January

Well, January is supposed to be a time for new resolutions, and it looks as though one of Plot 129's should be to blog a bit more frequently! I seem to have missed the last nine months - I can only assume I was too busy planting, weeding and harvesting to write about it...

The 2014 growing year was mostly very good - kale, beetroot, potatoes, chillies, rhubarb and the soft fruit all did very well, as did the carrots and courgettes. We had one wonderfully large and tasty squash, but no others, and the onions and garlic weren't a success. Mostly the onions were spring planted after the floods, or left in from the year before, and they stayed very small. Sadly, the tent greenhouse suffered in the weather - once blowing entirely into my neighbour's garden, and many times being overwhelmed by the weight of collected rain. By the end of the season the metal supporting rods were buckled, and I don't think it will be usable again.

But 2015 is a new year! So far the ground hasn't flooded, and the onions and shallotts I planted in November are coming up well. The rhubarb looks great, and most of the herbs seem to be surviving, including a lovely parsley plant which had a rough start last summer. In December I planted about thirty cloves of garlic - Marco, Thermidorme and Germidour - and they are all showing signs of life. Today was my first day of proper work down on the plot, not just popping down to pick beetroot and kale, which I'm chuffed to say we can still do!

Here's  a shot showing the beds of garlic and onions in the distance, as well as, in estate-agent speak, areas with a lot of potential :)

Today's highlight was planting the broad beans - three rows of Aquadulce Claudia.

More resolutions for 2015:
1) Plant more squash!
2) Don't get seduced by new varieties of thyme - there's only so much you can eat...

New greenhouse (sort of!)

It's Easter Sunday and it is raining. What better time to put up the new click-fit greenhouse tent?

Having cleared away a patch of nettles and brambles it was actually very straight-forward to put up, and the tent kept most of the rain off me whilst I was putting the finishing touches to it.

Before...

...and after!

Hopefully this year our tomatoes will ripen!

April update

The weather has dried up, and warmed up, over the last few weeks. The floods have receded, leaving an interesting spread of green and orange algae over the bare ground. Incredibly, some plants have survived the flood - many of the garlic and onion bulbs have coped well, and there are even a few peas and beans showing through...

Today has mostly been spent weeding the onions, and tidying the beds. Sadly, my trusty battery strimmer has ceased to work, and so I will be looking to purchase a new one (probably petrol) asap. Any advice for selecting one greatly appreciated!



Other planting so far includes mangetout in the pea bed, and replacement broad beans, to fill in the gaps left by the flood. In the greenhouse we have aubergine, chillies, courgette, lupins and sweetcorn - fingers crossed they get some nice warm weather to germinate!

Floods

With flooding to rival that of 2007, most of plot 129 has spent a week under water. So much for all the garlic, peas and beans. Surely 'winter hardy' doesn't cover this!

The broad beans are in! On with the list!

Things to Do on Plot 129

With just the broad beans still to plant, Plot 129 will shortly be turning its attention to more mundane tasks - trimming the blackberries, pruning the raspberries, winter digging, and other rather unmemorable things. To help jog the mind, here's the list of Things to Do:

• Trim blackberries and wild rose
• Prune raspberries and damson
• Clean guttering
• Bonfire!
• Clear and winter dig empty beds
• Plat broad beans
• Build and creosote new raised bed (using discarded pallets from the nearby building site)
• Clear area for new greenhouse tent
• Tidy away plant pots
• Prune Darcy Bussell (rose)
• Weed flower garden
• Put away summer structures (garden bench, greenhouse tents)
• Refresh woodchipped areas

November

We're well into November now, and the temperatures have dropped. Last week Plot 129 saw the planting of its largest attempt at garlic so far, with four cloves of Elephant garlic, and about twenty five cloves of a hardneck variety (Carcassonne Wight) going into a freshly dug bed. We've had mixed success with garlic over the years, but hopefully the sheer quantity going in the ground will ensure some edible plants for 2014!

Joining the garlic in the central bed were 50 sets of 'Electric' red onions, and around 100 white onions, ready for spring. Left in the ground these should develop into good cooking onions, but also promise a spring onion crop if picked early.

One of this years failures was the asparagus - apparently very unhappy at being moved into raised beds, most of the plants died off and didn't sprout at all this spring. Clearing out the bed, it became clear that fennel had done its best to colonise as much as possible. Whilst I love a good cup of fennel tea, we don't have quite as much application for fennel as asparagus, so the fennel had to go. Nine crowns of Connover's Colossal have gone in, in place of the fennel, and fingers have been crossed.

Other additions include a new 'Champagne' rhubarb, and lots of spring, summer and autumn bulbs (Autumnale Album and Water Lily colchicum and Conqueror autumn crocus , as well as snowdrops, gladioli and lillies) and this year Plot 129 is experimenting with winter planted peas - a variety called Meteor, which promises winter hardiness, dwarf habits, and tasty, early cropping. We'll see if theory matches practice in six months time...

Still to go in the ground are just the broad beans, having missed the window for green manure, and the poppies Plot 129 has been promising itself for years. There's also a lot of structural work to do, some of which can take place even as the temperature continues to fall. Oh joy!