Considering the time of year Sunday wasn't a bad day. After a bit of a cloudy start the sun broke through to give us some decent sunny spells and it was reasonably mild for December. We decided on an afternoon trip to the plot to lift our dahlia tubers and save them somewhere frost free and dry over winter.
Sue was hoping that our chrysanthemums had survived the recent cold spell and that they might provide us with a few cut flowers.
Unfortunately that wasn't the case and we decided that these too could be cut back and the roots lifted and protected again the worst of the winter weather.
Whilst I cut back and lifted the dahlias Sue cut back the chrysanthemums.
The last couple of months have been on the dry side with not a great deal of rain which meant the dahlia roots came out of the ground easily without too much soil clinging to the roots. Most of the soil was cleared off the roots with a small hand fork. The roots have been placed in a large potato sack and have gone into the garage to be stored alongside our potatoes. I'll leave them in the garage until around the beginning of March.
The chrysanthemum roots were lifted too but these were placed in plastic tubs with the roots packed in wood chip. The tubs were placed in the plot greenhouse for protection.
After lifting the dahlias and chrysanthemums we decided we still had a little bit of time left before it got dark to do some harvesting. We managed to dig up some carrots, parsnips, leeks and beetroot as well as cut a couple of red cabbages and a green one. The main surprise of the day was that some tomatoes and a couple of red peppers in the plot greenhouse had survived the cold weather.
As you can probably tell from the photo by the time we'd finished harvesting it was starting to get dark.
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Nice to get a fruit bonus of tomatoes and peppers! 1st picture cardoons?
ReplyDeleteWhat’s really surprising is that the tomato plants haven’t been watered since the end of August. You’re right the first picture is cardoons.
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