Dry day at last

Garden, post-tidying

Compost heap, rotted down quite well

Refilled

A nice, sunny day today, and the neighbours have given me a key to their shed, so I can borrow their mower. I borrowed their mower, and eventually worked out how to start it. Once running, it made short work of the long grass, even the lumpy bits. Sadly it also made short work of a frog who I didn't spot and who didn't get out of the way in time.

I sheared the grass round the edges of the beds, and a lot of nettles and fumitory which was growing between the fence and the long row of beds at the bottom of the garden. The clippings have filled the compost heap to overflowing, even though it had sunk about two feet since I last filled it up (three weeks ago). I'm pleased that it is composting so fast - it must be hot composting, although I haven't got a thermometer to check it. Mild weather and lots of rain is probably just right for fast rotting.

Quite a few weeds went into the heap as well - I hand-weeded the carrots, onions and leeks, and I harvested the last of the first batch of radishes, and composted the tops.

Busy morning

Making paper pots

First batch - leeks, cauliflowers, and two varieties of peas

Since the weather is very mild at the moment, and the long-term forecast says it will probably continue mild, I decided to try getting some veg off to an early start. I chose things that are supposed to be planted in March, and will keep them in the greenhouse for the first month or two. The veg chosen for this early experiment are leeks (Carlton F1), cauliflowers (All the Year Round), and two varieties of peas (Early Onward and Greenshaft).

For Christmas I got a wooden tool for making biodegradable pots out of newspaper, pictured right. A strip of newspaper about 4" wide is wrapped round the top part with about 1.5" sticking out, which is folded under and crushed against the bottom part of the tool.

They seem to stay together quite well. Obviously they won't be very strong when wet, but I will be able to leave them in their trays until it's time to plant them out, when the pots will be transferred whole to the beds - no need to unwrap them, the newspaper will just decompose in the ground.

Since the volume of earth in each is quite small, and the paper will wick water away, there may be problems with them drying out. Time will tell.

Raspberry plant

I also planted out the raspberry I got from the neighbours. I put plenty of slow-release fertilizer pellets in the hole, to help it along.

Some raspberry varieties produce fruit on the new year's growth, and some on year-old wood - if mine is the latter I wont see any raspberries until 2013. Hope it's the former!

Legumes suffering

Frost damaged legumes

The peas and broad beans have suffered from the weather despite it being generally mild, and despite the fact that both were described as extremely hardy varieties. (The peas are Meteor, the beans Aguadulce.)

We had a spell of frost about two weeks ago, then some strong winds, and now another frosty spell is starting. Several of the beans look totally dead, as do about a third of the peas. I will fill in the rows to replace casualties in March or so. Still, I was hoping for better from hardy varieties - the temperature never went below about -2°C, and it was only that cold for a few nights. Hrumph.

Crocuses flowering already

Crocuses starting to flower

The mild winter we've been having here has prompted some crocuses to start flowering - I noticed the shoots about ten days ago. This is early - apparently March is normal, and according to the BBC they can flower in February in mild conditions.
I didn't plant these, they're relics from a previous owner. I wonder what else is under the ground waiting?

Give peas a chance

Mesh for pea plants

The peas have been bashed about by the very strong winds last week, and were looking a bit forlorn, so I've given them something to climb up. Next time I will put in the supporting mesh as soon as the peas are in the ground. The canes and mesh are re-used from my  last garden, and since those peas came down with powdery mildew I left the equipment to soak in a fungicide solution before setting it up, in the hope that any spores are killed and I don't introduce a harmful species to this garden.

One of the broad bean plants had its stem broken, so I cut that off to a few inches above ground level. Possibly the root system will have enough stored energy to grow new stems and leaves.

First frost

The temperature was down to 1 °C last night, and in sheltered parts of the garden there was a light frost, the first I've seen this year. The average first frost date in these parts is mid-October, that's six weeks ago.

The frost had melted away by 10:30, before I thought of taking a photo.

According to wikipedia, "In the United Kingdom, the growing season is defined as starting when the temperature on five consecutive days exceeds 5 °C, and ends after five consecutive days of temperatures below 5 °C." I don't think we've had temperatures that consistently low yet - most days in the last few weeks the maximum daily temperature has been between 6 °C and 9 °C.

First phase of digging beds finished

Finished!

A marathon digging session today, doing all of beds seven and eight in one go. I was knackered when I had finished, but pleased that the initial phase of digging is done.

Next job: planting the onions and garlic.

Since the weather is good and there isn't much else to do, I may add a few further beds before frost sets in. Average first frost around here is mid-October, but there's no sign of any yet - night time temperatures haven't been lower than 5ºC, and mostly they've been much higher, as much as 13 to 15ºC.