First seeds of 2011

The plot has been a virtual no-go area for several weeks, but I spent a few minutes sowing some onion seeds earlier today. I usually order onion sets but always end up ordering too many and spending too much, only to get patchy results, so this is a new approach for me. These seeds were some of the ones I got in the sale at the garden centre, using my garden centre reward vouchers, so hopefully if they grow well my onions will all be completely free this year! At least that's the plan...

Tradition has it that onions are sown on Boxing Day, but this is most likely a rumour started by men who, by 26th December, needed a bit of alone time in the shed to escape the Christmas madness! It's true they need a long growing season, so any time in January should be fine according to Terry Walton on http://www.gardenersclick.com/.  They need to be kept at about room temperature to germinate, so two trays of Duchy Organic Sturon onion seeds are now on the window sill under plastic propagator lids. My windowsills are quite dark so I have stuck silver foil on one side of the clear lid, in an effort to reflect as much light in to the seeds as possible at this time of year, a trick I saw on Gardener's World. The seeds are exactly the same as leek seeds which I have had good success with so hopefully these will do well.

Parsnips for Christmas

By the 24th December the snow was showing no signs of melting but Moog and I needed parsnips for Christmas Day! We made an intrepid journey to the plot and scraped about in the snow until, happily, we were able to unearth enough to keep us going.

Unearthing parsnips in the snow

On the way to the allotments a local resident asked where we were going, and was appalled to find that we planned to dig up parsnips in the snow - in fact he offered us £1 to go and buy some from Tesco. My reply was,  I haven't spent all year growing the b*stards to leave them in the ground and go to Tesco!

Winter on the plot - pictures

Here's a picture of my scarecrow who remains jolly despite the thick layer of frost.

A bit chilly

The whole country has been stuck with sub-zero temperatures for a while now; no point in writing about that when so much has been written and said already (Google News returns over 5,500 articles on 'cold Britain') - the British obsession of talking about the weather knows no bounds when a couple of snowflakes arrive. I can stand the cold by wrapping up warm, and it can be a very pretty time of year, but it's the lack of daylight that really gets me.

As I haven't ventured out much lately, the kitchen scraps for the compost heap have been building  up at home, so I was forced to venture to the plot to empty the overflowing caddy. It was five degrees below zero on my car's thermometer so I didn't stop long.

Everything was covered in a thick frost except for the pile stable manure that the council have dumped near the entrance, which was gently steaming and adding to the mist. I did take a couple of barrows of the stuff but it is mainly straw and wood shavings - the latter I have been warned not to use as soil improver as they actually decrease the nutrients available to plants while they rot.

I took the opportunity to retreive some more parsnips. Being so large I have only used a couple of them so far this winter, leaving plenty left for Christmas dinner. I expected the ground to be frozen like concrete but was pleasantly surprised to find there was just a thin frozen crust. Underneath it was, well, just soil. I turned a couple of spades over so the local robin red breast could have a go at finding some worms, then made my way home to defrost with a cup of cocoa.

Tomatoes: Don't believe the hype

I have heard from various sources that you can successfully ripen green tomatoes by putting them in a drawer, box etc. with a banana. The gas released by the banana as it ripens will turn the tomatoes red. I am happy to confirm that this is complete rubbish. All you get are mouldy tomatoes, a wasted banana, and if you're really lucky some nasty liquid will dribble out of whatever container you're using. The best thing I have found for green tomatoes so far is to chuck 'em straight back on the compost heap.

Mice don't eat cheese they eat raw potatoes.

Potatoes in store at the allotment have been attacked by mice, so we brought them home today. When you start growing vegetables you think the hard thing will be the actual growing of the plants. In fact the hard part is stopping every other living creature on the planet from eating your crop before you do.

Pumkin Harvest

Moog and I have had some quite good results with butternut squash and pumpkins this year (pictured above). One big orange pumpkin (variety 'Mars') has already been eaten, along with two squashes (variety 'Avalon F1').

These will be saved for soups and for roasting as the winter draws in. I couldn't bear to risk wasting my home grown produce at halloween, so we bought some from the shops specifically to carve into lanterns.

Bizarrely, these were labelled as 'Extra Large Monsters versus Aliens Pumpkins from Outer Space.'