Cabbages and cauliflowers

Cauliflower ‘All Year Round’ – I’d settle for over winter and into Spring

Spurred on by my success with onions this season, a crop which hitherto had proved troublesome to me, I decided to have a go at another family group which has always eluded me and so a couple of months ago, I sowed some cauliflower (All Year Round) and cabbage (Winter Jewel) seeds, in a propagator which has lived in the greenhouse ever since. I chose the varieties for their ability to overwinter outside and, with luck, provide us with spring produce.

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Winter Garden, Spring seedlings

Even Lilliputians would struggle to make a meal out of this one!

As I peered into one of my little growhouses yesterday, I got a bit of a surprise …… my first ever cauliflower! Cause for celebration, you might think but this speicmen is no family sized block buster, nor would it sustain a health conscious singleton, in fact even the local vole would struggle if it was wholly reliant on this cauliflower for survival. But a cauliflower is a cauliflower, even if it is only 1 inch diameter, and it is the first one I have ever grown at home and so I am going to celebrate it Lilliputian style with a suitably subdued ‘Yipee!’

The Winter Garden: an update

Last years strawberry runners are liking the greenhouse

The air was crisp but the sun was shining first thing this morning and so with the Mudlets delivered to school I decided to take a stroll down to my vegetable patch and greenhouses, to check on the progress of the various plants.

The Winter garden at year end

Towering above the rest of the garden, these have been taunting me for weeks!

With the very strong winds, rain and/or plain icy weather we have been having in recent weeks, I have to admit that I am guilty of neglecting my garden, preferring to remain warm and snug inside and blatantly ignoring the chaos and unkempt appearance at the end of the garden. Not that much of that section of the garden can be seen from the house and I have become adept at turning a blind eye on my daily visits to the coal bunker.

My Winter Garden: snug as a bug …. I hope

Going nowhere fast

I think it’s safe to say that no matter what happens to the plastic covers for my little grow houses, the frames won’t be going anywhere soon. You see, in true Mud fashion, these have been secured to the railway sleepers that edge my beds with industrial strength U-shaped nails and cable ties.

The Winter Garden, Christmas Carrots and Little Elf Chillies

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The ‘Tim and Joey’ seedling

I have to say that the bubble wrapped greenhouse is quite a pleasant place to be on a cold autumn morning and judging by the look of my tub of Christmas Carrots, the plants seem to agree.

That’s a wrap

Under wraps and ready for winter

With the day dry and bright, albeit a little cold, I decided to crack on and get the insulating of my small greenhouse finished before the first of the frosts arrived which should be any day now. Of course I had left the trickiest section of greenhouse to last, well you do don’t you, and so I first had to work out just how I was going to attach the bubble wrap to the front panels and the door.

Hhmmm. Quite a bit of dead scratching, chin rubbing and tutting later (I think I’ve picked up some bad habits from Mud), a solution popped into my head and I got to work.

Clearing the beds and winter crops

Spot the difference

Today you could have been forgiven for thinking that it was still summer in our part of the UK: the sun was shining, there was barely a gentle breeze to disturb the illusion and temperatures reached the low 20’s. It felt like summer but a look around my fading garden soon dispelled any pretence and I had to face the fact that there was one job I couldn’t put off any longer, so this morning I started the laborious process of clearing the spent plants from my beds, reclaiming my plant rings and labels and consigning numerous bamboo supports to winter storage.

The great tidy up had begun.