Well the potatoes are
chitting away in the potting shed.
My first early sowings are sprouting in the heat of the greenhouse
and propagators. Broad Beans are pushing their tops through sandy
soil in Root Trainers.
Sowing all
Legumes indoors is the only way to keep the rodents here at bay.
The plants will be hardened off and planted out under an Eco-Green plastic
cloche later in the season
as these
performed really well last year.
Now it’s
time to turn my attention to the beds.
The Kitchen Garden is
situated on an area of very poor sandy soil which needs much
improving to give a good yield but, is quick to warm in the spring
and can be worked much earlier than clay soils. Nutrients will
easily get washed away on this kind of soil and so I tend to wait
to apply manure or soil improvers until February.
I apply a good covering of an improver with high organic matter on
each bed and leave for a good few weeks, and then I will dig as and
when necessary for planting. I take a very different approach to my
home plot which is clay, and try to dig and improve as far back as
December, if possible.
Once the hard
work of spreading all that glorious muck is done, I apply cloches,
mulch and
fleece to warm up the soil before
planting.
On our raised beds we are
fitting brackets and hoops these used in combination with
polythene or fleece held in place with these natty clips (much
quicker than struggling to hold sheets in place with one hand and
cable tying with the other!) will create a cosy growing space and
help keep those temperatures above
freezing.
Other jobs
to be done now:
-
Sorting seeds
into a month by month sowing plan using a Seed
Tin Organiser so you do not forget
any!
-
Fruit tree pruning if
not already done.
-
Currant bushes can be
thinned by removing old wood.
-
Autumn fruiting
raspberry canes to be cut down.
-
Green manures cut and
composted or incorporated via digging or mulch.
-
Sowing early crops,
sweet peas and other legumes
