Planning for the new season, gotta start somewhere.

It may only be January and the weather is definitely still winter but the garden won’t wait for me, planning  and preparation have to be started early so that we are ready to sow come spring.

This year, work will have to start on the greenhouse, not for reasons of planting etc but purely because I have to rebuild it. We had a bad storm over Christmas which tore a couple of roof panels out and last week another storm took the rest. The annual hunt around the neighbourhood to find my greenhouse roof panels is not my favourite game but at least if I find them they pop back into place easily. If it was a glass house, they’d likely be smashed so take the positives where you can.

It’s also time to at least start thinking about the veg I want to grow if nothing more and how that’s going to work out. We didn’t grow carrots last year but ended up spending a fortune buying carrots to eat, so carrots are back on the list. Another new item this year which we are going to try for the first time is sweet peppers. We’ve never grown these before but easily go through half a dozen per week so worth a shot, right? We’ll see how the quadgrow system copes with these.

Bedwise, it’s time to move things around, the strawberries have had their 3 years so we’ll be getting some new plants and moving them to a different bed.

Same with the brassicas. Speaking of which, we are going to have to have a think about the structure we are using for the bed netting. It’s fine for the smaller plants like carrots and beetroot but the kale was growing right through it last year meaning the net did a rotten job of keeping caterpillars away. Some ideas needed there.

Speaking of garden pests though, some little blighter has been digging huge holes in the beds and all the pots, scattering the earth everywhere. I was blaming neighbourhood cats, but I think there may be another culprit. I know our local magpies have been guilty of stealing the fatballs from the bird feeder and burying them, I think they are up to it again. This morning I found a buried bagel in one plant pot.

Oh well of to make a cup of tea and contemplate pea varieties.