Allotment Diary (December – Week 4)

It’s been another extremely slow gardening week, but next week picks up a bit and then we are full steam ahead in the new year.

We’ve had a few issues though. The last two months have been very damp and as a result we have lost about 1/3 of lettuces to stem rot in a couple of beds. Fortunately I sowed new batches – just in case – in November and so I’ve decided to clear and replant the whole beds, which will probably delay early spring harvests by only a week or two and the plants will be stronger and last longer.

We did a lovely harvest for friends and family for Christmas, a veritable feast

Other than that we had a brilliant Christmas, managed to talk to, or spend time with, all of the kids. had some great walks and hired a beach hut for some socially distanced birthday celebrations.

We did managed to save plenty of food for the new year though, I’m fairly confident that we won’t have any shortages, provided we have few moderately sunny days a week for the rest of winter. I’ve just done probably the smallest harvest of the year, just enough for the kids, Debbie and I.

In addition to the gardening news another of my daughters got a new dog for Christmas, bringing the total number of dogs in the family to two, to match the number of cats and soon the number of grandkids!

It’s very rare for me not to sow or plant anything, but that’s how it should be in December, a rest month!

I have however done plenty of pricking out and have some lovely early brassicas growing well under lights, ready for planting out – under cover – in February.

Here’s our harvests for the year so far, with the most recent at the top.  We’ve now passed last year’s total harvest value and we still have a huge amount of food in the ground to harvest this year, so I’m expecting to harvest about £2,500 more than last year.  This is party as a result of spending £200 extending the growing area in the back garden, a very nice payback!

Here’s a list of the preserves for the year.

I always like to keep a track of or first harvest dates and you can find a summary of those here:

YouTube videos for the week can be found here: