The New Year begins

   Happy New Year! Christmas has gone and 2016 has started and this is the first posting of 2016. 2015 ended with a freezer disaster with me loosing two turkeys and three chickens. Fortunately none of them were required for Christmas. My seed holding has been sorted and I have a good idea of what my sowing and planting for 2016 will be. It will be a year of unusual tomatoes with a bit of luck! I have been given some seed that will produce blue tomatoes. That seems to be as bad as violet potatoes! 

Morning moon 271215

   I often wonder if the phases of the moon affect sowing and planting. The picture opposite was taken on the morning of the 27th December 2015. There is a whole raft of stuff about the subject and here in France there would seem to be quite a following.
   In the garden once more not a lot done. I have cleared off the bean poles, late I know and I am wondering whether to leave them up or not. Most of the leaves have now been raked up and put into a leaf compost heap. Due to the mild weather I have managed to pull a couple of turnip/swedes and I cannot say that I prefer them to swede. Never been a keen fan of turnip. I guess the turnip/swede would be quite good in soup and stews but mashed, no. I still have a few carrots in the ground and really must use them up. Also I have winter cabbage the size of footballs. I have to admit to planting F1 hybrids here bought from the local market as my own plants failed. The winter leeks are now of an edible size and the few purple sprouting plants are now recovering from the late attack by white butterfly caterpillars.
  The better part of two years old leaf compost has now been spread over the poly tunnel beds. An area has been prepared for a sowing of white spring onions except these have a bulb and are not like White Lisbon and yes they can be sown now.
  On the animal front I can report that our eleven hens produced 2554 eggs in 2015 (Jan-Dec) with sixty either soft shell or laid outside the coop. That is approximately seven eggs a day! What have we done with 2500 eggs??? The geese were processed and one eaten for Christmas dinner. It was quite nice but I am not convinced they are worth the effort. The decision has been made not to raise geese or turkeys next year.
  I am keen to get cracking with early sowing but I need to resist sowing tomato seed too early. Last couple of years I have sown it around the middle of January and ended up with plants ready to put out before the last frost has happened. I will sow some lettuce soon. That has worked well.
  Still lots to do. Need to take herb cuttings and sort out my three herb beds which are now two or three years old and some plants are getting a little long in the tooth. So upwards and onwards!