Broad beans, garlic and Jerusalum Aritichokes

The weather was a lot warmer today, so we did a bit more clearing and planting. 

Broad beans went in - never been very successful, but they are fun as they are so early.

Garlic didn't go to plan - bought Elephant garlic by mistake, so only had four cloves to plant. I thought the pack had four bulbs rather than four cloves.

And Jerusalum artichokes - £3 for 2!!! Really! Couldn't believe it! I bought them anyway as I'd made a special trip to buy them but, wow!!! Howfully we'll get some in the organic veg box, so I can plant a few more from there.

Fruit planting

New plan this year - I'm going to keep things simple and concentrate on things that actually grow.

Things that grow:

• Potatoes
• Squash
• Runner beans and Telegraph peas
• Onions
• Artichokes (globe and Jerusalum)
• Soft fruit (rasberry, blackberry, currants)

Things that don't grow

• Brassicas. All of them. Or rather they grow, and then are eaten by slugs, caterpillars, whitefly, you name it...
• Carrots
• Leeks
• Chinese leaf  (they just bolt).
• Most other root vegetables.

Actually, this isn't quite true, most of these do just about grow, and with a huge amount of effort I get about 50 pences worth of veg at the end. Just not worth it. And I've totally had it with ALL brasiccas. 

So, I've been planting more soft fruit. I got a Tayberry and Blueberry for Christmas, and I've added rasberries, a red Gooseberry, redberries and another blackberry. I've also planted out dwarf apple and pear trees that I've had in pots for a few years.

Here's a quite piccy of the area - not much to see at the moment.

Snow

Not a lot happening at the moment - it's snowed for the last few days, as you can see there's a bit left. The winter veg (purple sprouting, kale) have been more less eaten (or at least, aren't there any more). 

There's still are fair bit of grass, and (controversally with my neighbours!) I'm going to try and minimise digging this year, as I think this just makes it worse. Instead I'm going to cover as much as can - you can see one piece of plastic sheeting, and I added another after the photo. Organic matter would be better, but I haven't got any. I might try cardboard.