Still January – 2021

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January

This picture of of my vegetable garden planning was shown on BBC Look East!

It seems to have been a long month, we’ve had lots of rain, snow, fog and more recently, Storm Christoph. I have had a few more days off since the last blog post, due to the weather rather than the pandemic. Today was a beautiful sunny day but I was at home because Friday’s garden is still flooded.

Snow in the back field a week ago.

Since the last post I have been rose pruning and general tidying of the borders, trying to make the best of the emerging spring flowers.

Weeded and compost added, ready for spring.

I have also started spreading a nice thick layer of muck on my vegetable beds at the pub.

Ready for the vegetable beds.

The rectangular planter has a good crop of wasabi mustard, not thinned, the round pots are my newly transplanted salad leaves.

Salad leaves in the polytunnel.

In the polytunnel, I have transplanted my salad leaves, sown in the autumn. Winter lettuce, corn salad, rocket and beetroot, for the red leaves. Not ideal when it is going to be frosty but they were getting too big and starting to rot off.

The snowdrops came out!

At home today so no excuse for not getting on with my own garden. Always first is to clean out the animals. I can’t let the chickens out of their run at the moment so they like to get in on the action.

As soon as I take the side off to clean out the hen house they are in to have a look.

Beautiful blues skies and I found ladybirds on the yucca as I was cutting off the dead flowers.

I have made a start on my, rather neglected, front garden.

Mr Robin at the top of a tall conifer, singing to the moon.

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Back at work- January 2020

My first week back at work after the Christmas break and it’s been hard.

There have been a few highlights, finding the aconites and first snowdrops and hellebores.

But it has been relentlessly cold, I know it is January, and sometimes wet.

Braving the rain in my 4 hats!

I had 1 day off because the ground was too sodden and a brief glimmer of sun on Thursday afternoon

More Hellebores in the sunshine

I’ve had quite a few chats with resident robins and discovered, through an online thread, that it is common practice for us horticulturists to chat with birds, snails, plants in fact, most living things and sometimes stones too. Very relieved that it isn’t just me!

So to Friday, minus 2°C as I drove to work and only reaching 0° all day, and foggy too. This garden was more flooded than I had expected and I knew that it would be quite damp.

Over full pond and flooded lawn

Flooded flower bed

I managed to find enough to do out of the water but it was really, really cold and I hope it goes down soon. The weather forecast isn’t great for next week!

Keep looking for those signs of spring.

I almost forgot, I harvested the first flower sprouts this week.