Hope you’ve had lovely Christmas and New Year celebrations and some time to rejuvenate in preparation for 2023.
Serious winter at the moment! Cold and rain. Keeping indoors is the most sensible thing to be doing at the moment.
At our place we’ve weeded the onion and garlic beds and planted violas as a companion plant – to keep the weeds down going forward. Violas don’t compete for nutrients so they work well.
Our leeks are less advanced than they were this time last year, and we’ve just given them the first hilling up. This is to encourage long white stems.
The asparagus is ready to be cut down to ground level. After that, we add our organic fertiliser and compost to the bed, and in a couple of months’ time, we should see some sweet spears shooting up. If you’re starting a new asparagus bed, January is the month to plant out crowns.
The plants in our strawberry bed are pulling away and some are even putting flowers out. Trying to produce fruit in winter is too stressful for the plants, so we nip the flowers off until around March, when we can let them go.
The first lot of broccoli is all ready and we’re loving eating it. I give the smaller brassica plants a bit more chicken manure to boost them up during these harsh months when they’re growing more slowly.
Lastly, when there’s not much around for the birds to eat, consider leaving out food for them to keep them in your garden. This is just a bought one, but there are loads of creative ways to make your own on the internet.
Keep warm and dry!
From Jan and Rob.
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