Happy New Year 2010

A new year and a new start to regular blog-keeping, I hope.

I made a New Year's visit to the plot yesterday in glorious sunshine, but bitterly cold weather. I had accumulated three buckets of compost over the festive period and a black bin bag's worth of paper shredding so I spent most of the time dealing with the compost. I cleared the old compost and laid down the shredding and then covered that with the old compost, new compost and a barrow-load of stable droppings. It looks good enough to eat! I then cleared a bed of weeds and covered it with the manure for winter.

Given how beautiful the weather was, I was astonished to see that the whole site was deserted, but it was wonderfully peaceful and I really enjoyed being there.

The Tame Photographer and I went again today, to carry on clearing beds and covering them. TP cleared one bed while I worked on a second one and we got one covered. Hopefully tomorrow will see the completion of the task. Some of the beds are far to wet to work on, but a couple of days without rain should help. Also, the heavy frosts we are having should help kill off some of the pests. Today the soil was frozen to about 4 inches down.

I harvested my first January King cabbage today - and it looks magnificent, as well as leeks, beetroot and brussels sprouts. Also growing at the moment are parsnips, swiss chard, perpetual spinach, kale, purple sprouting broccoli, parsley and sage.

There is a lot to be done - tidying the shed, emptying the old manure heap and starting a new one, clearing and covering the rest of the beds, cutting down the raspberries and manuring them and so on. But now I have only one plot and have really got going again, the whole things seems much less daunting and I am really looking forward to 2010 on the allotment.