What's happened in January

January's been mostly a garden month of very hard work and nothing much interesting. Apart from the vegetable garden, we also have the "pretty" garden, which has gone through a major redesign from a ricketty, falling down fence, overgrown hedge and weed filled beds to this:

Lots of digging, lots of hefting of heavy stones, almost an entire day up a ladder trimming the hedge gets me the reward of an extra foot all the way around the garden and the place looking like a bomb's hit it. I'm reliably informed by my parents, who helped the transformation, that the hedge will green up and the grass will grow back. I don't tend to know much about non-food gardening, so I'll take their word for it.

In the interesting garden, the experiment with the early carrots appears to've been an utter failure. Not even a sniff of a seedling, which is a shame. I'll keep the pots wrapped up for a bit longer in case they suddenly sprout forth when the weather turns, but I'm not holding out much hope.

I have received most of my seed potatoes through the post and they're now out chitting so they'll grow quicker when they're planted in March.

 

First Earlies, Early Maincrops and Maincrops - my Second Earlies are still in the post. Think I might have enough seed potatoes?! The pot on the far right hand side is the indoor carrots, resolutely not sprouting for the camera.

Next year is going to be much more interesting, as I plan to still be harvesting at this point. Spinach, kale, brussel sprouts and leeks will be available with luck, as well as living off the stores of potatoes and jerusalem artichokes. It's the dream that keeps me going.

Oh, and that diagram of the garden that I drew, with all the carefully planned beds, pots and growing areas? Already out of date. The garden has expanded to fill the available (and unavailable) space again, with a new 1m x 1m bed planned for more green beans (and to allow room for crop rotation next year) and three extra potato bags (there was a special offer). Wife is tolerating the further expansion, as long as it doesn't encroach into the pretty garden. I guess one could make a case that the borders of the pretty garden aren't that well defined and I could probably fit another bed into a corner where she'd barely even notice it...

The plans for next month - more digging, first growing of seedlings for cabbage and cauliflower and the planting of jerusalem artichoke tubers.

PJW