A “quick” visit in the afternoon to fetch some bits for tea and to dig up the Christmas potatoes. It was both wet and cold and so wasn’t going to stay for long, but I did end up moving some of the paths to go around the edge instead of through the middle now that room was being freed up.

I noticed quite quickly upon arriving that some small animal had dug holes in the woodchip paths. Further on I saw they had dug up some of the plastic bottles covering the young broad bean plants and nibbled them enough to kill them off. Four plants remain under bottles and I pegged them down with the hope they might survive until they get bigger. When I got home, I planted another lot in pots to be kept outside but undercover with the hope to plant them out later on. Not as low maintenance as it was last year…

I dug up the potatoes, a small collection. They died off at the beginning of November and so have been mostly sitting underground since then. It’s never a massive amount but at the same time it’s nice to think you are eating your own new potatoes when days are short, dark and cold. Not sure they will actually see Christmas though…

Some of the potatoes were planted in pretty bad ground right next to the fence that separates us from the South Downs. It’s rocky and full of tree roots and not much grew there in the summer and the potatoes there didn’t do that well, which was not a surprise. Potatoes further away from the fence did much better. With all that in mind, I moved the wood path to next to the fence.

The sprout plants were looking a bit unloved with a lot of dead leafs needing to be removed. Having done that it was clear that sprouts are now ready for picking and so I picked our first lot for the year.

I pulled up some parsnips, the plant’s greenery has mostly died off now. All of today’s were pretty small and funny shapes, showing again that transplanting them as seedlings might not be the best thing to do next year. Saying that, they were all feasible, just not as good looking as they could be.

I came home with the following:

• parsnips
• leeks
• carrots
• kale
• potatoes
• sprouts
• broccoli

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•