season and to do the important jobs to set everything up for success e.g. cleaning the greenhouse - inside and out, cleaning and sorting the pots and trays, cleaning my tools, and cleaning the labels. Time will rush by…
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