Its the lull before the storm...

    Well here are heading into the last week of January. Seed potatoes are in the garden centre and the brico (builders merchant come garden centre). This coming week I will need to decide what potatoes I am going to plant this season. After last seasons considerable success with Desiree, Rosebelle and Belle de Fontenay my strategy is going to change to growing first earlies and a larger main crop, probably Charlotte and Desiree. I will have to see what there is on the shelves! I do like to grow a heritage variety even if its only a small number.
   I find is interesting to look back to last year and see what I wrote. On January 20th last year I had germinated onions and there was snow on the ground. Not so this year, although the onion seed has been sown into modules and are at this time sitting on my dinning room floor!
   So what has been going on over the last week? Not a lot. The weather continues to be cold and wet with frost most mornings. Anything done in the garden? Nope, not a jot. 
   What else then? I can report that our chickens are excelling themselves this month and have to date produced 162 eggs up to 15th January! I would have thought January would have been a poor month for egg laying. 
   Hopefully the weather might dry up a little and I might get something outside done. In the mean time it is hunker down by the fire time, make some hot chocolate and continue to plan out the garden plots.

What can I say? Its January.

   So here we are in the middle of January. Not much to write about really. I have sown some Yellow Rynsburger and Sturon onion seed in modules and some in a poly tunnel bed. The seed in the bed is pure speculation. Other than that done a little more tidying up of the annual beds and had a bonfire to get rid of the dead tops and some wood. 
   The weather continues to be wet and this week the ground became just about workable and we got a down pour. One of the culverts on the side of the road got blocked and we could not free it so we had to dig a trench along the line of the culvert to enable the water to run away down the ditch rather than over the road. The fast flowing water has made even more of a mess of the road.

Christmas Potatoes!

   First ever Christmas potatoes! After three attempts at growing new potatoes for Christmas, success! A decent amount of potatoes were obtained from potatoes planted in the poly tunnel despite the plants being killed off by blight/mould. Sprouts, rather on the small side and once again disappointing, parsnips and small carrots were other vegetables taken from the garden for the Christmas table to go with the home raised goose. I am going go give up with sprouts. Really not worth the effort and the fact that they have to be in the ground for a long time.

Christmas Potatoes

As has been the trend since moving to this part of France winter really starts to bite at the end of December. There has now been several mornings of frost.
   I come back to this blog with Christmas over and the New Year underway. Much to my surprise the weather has turned mild but still very damp with many days of  on/off drizzle. On the sowing front I am resisting sowing onion seed for another week or so.
   Nothing much going on in the garden, either too wet or frosty or something else gets in the way. There is still a lot of tidying up to do but the weather has not cooperated. Dug up some leeks and parsnips. In the poly tunnel I have forked/raked in some pot ash (ashes taken from the wood burner) into about half of the long bed. There is not a lot going on in the poly tunnel. Some fennel is hanging on as are some radishes. The spring cabbage still looks good and fingers crossed I may get one or two. My peas, due to the mild weather, are further on than I would have liked. I may try to sow some more and see what happens.
   All in all a quite couple of weeks on the garden front with more being done on the Christmas/New Year celebrating side!