Happy New Year

I am so excited about the coming season; spent an hour wandering around the local garden centre this morning; ordered new seeds online (more about that later); and the sun is shining today, which I am taking as a sign that this year we will have more favourable weather than last year.

I have already started some things off; in the autumn I planted some onion sets and they seem to be doing pretty well

 

I also started off some peas and have so far managed to keep them pretty happy in the potting shed

 

Again I am trying with broad beans, which are now planted out and fleeced to keep out the cold, and hopefully the dreaded blackfly which seem to be present all year round

 

 

 

I was seduced by a mailing from one of the online garden centres which advertised “Potatoes for Easter”, so currently have 15 swift tubers chitting on the kitchen windowsill; they need to be planted in January so I will probably do that at the weekend and keep the sacks in the greenhouse for now.

I’m planning on trying a host of new produce this year:

Whilst I love french beans I’m not really a fan of runners, so this year they will be one of my “if I grow it I might like it” experiments; I will be trying hunter and jiminez.

I can’t seem to watch a cooking show, either professional chefs or amateurs without celeriac popping up somewhere, so I’ll be trying monarch this year.

I’m going big on winter veg, so as well as re-introducing leeks which I really missed last year and regret not growing any, I will be attempting two new varieties of squash; festival and sweet dumpling.

I’ll also be introducing a couple of heritage tomatoes, green zebra and cream sausage, just the names of them make me chuckle.

The most challenging new addition will be mushrooms, chestnut button portobello and white button; although, according to the write-up they are the easiest things to grow, so we’ll see.

So much to look forward to, I really can’t wait to get going.