2022 Summary

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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