Thoughts on a wet day just after New Year

I was bitten by the vegetable growing bug soon after we moved into our new house and garden in Marden. Thrilled to harvest a big crop of onions, it did occur to me soon afterwards that I could have bought them very cheaply at the supermarket without the bother and expense of planting, tending, harvesting and storing. However, that simply prompted me to move on to other crops which are more expensive to buy. Since then my veg garden has been an ongoing project. I tell myself that I’m doing my bit for sustainability, but really it is because I enjoy vegging out in the fresh air and soil.

So I decided to blog about it here, in the hopes that some of you other keen veg and fruit gardeners will join in.

Admittedly January is not the ideal time to start. All the Christmas festivities have meant that I haven’t really been out there and Storm Henk is now raging. It is very wet and windy and I’m worrying that the purple sprouting broccoli will be blown over. Worst still, I haven’t sown my over-wintering broad beans, ‘Aguadulce’ - and now I have just picked up the packet of seeds to see how to spell Aguadulce, and in doing so knocked over an open packet of peas and have spilled them over the floor! These are Pea ‘Meteor’ which also should have been sown a couple of months ago.

Clearly I need to get organised! Another thing on my mind is to sow peppers and chillis. Last year I sowed them too late to get any sort of crop, so a lesson has been learnt. Of course these will have to be under glass, so there is a job to be done reorganising the greenhouse for this. I’m hoping to get away without heating it this year, so if the weather does turn very cold some things might have to move in to the house.

There isn’t much I can do right now, it is dark, wet and cold, so I’m just going to dream about next summer’s crops…