Through the garden gate in January

There's not a lot you can do in the garden in January and being such a long, dull, dark and dreary month, if you like to be out gardening it can be quite depressing.

But I find signs of hope as I wander around. The snowdrops are peeping through the soil now, so I know it won't be long before they are in flower. Walking around the garden I can also see the crocus and daffodils poking through the soil. Soon there will be little clumps of colour, it's something to look forward to.

I like to plant up pots of bulbs as well as having them in the garden borders. So I went off to the garden centre recently and bought little pots of snowdrops and  crocus to plant up. They will go on the garden table or potting benches.

I did some tidying up in the woodland garden last week.  It gets full of leaves from the lime tree, and although they do provide a good mulch,there are lots of little bulbs in the ground which get hidden. So I cleared the leaves away from the areas where the bulbs are coming through so that we will get a good display in a few weeks. There's also a hellebore plant which has big buds on now and will be in flower soon. I cut off the leaves to expose the flower buds. Hellebores are quite hardy and can manage without the protection of their big leaves which hide the flowers.

Around the garden borders there are still a lot of leaves, debris, dead plants and seedheads. I will gradually clear these over the next few weeks to get ready for spring.

Richard has been doing repairs to paths and fences over the last week or two. In the woodland garden he made a new fence panel to replace one which had blown down and fallen to pieces in the bad weather.  The wooden path through the woodland area was rotting  and he has repaired that too. Another path through the garden down to the drive was breaking up, so he has redone that with gravel. It looks really good and is much easier to walk on now.

So although January may seem like a month where there is not much to do in the garden, we have been keeping ourselves busy. What about you?

This monthly post is  linking to 'Through the garden gate' on Sarah's blog Down by the Sea

A few little jobs

On Saturday I popped down to the allotment  to do a couple of jobs whilst Richard was busy in the garden doing repairs to the fence. I went just to fill up the bird feeders, pull some leeks and the last of the cabbages. But once I was there, I decided to hoe and tidy the beds where I had been pulling up the veg. Then I decided to give the leeks a boost with some chicken manure pellets. I also noticed that the purple sprouting broccoli needed staking so I sorted that out too. There are always jobs to be done even in the winter.

When I arrived at the allotment site there was a pile of bark shreddings on the car park which had been left for the allotment people to take. I was quite pleased about that as I had been wanting to renew the bark mulch which I had put down on the path through the woodland wildlife area at the top of our plot.

The woodland wildlife area was originally made as a play area and den for the grandchildren. But they have grown a little older and have lost interest  in the allotment. Not me though, I love this little space. There is a bug hotel, a nest box on the big sycamore tree and shade and woodland loving plants. There's an old bench at the top, where it's good to sit and look down on the allotment. I found that putting the bark down has helped to suppress the weeds and it looks good too.

So another job I decided to do was to take a couple of barrow loads of bark from the pile on the car park. We both returned on Sunday to continue with the work, Richard barrowing the bark whilst I did a bit of tidying up and then spreading out the bark. The woodland garden is looking much better now.

Turning the compost bin

One of our first jobs of the New Year on the allotment was to turn the compost. We have six compost bins. One is for leaves and two of them are manure bins. We used to have a good supply of manure delivered to the allotments, but that source has now come to an end. We may have to look elsewhere.

The other three bins are for compost. One bin is for current use for all our garden and kitchen waste. The middle bin is for compost which is rotting down and not being added to. The third bin is pure well rotted compost ready to be used.  That's the system.

We turn our heap about once a month with a fork to allow air to circulate.  We find that the stuff rots down quite quickly and within about 6 to 12  months we have some fairly decent compost ready to be used.

As the first bin was quite full Richard decided to turn it into the middle bin. I let him get on with it. It's quite a strenuous job. The compost looks good but still has woody bits in it. That bin will now be left to rot down without any more stuff being added to it.

It didn't take me long to start filling up the empty bin with compostable waste.  We bring kitchen waste from home, fruit and vegetable peelings as well as cardboard tubes, shredded paper and newspaper. Also added is anything which will rot down from the garden or allotment. Grass cuttings and dead plant material. No perennial weeds, although I do add nettle leaves( no roots) which are good for making compost.

Comfrey leaves can be added too if I'm not using it to make comfrey feed. There is a big clump of comfrey on the plot as well as plenty of it growing outside on the lane. It's a plant which grows big and can take over if not controlled. But it's brilliant for feeding crops especially tomatoes. Woody plant material takes a lot longer to rot down so is not always a good thing to put on the compost heap, but I always put some twigs at the base of the bin when I am starting a new one. It allows air to circulate.

I never fail to get excited about making compost. To me there is something really magical about putting rubbish in a bin or on a heap and then months later to dig out a lovely crumbly mixture to put on my garden or allotment beds.

Allotment catch up

We went to the allotment three times in the last week. That's quite a lot for January. But we were making the most of fine weather to get the last of the beds cleared, weeded and mulched. It was good to get down there, the days are very dreary in January and to get out in the fresh air and do some exercise in the form of hoeing, shovelling and barrowing manure and compost made us feel much better.

It's very quiet down the allotments at the moment, not many people about. Some we won't see yet until March when the growing season starts again. This time of year though, is a good time to catch up on maintenance jobs. Like mending fences, making new beds, sorting out a new allotment.

The birds were glad to see us, we hadn't filled up the feeders for a while.  We have probably now refilled them three times in the last week.

There's always something to do on the allotment, but at this time of year there isn't the rush to get seeds sown or plants in the ground or the feeling that there is so much to do we'll never get through all the jobs. So we can take our time, make the most of leisurely visits to the plot and think about this year's growing plan.  

Looking back on the allotment 2016

We went to the allotment today, the last day of the year. It was good to get down there to do some work. We haven't been to do jobs since the middle of November, just to pick vegetables. It was a bit dull and dreary at first, but we did get a trickle of sunshine later and some blue patches in the sky. We took some lunch and as we sat at the table eating our lunch we thought about the past year and what had changed.

This time last year we were busy clearing our daughter Helen's allotment ready for the new tenants to take it on and I remembered the shock of finding a dead chicken in the manure bin! That had come from the plot behind--poor chicken, we don't know how it got there. Now we just have  the one plot to look after it has been so much easier. Read about plot 10b here

We acquired two greenhouses early in the year and I have so much enjoyed growing things in there and we are now enjoying eating the chutney made from the tomatoes and chillies.

The wildlife have enjoyed our allotment this year. We had frog spawn and tadpoles in our new pond and  I rebuilt the bug hotel which was falling down. The flowers have been great especially the sweet peas.

Anyone who gardens or has an allotment will know that you have good years and bad years for crops. So some things have done well and others not. After several years trying to grow celeriac without success I have decided not to bother growing it again. But one new veg I would like to try growing is flower sprouts.

Most of the fruit has done well, we are still eating the apples which are stored in the shed, the freezer is groaning under the weight of the rhubarb and I have had blueberries for breakfast.  Strawberries and gooseberries keep us going in jams through the year, they go on my breakfast porridge.

One sadness of the year has been that we lost Ziggy the allotment cat, who came with Helen's plot and then moved to our plot. We miss her, she was always there to meet us very noisily when we arrived and miaowed constantly as we worked, wanting nothing more but food and the occasional cuddle. It's very quiet on the plot now she's gone.

So, after a year of, weeding, mulching, composting, sowing, planting, growing and harvesting, I now look forward to another year. I wish you all a happy and blessed new year, a year of good crops and very few bugs, a year to enjoy sunshine and showers, a year to enjoy your plot or your garden.

Thank you for following me.

Through the garden gate in December

I prepared this blog a couple of weeks ago and with all the busyness of Christmas, didn't get around to finishing it. So as it's about things I have been doing in the garden in December I decided to publish it as this month's 'Through the Garden Gate' post, joining with Sarah at Down by the Sea.

There's not been much gardening done in December except to sweep up leaves and cut back the odd plant which has got messy. But I've had lots of fun doing other things.

Christmas is a busy time,  I love all the sparkle and glitter, it just seems to brighten up this dark time of year, not just in the house but also in the garden.

I've always enjoyed making my own evergreen door wreaths at Christmas. I put one on the front and one on the back door. But in the last two or three years I have felt inspired to decorate the garden too. I have loads of foliage available in the garden and at the allotment. There are seedheads, moss, twigs, berries and many other things freely available.  So I have been making use of them.

I got a few ideas from our December visits to RHS Harlow Carr who decorate the greenhouse and summer house with rustic stuff, but who also add quirky things like hanging big baubles from trees and twiggy stars from the pergola.

So this year I have made twiggy wreaths wrapped in moss and  berries and hung them on the garden gates and the shed. I have also arranged pots of seasonal colour on the garden table and potting benches.  I made stars and hearts out of twigs to hang from the apple tree and other places.  And I have hung big red baubles  from the apple tree too.

I am expecting that the berries will all be eaten by the birds, but that doesn't matter they can have a feast for Christmas. Storm Barbara arrived here in the north yesterday and this morning I spotted a bright red shiny bauble on the lawn which had been blown off one of the stars in the apple tree. I'm hoping for some calmer weather soon.

Thank you to all who follow and comment on my blog I wish you all  a happy and peaceful Christmas.

Hyacinths at Christmas

 It seems ages ago that I potted up the hyacinth bulbs for flowering at Christmas. It was at the beginning of October and once I'd planted them, I put them away in the shed where they would be cool and dark and almost forgot about them. Occasionally when I was rummaging about in the shed I remembered them and checked to see if they needed watering. They always looked no different to when I had first potted them up.

But then about three weeks ago I checked them again and amazingly there were pale yellow shoots poking through the compost. I brought them into the house and following instructions on various gardening web sites, I put them where they would get some light but still be cool. After a week the pale shoots had turned green and were looking really healthy.

Some of them I give to friends for Christmas presents, others go to family. The rest of them go in my front porch on the windowsill or the table, and decorate the porch for Christmas. I cover the top of the compost with moss, collected from the garden, and I put sparkly gold twigs in the pots which look good at Christmas but provide support as the hyacinths start to grow taller. The hyacinths are white so with the gold twigs are a good seasonal colour. I'm not sure that they'll be in flower for Christmas, but they won't be long after.

Some of my friends say that it is easier to just buy them from the shops at this time of year, they are quite inexpensive. But I love the growing process.  The waiting and watching, the excitement of those green shoots appearing and the knowing that this was something that I have nurtured. This is all part of the magic of Christmas.