January 29, 2025

January gardening gifts and getting organised

It has been a beautiful, sunny day today and so I thought that I would go outside into the garden and get some jobs done.  I usually don’t go any where near the garden until at least February, but this year I have decided to keep doing a bit at a time so that March and April do not seem as busy.  As I age, I don’t have as much energy as I used to have, and so I am pacing myself.  I want to be organised for planting. Unexpectedly the garden had a few gifts for me.

My raised box bed had sunk a bit and the soil is too low for planting next season. I had filled the bottom with twigs and logs and things which have started to decompose.  This is good as they will add nutrition to the soil.  I thought that the box was empty except for a few baby leeks.  To my surprise I found some hidden carrots (the pigeons had eaten the tops off), and some baby beetroot.

We had enjoyed a meal out a week or so ago which included roasted baby beetroot with a a blackberry rue. I was pleased to find them as I can try to recreate that with a meal over the weekend.   The carrots were not massive but will go in one of our weekly stews.  I appreciate every little bit of free, organic food and nothing is wasted.

Most of my Swiss chard had been ruined by the heavy snow and ice that we have experienced recently, but it has started growing again.  I picked some fresh leaves to dehydrate as I want to make a green powder to add nutrition to baking and cooking this year.  Usually, I don’t use all of my Swiss chard as it is not one of our favourite vegetables, but it grows well without me looking after it in the winter.  It adds a splash of colour to the garden as well.  Usually some goes into the compost bin and so I am glad that making the powder will help me to use it up more for our food. I do use the leaves like spinach if they are young.

The garden also had another unexpected gift for me.  I had emptied a couple of containers of my potato soil into a bigger pot last year when I had harvested them at the end of summer.  This soil seemed ideal to help fill up my raised bed again.  There must have been some of those mini potatoes in the soil when I had harvested them in September as I found lots of small potatoes which will make a meal, but enough so that I can also use some as my seed potatoes to plant this year.  They need to be about the size of a hen’s egg to produce a good harvest, I have found.  A lot of these were.

Seed potatoes are expensive and so having these will save me some money.  I have already bought some seed potatoes, but plan to plant more than last year as I am utilising the front of the garden to grow more food this year. Two potatoes in a tub, which is a bucket sized, gives me a good crop of potatoes. I reckon that I can put about 4 or 5 tubs at the front that can be hidden out of sight. I usually have about 8 or 9 in the back garden.  I plant them every 2 weeks so that they are not all ready at once.  I also plant some more in September for fresh potatoes at Christmas.  These go in the greenhouse as the weather starts to get colder.

I added the spent compost from the potatoes to my raised box.  Vegetable peelings were buried deep, and some leaves , and some mini Swiss chard as I have lots as it is growing in 3 different places. (After I took the photo I buried it deeper so that it does not attract rats or anything).  This will refresh the soil.  I then mixed in some organic chicken poo pellets, some ground egg shells, a few worms from my compost bin, and some coffee grounds.  Fresh compost will be added to the top in a month or so.  I also stapled the lining back on to the sides.

Transplanting my leeks into a different box was the next job. They are a kind that keep producing baby ones each year which I just move and so I never have to buy seeds.  Some one gave me some baby ones at the allotment about 5 years ago and so I don’t know what they are called.  They have reproduced each year since and so I have not had to buy any.

I checked my baby garlic, and fingers crossed, up to now, the birds have not fished them out of the ground thinking that they were worms.  They are about 2 or 3 inches high.  I have grown them all from sprouting garlic cloves from the supermarket that would have just wasted.  The rhubarb has started growing, too.  It is a lovely feeling seeing my main summer and winter vegetable food sources starting this early, especially as it is still freezing most nights.

My next job was to wash a load of my plant pots.  I don’t always do this but it is a good way to stop disease spreading.  I mainly check them all for baby snails and slugs so that they do not decimate my crops when I transplant the different seedlings and put them in the greenhouse.  Even though I had stacked all my small plant pots in the green house, there were still a lot of the little baby blighters.  It was a really bad year for slugs and snails last year, and I had to do slug and snail patrols most mornings to keep on top of them.  I used to dump them on the moor, though I did use some beer traps as well. I am thinking of making a make shift pond this year and finding some frog spawn in the hope that will help.

My last job this morning was to do 20 minutes of weeding.  I have put cardboard discs inside a lot of my pots to keep the weeds down, but there are still plenty of weeds around the garden.  It is easier to get them now before they start seeding in spring and so I keep doing little bits each week to try and get on top of them.  I hate weeding but it does not feel as bad when the sunshine is bouncing off the top of your head and blackbirds and robins are singing in the trees around you.  What are you up to in the garden at the moment?

 

 

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4 Comments

  1. Jax January 30, 2025 at 9:38 am - Reply

    What a lovely day you’ve had in the garden. Mines a mess as I never tidied it in the autumn! Are the leeks called walking leeks?

    • ToniG February 1, 2025 at 12:04 pm - Reply

      I have no idea, but thanks for the suggestion. Another person has called primal leeks. I just inherited at my allotment and then brought some home. What ever they are, they have provided me free leeks for about 6 seasons, and saved me money and effort sowing more.

  2. wil verbaas (a women from the Nederlands) January 30, 2025 at 11:44 am - Reply

    the leeks that baby leeks grow next to are called primal leeks.they are baby leeks that just grow big but the leeks also come in primal bulbs

    • ToniG February 1, 2025 at 12:01 pm - Reply

      Thanks for letting me know. They certainly save me work and money

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