Gardening blog

Week forty nine December 2nd - December 9th

2007

Photos Sunday 2nd December 2007. Pruning large cooking apple tree. John's Early Purple Sprouting. Apples for birds. Planted first garlic. Sowed broad beans. Need to plant tulips bulbs that are now late.

2005

Time to clean out the gutters and trim the Virginia Creeper.

2004
Sunday 5th December 2004 It was a great day to sow early peas - indeed it was warm enough for a few bees in every hive to go out in the middle of the day for a fly around. I sow these peas simply and thickly in drawn out drills. As the rhyme goes:- one for the mouse, one for the crow, one to rot and one one to grow.

Not only did I get two rows of peas sown (my own saved seed from Meteor and newly purchased Feltenham First) but had a good day taking down and putting away in the shed the canes used for growing the runner beans and digging the area over. The autumn planted Japanese onions needed hand weeding and the broad beans were hoed. Pulled up the last of the small beetroot sown in the summer.

The celariac that was given to me as the smallest of plants early in the year by John have done extremely well and have been ready to crop for a few weeks now.

2003
Weekend 6/7th December 2003

On Sunday the sun shown but the light breeze came from the east and as the day ended with clear skys there could well be a frost tonight. I like to sow Meteor round seeded peas during the first week in December and got four rows of saved seed in today. One lot of seeds were those that I selected this year as a cross between the Meteor and my tall old fashioned peas as the plants were growing considerably taller than the rest of the row.

I dug up and gave away a bunch of suckers from the greengage tree and a couple of gooseberry bushes and moved one gooseberry bush to the front garden.

The annual cleaning of gutters and pruning of the Virginia creeper was accomplished this weekend. Cleaned out bird boxes.

On saturday the weather was dry overcast and gray so digging the allotment could be continued.

2002

Sunday December 8th 2002

It's getting still colder with the wind in the East although it has been dry a a fine day to get some peas sown. I have sown 4 rows this year - twice as many as last year.

Saturday December 7th 2002

The weather is gradually getting colder so it was good to get the last of the tulips planted today and dig up more potatoes.