Winter's Last Fanfare?

Purple Sprouting Broccoli - Rudolph

 This is one of four plants in the school garden.  I am surprised that it doing so well.  Last autumn an overenthusiastic child mistook it for a weed and uprooted it.  It was quite adolescent at about 18 inches high but I decided to retrieve it from the compost heap and plant it again:  brassicas are transplanted when very young so why not give it a try.  All the same I am gobsmacked that this has done best of all out of four specimens.

Some other overwinterers are also thriving in the balmy conditions

Winter Purslane

Land Cress

 There is some less voluminous lambs lettuce in there too.

And bouncing back, after looking very bedraggled over the winter months

Leaf Beet

Flowering in February

Here are some of the treats revealed in February.  The star has got to be witch-hazel.  But then again snowdrops are welcome

as are crocus - s

Only to be outdone by winter flowering iris - s

or the stalwart primula - e

Thank goodness for viola - s

It may not be summer - but something is happening.

Winter Survivors

Not the prettiest of pictures, but I must give credit to the crops which have survived the winter and are still providing food for the table.  

Top of the list has to be carrots.  

The fleece/mesh that was in place to keep off the root fly goes on to afford some protection from the weather.

Hardier than carrots but competing for sweetness are the leeks.  This is the last of them just before I lifted them to make soup yesterday.

Even more bedraggled but showing signs of recovery is spinach.  There were three rows of different varieties and I think it is the Winter Giant that has proved most robust in fighting off the persistent annual meadow grass.

Another hard nut is the Swede.  The pigeons have pecked off the leaves that the frost didn't get, but they still deliver on flavour. Kohl Rabi also deserves a mention as the big swollen stems have overwintered well.  Salsify has also shrugged off winter.

Last but not least I planted up the former strawberry patch with a mixture of brassicas in late summer and hope yet to get some spring pickings.

These are my winter survivors.

Green Manure Update

I have tried three green manures over this winter and they are all still standing*

Grazing Rye

Winter Tares

Clover

These patches are due to be planted up with (1) peas and beans, (2) potatoes and (3) brassicas respectively.  I now have to decide whether to a. vigorously dig them in b. mow and mulch or c. cover with weed suppressant fabric.   My current thinking is 1b, 2a, 3c.  This is partially dictated by the amount of organic mulch I currently have available.

*Cue song:

Invasion Earth - Worm Composting

In order to turn this:

into this

you need a bit of help from these:

Today I decided to empty my mature 'dalek' composter so that I could start filling it afresh and leave the current one (I do have two you see), which is full to brimming, to rot down.

Current Composter

Current contents revealed

Mature composter

Mature contents revealed

Aside from the full capacity I have been prompted to record this event by a most interesting post on another blog.  Hot Composting


In the course of the ensuing discussion  I realised that I don't precisely know how long it takes me to fill one bin and move on to the next.  So in some ways this post is a stake in the ground to remind me of the date I stopped adding to the current (green) dalek. The clock is now running!  A really interesting comparison would be to run one bin with worms and one without, but I don't have the means to do that at present so that will have to wait.  As the worms seem to appear like magic it might not be that easy to engineer the no worm scenario.

Currently we are still in the grips of winter and worm activity will be focused primarily on survival. The will have migrated to the centre of the bin and not be feeding so much.  Once temperatures rise there will be a lot more activity and consumption.  The worms pictured above are escapees from the mature bin.  There's not much future in mining that pile (although there are still a few hundred hidden away within).

In case you are wondering I store cardboard alongside the bin where it gets rained on and is to hand when I consider the balance between browns and greens (or carbon nitrogen ratio) needs redressing.  This is very subjective, as is the addition of water if I consider the mix has got to dry.  If the worms are all on the top it is definitely too wet  and if I start seeing ants that signals to me that it is far too dry. 

I feed my compost bins with kitchen waste  - about a caddy a day.  Coffee grounds, tea leaves, vegetable trimmings, excess cooked vegetables and paper all go in, fats, dairy, meat and bones are all excluded - they go into the Council food recycling caddy.