Frozen in the Sunshine and Flying Greenhouses

Fozen Sunshine

Down to the plot around lunchtime. Whilst places from Aberdeen to Cornwall suffer under the snow, we had bright sunshine, which quickly melted the frost although it’s pretty cold. When the sun went behind a cloud the temperature fell 10 degrees,

Since we have so many chippings, decided to add some to the bit by the shed on plot 5. This involved moving everything off, including table, coldframe, bags of sand, bench seat, sides for anti pigeon screens, greenhouse door and so forth!

A nice topping of chippings should keep it from dissolving into the mud for another year. I suppose next year I should scrape the top chippings back and use the rotted chippings under on the plot.

The winds last night had blown over a sheet of greenhouse glass – needless to say it was smashed. Not as bad as the plot opposite, He had erected the frame of his greenhouse, which had flown onto the next plot, twisting in the process. The power of the wind is amazing. I wouldn’t have thought it had enough surface area without glass in to act as a sail but it had.

Larry, the site rep, and Tony from plot 4 helped me to move it back to its own plot.

One of the chipping piles delivered has a lot of leaves in it, mainly holly by the look of them. It was steaming so I thought it should rot down fairly quickly. Put a four inch layer on the bottom of the leafmould cage on plot 5. This should rot down under the leaves and, next year when I use the leafmould, indicate where the leafmould finishes and the soil begins.

One of the compost bins is empty so proceed to barrow loads of leaves to the cage and loads of chippings in the big green garden bag to the compost bin. About half filled the bin and just started the leafmould cage.

Because I want to hurry the process of turning the wood chippings into compost, I added a bit of urea to improve the carbon nitrogen ratio.

The comfrey bed looks folorn. The comfrey normally just dies off when we start having cold days and frosty nights but the sudden change has caught it on the hop. The foliage has just frosted in the minus 6 temperatures and is laying there.

Garlic Problem

I picked up some garlic to plant at the beginning of the month but it has been too wet and now too cold to do so. So shall I hang on in hopes of improved weather or start them off in plant pots? Eeeny, meeny, miney, mo.