A happy new year everyone, and I hope that we all have a good year in the garden or on the plot. The weather has continued to be unsettled and on Tuesday there was heavy rain and high winds for much of the day. Yesterday morning was calm, dry and sunny when I took a look round to see if all was okay. Thankfully it was, and although the plot was very soggy it wasn’t waterlogged.
Just before Christmas I made a start digging out and sieving the compost heap with a couple of barrowloads which I’ve put by the blackberry bush.
I borrow the wheelbarrow from my plot neighbour Brian, and use the blue plastic crate as a sieve.
At home I’ve still got enough stored second early potatoes Charlotte for at least a couple more weeks, and enough main crop Picasso for over a month beyond that. I’m now checking all these every couple of weeks as they start sprouting at this time of year.
There’s more rain due later today but tomorrow onwards it should be drier, and getting noticeably colder into next week with daytime temperatures around 0 C /32 F.
Have a good weekend, and take care!
This archive sunflower photo was taken during August, 2019.
I cleared, then hoed, the area around the blackberry bush in readiness for when I start emptying the compost heap. Most of the sieved compost will go direct onto various areas of the vegetable patches but some I’ll put by the blackberry bush to use as and when needed.
At home I’ve eaten the last of the stored Sturon onions, which would normally last until well into the new year, and sometimes through to Easter. I generally do well with them but this year even the biggest ones were barely the size of a golf ball, when most years I’ve had plenty that were at least tennis ball size. This picture, from November 2011, gives an idea of the difference in size. Most also had a very dark hard outer skin and I’m guessing that they simply cooked in the hot summer weather and stopped growing. I’ll be buying new sets during January and they’ll be be the first vegetables I’ll be planting out mid-March onwards, weather permitting.
The pot of English daisies is the only plant on the windowsill at present, and all I’m doing is removing the occasional dead leaf and watering sparingly.
I really must remember to use my small indoor plastic watering can in future.
I’ve been sorting saved annual flower seeds – cornflowers, cosmos, pot marigolds and sunflowers – to sow and grow next spring.
These pot marigolds Flighty’s favourites are from summer 2012.
I think that must have triggered the tree’s survival instinct as since then numerous stems have appeared and grown for several feet all around it, which has not happened before.
I doubt if I’ll be able to dig these out so I’m thinking about what, if anything, I can do apart from cutting most of them back to ground level, and try to keep them spreading any further.
Flighty's plot 