Kitchen Garden Forum

As the last few mornings have seemed very Wintery, with hard frosts, I thought it would be an good time to start the new seasonal thread...and I like to keep in Monika's good books...

Yes and if it's December, it's definitely winter in my book!

Well that's improved the weather, just gone past 6°!

It's good to be back on the ground once more, on the drier side of England ? where last month it seemed to rain everyday...even with a 5% predicted chance of rain it tended to pour down.
I have had "my" spade running the last two days now. Open ground digging in the morning and then digging out and changing soil for some Rose replacements in the afternoon. At one location the old shrub Rose saw 5 barrows of soil dug out, 5 barrow loads dug from open ground to refill and then the removed 5 barrows worked in to the resultant hole...so it could be said I was busy moving a hole around the gardens..... The errant Rose was well worn out...1962 planting...so same age as me.!

C.

Strangely, reading all about the "wettest autumn on record" in the newspapers, we have commented what a pleasant late autumn it has been. Our October rainfall was high (218mm), but November was low (118mm) and certainly the last two weeks have been very pleasant, especially since last Wednesday when the sun has shone every day after nightly frosts down to -3C. Perfect for the dug vegetable beds: frozen hard overnight, thawed out during the day ....
It might kill a few bugs as well.

We've had grim & drizzly or pouring rain for weeks on end. Finally now it is cold & bright. I have a few more outdoor craft fairs to get through, so hopefully it will stay on the dry side!

Had a visit from the rooks in the trees out the front. I think they meet once a year to pick a partner, normally from memory it is late November, so seem to be running a bit late this year.

It is certainly winter!
A move to Italy would be such a good idea. Rome in January is really rather nice.

Stephen wrote:It is certainly winter!
A move to Italy would be such a good idea. Rome in January is really rather nice.

Would raise problems getting to the allotment three times a week.

A big job that I thought never got done these days, Clive, so fair play to you....

The first of my autumn planted garlic is showing their heads above the soil ,to be honest I’ve planted them through cardboard so the heads are showing above cardboard not soil they appear to be the elephant garlic planted around six weeks ago

My Elephant Garlic are coming through too, Robo...we must be doing something right...

Seems we are in for a bit of a sea breeze over the next couple of days...

I went to dig up some leeks this morning. All the recent rain seems to have caused about half of them to collapse as the ground is so sodden.

I,ve also been looking at the massive amount of moss accumulating on ours and all our neighbours roof tiles as a result of heavy rainfalls. I suspect this is going to result in a few guttering blockages as the birds or winds eventually dislodge some of it and it comes rolling down. I expect we'll be innundated with all these roof clearing guys knocking on our doors in the Spring offering to remove it at an outrageous cost. There no easy DIY way if tackling a job like that, is there?

I had my grandson down the plot doing a bit of turning the soil in a couple of raised beds , one of them is devided roughly In too one half is the asparagus beds the other is full of weeds I pointed out which half needed turning over I told him not two deep I did not want the full fork sticking in ,on our way off the plot we walked past this bed to find the side that needed turning had not been touched but the side that was the asparagus bed has been turned .he is growing up into a right idiot it’s not like he is a young kid helping his old grandad he is 21 years old and won’t listen