A quick summary of 2022… a year that seemed to come and go way too quickly. It was either way too hot, or way too cold, or way too wet.

January

• Mostly dug a lot of parsnips

February

• Lots of purple sprouting
• Lots of sprouts
• Two of the overwintered chili plants starting to come back to life, meanwhile I sowed some new ones for this year
• After a lot of rain, I bagged up a load of poo from the local stables and spread on the garden beds
• Re-netted plants on the plot after very strong winds and storms

March

• Planted out onion sets
• Used compost I had made, dug beds
• Sowed leeks
• Lit a fire
• Planted potatoes

April

• Decided to turn the one large bed in the garden into two, with one of them raised higher off the ground. The garden is on a slight hill
• Good Friday was the hottest day so far of the year
• Used some of the homemade compost from the garden to fill the new bed
• Planted the rest of the potatoes
• Sowed a lot of seed at the plot and in the garden
• Put down new turf in the garden over where some of the beds used to be

May

• Started pulling radish
• Cutting the grass
• Pulled the last of the leeks, they didn’t do too well (allium leaf minor)
• Peas in the garden starting to show
• No rain
• Purple sprouting finally flowering, looks nice but harvesting over
• Finding homemade compost in the garden still contained a lot of old tomato seeds, all starting to show (and being pulled out as they show)
• Beds at home full
• Planted out leeks (which would come to nothing this year)
• Strawberries rippening
• Breakfast in the garden, toast and coffee – hot and sunny

June

• Super hot days between heavy showers, very good weather for growing
• Grass on abandoned plots now shoulder height in places, the plot seems hidden within the wilderness
• Mice eating strawberries
• Spending a lot of time sitting in the garden during the hot weather
• Harvested garlic and over wintered onions, a lot of the garlic had not split into bulbs
• Hot weather also brings heavy rain storms, potato plants get battered
• Picking peas in the garden
• Starting to pull spring onions
• Water trough at the plot has leak in the water pipe, water got quite low until I worked out how to temporarlly turn it back on again to fill. Doing a lot of watering

July

• Picking lots of cherries
• Super hot weather, potato plants suffering – max temperature recorded in the garden as 33c
• Watering as much as a can every other day
• Planted out sprout plants, possibly a bit late
• After the peas had finished, I kept a couple of the self seeded tomato plants
• Lots of harvesting

August

• Harvested borlotti beans for the first time, made my own baked beans!
• Bought in swede plants after the ones from the seed came to nothing. Peat free compost has been a challenge throughout the year for everything
• Soil very much like dust
• More watering, until it finally rained, a lot
• No real weeds due to super hot weather
• Dug the remaining potatoes, a good result for the year
• Planted field beans as green manure
• Netted sprout plants
• Tomatoes and pumpkin plants growing
• Pumpkin and butternut squash taking over their bit of the plot
• Tried to take blackberry cuttings, none of them worked out
• Loads of tomatoes at home, plus a couple of butternut squash

September

• Cutting the grass constantly
• Field beans growing
• Days getting shorter
• Two pumpkins growing well
• Lots of heavy rain, weeds growing once again after little activity during the dry hot summer
• Loads of tomatoes
• Loads of potatoes
• French and runner beans

October

• Sprout plants overtaken by pumpkin plants, not getting to the plot that much meaning they need a lot of tidying up
• Planted overwintering onion sets in the garden, giving the plot a break hoping to get rid of allium leaf minor
• Planted garlic at the plot
• Pulled carrots
• Removed old courgette plants, didn’t do very well this year – maybe lack of water during the super hot weather?
• Cut our first ever pumpkin, made pumpkin pie
• Picked the remaining tomatoes, mostly green ones

November

• Cut down, cut up, and dug in the field beans
• Lots of bad weather and rain
• Even more wind and rain, rivers flowing down the road and locusts falling from the sky…
• Sowed broad beans
• Picked purple sprouting
• Lots of tidying on the plot

December

• Heavy frosts for a week where temperatures did not get much higher than 0c
• Covered garden beds with compost
• After ice, lots and lots of rain
• Broad bean plants starting to show
• A muddy morning at the plot, I returned with parsnips, swede, sprouts, beetroot