Thursday was a lovely sunny if cold February day, a complete contrast to the horrendous weather we had on Wednesday. In truth the wind hadn't died down completely and it was a bit blustery at times. It clouded over in the middle of the afternoon just enough to produce a light shower.
After finding a small part of our neighbour’s roof had fallen onto our car I thought I’d better have a look and see if there was any other damage from yesterday’s gales. I could tell before I got to the garden greenhouse that some of the roof had been blown out. There was no way the glass could be that clean. Sure enough three large roofing panels had been lifted out and deposited in pieces on the path behind the greenhouse. There’s not much I can do as a temporary repair and I need to give a bit of thought to a longer term repair. I’ll just have to hope that the forecast storms don’t do too much extra damage.
It was a nice afternoon and, as we hadn't visited the plot since the middle of January, we were in need of some fresh vegetables so we decided to check out the plot and also recce all the potential storm damage. We were pleasantly surprised that both our shed and plot greenhouse had survived the gales intact.
The plot’s very wet with even our grass paths making a squelchy sound under our wellies. The vegetables have stood up to the battering and rain pretty well. First on the list for lifting “Chantenay Royal” carrots. Having lifted part of our final row I decided to go for broke and finish lifting all of this variety left in the ground and freeze some for using before our summer crop is ready.
They were certainly large but their condition was unknown as they were lifted from their rather muddy winter home. After a wash a few needed to be added to the compost heap but they were mostly in a decent condition for using in the kitchen.
They weighed in at 4.94kg once sorted and still taste good, as we gave them a taste test at dinner time. I think I've now lifted all our “Chantenay Royals”. That means with our summer and autumn harvest this variety has produced 17.6kg of carrots. Decent organic carrots in the local supermarket are around £1.20/kg giving us a crop worth £21.08. Not bad from a £0.60 packet of seed. I know I've got the investment in time, some environmesh and weed to control fabric to take into account but I reckon with a bit of care they’ll last a good 10 years each. The environmesh is probably in need of a jet wash this spring but it will then be as good as new.
We also managed to harvest some sprouts, red and green cabbage together with a few leeks to keep us supplied with fresh vegetables for a few days. By then it would be nice to think that the worst of this lousy wet and windy weather would be over and that some drier settled weather will have arrived. If only!
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A lovely harvest, I'm really hoping that this time next year there are some things at my allotment to harvest. It's a learning curve, working out how to get some produce available through the winter. A shame about the greenhouse damage, I do hope it's not too tricky to repair.
ReplyDeleteHaving something to harvest at this time of year is a bit hit and miss and really depends on the sort of winter we've had. Not done too badly this year. It's usually frost and snow which puts an end to our crops.
DeleteA very nice harvest Sue, especially with the recent weather conditions. Still horrendous here. 9 days without any rain since the beginning of December.
ReplyDeleteRain almost every day here but not in large amounts. Damage from gale force winds our major problem and expense.
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