20th January

We were out in the garden again, with the boys churning up the sodden lawn by the playhouse and me sieving compost.  I have put down a compost mulch on nearly half of the border and it certainly makes it look better – it covers up the soil that has so many stones on the top of it. You always get that, no matter how much you remove them or cover with compost or other top dressing. It’s those worms taking down the good stuff that exposes them, I think, that plus the rain effect. I noticed one solitary crocus in colour – a bright orange one whose leaves are still wrapped up, but there is a little flame of colour there.

January 8th

Another spell wrapped up in the garden, mainly sieving compost for the borders. There was still frost on the lawn even in late afternoon. Apart from when we’ve had snow – many years before, I can’t remember seeing frost that lasted all day. In a way, it is good to see a proper winter, a real shut down and time of dormancy. Mind you, crocus and bluebell shoots are appearing.

January 3rd

I never did get the garden tidied up within the bounds of last year. Two months of almost no activity helped to ensure that. I was, however, very pleased with myself that I had completed a project I had set myself at the beginning of last year, which was to keep a gardening journal. It won’t set the horticultural world alight with its advice or instruction, but it was an accurate record of some ordinary chap trying to do better in his garden and taking on an allotment. I found the project of journal keeping a bonus and so I’m repeating it hoping that this year will be more successful in the vegetable growing stakes.
Today it was as cold as it has been for about 2 weeks which had been enough to keep me inside unless I had to go out, but my boys wanted time in the garden so we all wrapped up and went out.  I set about dragging old bags of rotted leaf mould from behind the shed and putting new ones in their place. Some of the material was pretty good, others need longer to rot down. What was good was the shredded wood from 1995. Back in the early days of being a home owner, my Dad hired a wood chipper for the masses of wood we cleared in the garden. The chipped wood was of a really rough quality and so most got thrown, but 2 bags were neglected and have mulched down brilliantly over the past 13 years. Even the large lumps simply crumbled between my fingers whilst finer material looked like commercial composts in colour, tilth and texture. I think it will be put to use on the allotment with the new raised beds I sincerely hope I will be making before spring.  Some of the leaf mould was placed around the fuchsias, the rest is for other soil improving either at home or at the allotment.

 

Other jobs were snipping back a few branches on the rear lilac tree to gain a more straightforward and less scratchy path to behind the shed, trimming the chives of their dead stalks, finding pots all over the place and stacking them on the water butt for cleaning later, emptying the larger pots of spent compost that had the chilli and sweet peppers growing in them to also go down to the allotment and collecting all sorts of tiny bits of non compostable rubbish to go in the bin. One big achievement was to finally get 26 garlic bulbs planted in a tray. Apparently they need a week of temperatures between 0 and 10°C, so that should not be a problem. So my first planting has been done. Garlic can be put in from the autumn onward, even up to the shortest day. I am 13 days late although much earlier than last year when I planted on the 12^th January which in itself was about 2 months earlier than the year before! Maybe at the end of this year I will finally get round to planting before Christmas. Imagine that – to make 2 plantings in one year. You never know, I may even sow them at the right time in the autumn!

 

One other job was that I moved about 4 of the self seeded grass plants to the front garden.