December In The Garden: Time To Breathe Again
After the rush of November, December feels decidedly more calm.
Everything that needs to be in the garden is in, seed sowing has slowed to every couple of weeks now and I’ve only got one container of seedlings that need to go into the ground.
It only contains more basil seedlings, more fennel and spring onions. I may have been dreaming but there is also some parsley plants that need to go out but as it warms up they will probably go to seed pretty quickly once they go in.
There is also a couple cherry tomato plants that need to find a home which is in short supply as once again I’ve gone over board with tomato plants.
Most jobs in the garden are now a regular check up on each bed. Between removing the laterals from the tomatoes to help them concentrate on getting stronger not producing extra branches, giving the courgettes, tomatoes and glasshouse a weekly feed and checking on any nasties that maybe hanging around.
If you are practicing succession planting with your carrots/radish this will be the time you’ll be needing to begin thinning out the radishes if your sowing is a bit thick in places.
I find the easiest way to do this is with small scissors, just snip off the leaves and the small root base will break down back into the garden. This gives the radishes and carrots room to grow.
I’m onto my third sow of carrots/radishes and have just sown my third round of leafy greens too.
First photo was a bed I sowed 3 weeks ago.
Second photo was from the beginning of spring which will continue to provide for at least 2/3 more weeks before it’s finished but hopefully then the garden I sowed 3 weeks will be ready to enjoy.
Third photo is a garden that I sowed 2 days ago, nothing happening just yet but with the warm wet weather we are having at the moment it won’t take long.
I’m picking from the main bed on a daily basis and picking from a mix of rocket, mescaline, kale/spinach blend so there’s a beautiful combination of flavour.
Every year I like to try something different in the garden and this year it’s watermelon.
Our local strawberry farm has grown them the last few years with great success so I thought I’d give it a go to.
I prepared the garden bed a month or so ago with well broken down horse manure, leaf matter that I’d had breaking down from autumn 2 years ago and then topping it off with compost and garden mix. I will mulch with pea straws later in the month.
I’ll keep you updated with progress.
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