Made It At Last!

We were treated to double digit temperatures on Saturday as the thermometer hit 11°C. As the sun was shining too this tempted us down to the plot for the first time in over a month. The first thing to strike me was that the plot clearly hadn't missed us since the last time we visited. The grass and weeds aren't growing and the fruit trees which would normally be in flower now are only just showing some signs of growth.

The first job was to see if the bed dug over last autumn would be in a good enough condition to plant some early potatoes.

After removing a few weeds and tidying up the edging the bed looks ready for planting up. Whilst the soil looks dry on top it is fairly wet underneath. On to another bed where I wanted to clear a few weeds. This was too claggy to clear the soil off the weed roots so I decided to leave this bed for a few more days to dry out.

I decided to have a look and see if we still had any carrots worth harvesting.

These are Flakkee which have survived winter pretty well. About 50% were assigned straight to the compost heap having either rotted and turned mushy over winter or been damaged by slugs. The carrots above will get the taste test on Sunday but the parsnip below definitely won’t.

We had a few parsnips left in the ground but these were only fit for the compost heap having succumbed to the dreaded canker over winter. 

We still have some leeks left that have over wintered. The best looking of these is a variety called Blue Solaise which when I harvested and cleaned off a few outer leaves looked pretty good. Our over wintering brassicas haven’t recovered from the wood pigeon massacre but in the debris there’s still one or two cabbages worth cutting. This winter savoy Alaska is only small but doesn't look too bad and is a treat at this time of year with a scarcity of fresh vegetables to gather from the plot.

As for planting the potatoes I think I’ll leave it for another week. The soil can’t be very warm and over night Saturday into Sunday produced another frost with the temperature down to -2.4°C.

I know I harvested these a little early but I hope Daphne won't mind me adding this to Daphne's Harvest Monday.

Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett