I’ve not blogged for weeks, I’ve been too cold to sit still for long enough. And I’ve lacked inspiration – the novelty of frost-laced photos wore off some time ago. Blissfully, the sun came out this afternoon, the ground defrosted enough to allow for a bit of planting and weeding and the sun on my gently sweating back tempted me down to a t-shirt and one fleece, discarding the second fleece, body warmer and waterproof in which I’ve been swaddled for weeks.

We’ve actually got a lot done in February in hours snatched between the morning defrost and the afternoon re-freeze (I’ve stopped counting the sub-zero nights as they became the norm some weeks ago). So here’s a bit of an update.

Firstly, here’s the updated picture from the orchard. The plan is to sow the bare areas with wildflowers, using seed saved from our nursery patch from last year.

I’ll post a picture of the area under the Cedar later…

Here’s another before/after set….


No doubt you prefer the ‘before’, but it was in reality a bramble-ridden wasteland, formerly known as the old stock beds. We dug out all the useful plants before enlisting Bill and his JCB to create roughly flat tiers. It will become our outdoor growing on area, hopefully enabling us to keep much larger stocks and a much wider range.

Despite the deep freeze, I’m pleased to say we’re still occasionally raiding the garden for food. Leeks are the perfect nature’s freezer food – as long as you can get them out of the ground of course. These were pulled and eaten tonight, and they were tender and tasty.

And the carrot clamp worked perfectly (see post from 27th October 2009) The top few have a touch of frostbite, but the lower layer is fine. They won’t last much longer though as they are starting to sprout. Monty Don was reminiscing about carrot clamps in his GW article this month. Monty – the outdoor freezer is as good as ever.

February 24, 2010