Friday, 30 January 2015

That was January!

Not much to say about the garden this month. The weather has been varied - from heavy rain to frost and now snow - so there hasn't been a lot of opportunities to do much gardening. I stole a few sunny mornings to dig over part of the vegetable plots and add a bit of compost and to cut back quite a lot of ferns (bracken) and dead foliage which with the wet weather has just been lying all soggy over the soil.

Single snowdrops
Snowdrops are coming up. The single ones mostly in the flower beds are a little ahead and standing up with their heads bobbing. The ones in the grass (can't call it a lawn!),  mostly doubles and a bit shorter, are just coming up now. Have to be careful walking on the grass because it's full of little green & white spikes.

There are just a few hellebores in flower. Bulbs generally seem a bit behind. I suspect this indicates more cold weather before the end of the winter.

The water level in the surrounding field is pretty high with the green pipe flowing strongly and the pond almost over-flowing.

Friday, 9 January 2015

Heritage Orchard

Happy 2015! The weather has been crazy so far - the remains of Boxing Day snow, hard frost interspersed with torrential rain has kept the garden out of bounds - so some additional research (i.e. browsing) time.

Found this Heritage Orchard site www.heritageorchard.co.uk while checking out Leicestershire events for the Coleorton Parish website.   They run various talks and courses related to Leicestershire apple varieties. But their site also has links with mountains of information about vegetables, fruit and potatoes. I will be spending more time there, especially checking the potato varieties and pests section!