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
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