March 2018 in pictures

What a start to the month! Freezing temperatures and on March 1st we had heavy snow. This lasted 3-4 days, disappeared and then reapppeared with a vengeance two weeks later. No way were we going to be sowing or planting anything outdoors this month.

In between snow storms the rhubarb was bold enough to poke its head above ground. It was planted about 18 months ago so we are hoping to be able to harvest some stalks from it this year.

Indoors, we were enjoying some pea shoots growing on the window sill but I suspect we may have started them off far too soon. We have no clue as to when it is going to be warm enough to plant them outside.

We finally took the plunge and sowed our tomatoes in modules indoors toward the end of the month, three weeks later than usual but there was no point in starting them off any earlier. The weather forecast is still not good and it will take a while for the ground to warm up. It looks as though that, like last year, everything will be a month late.

We did, though, have some harvest from our perennials: ramsons (wild garlic), Babington's leeks and red veined sorrel. And we were still pulling up the spring onions that probably grew from a packet I had dropped in the autumn last year. 

January 2018 in pictures

January is generally a quiet month spent mostly ordering and sorting seeds, and planning the sowings and plantings for the coming year. Towards the end of the month I started testing some of the older pea seeds in the Reading Food Growing Network's seed swap boxes for viability. Most of the packets had good rates of germination and high enough to be included in the swap boxes for another year. It is, of course, far too early to plant out the seeds once they have germinated so they go into pots on the kitchen window sill and the pea shoots add a welcome variety to our winter salads.

It's also the time of year when I go through the seeds I already have and donate the surplus to the RFGN seed swap.

We had some snow and cold weather in Caversham. The snow was quite impressive while it was coming down but it didn't last long on the ground. SI really hope that we don't have long drawn out cold spell this spring as we have over the last couple of years.