…makes a change from the cabin fever we’ve all been suffering for the past few weeks. I’m itching to get out and do some work in the garden. Everything has gone to rack and ruin! Until the end of February, the winter was unexceptional. Nature was gearing up for spring, as usual. I’d had cloches warming the soil so I could plant some potatoes very early. Tomato plants that I’d germinated on my office windowsill had been potted up, and were sitting in the heated part of my biggest greenhouse. It was all on course.
Then March came in with not just a lion, but blizzard conditions the media dubbed The Beast from the East. We had days and days of temperatures well below freezing, and heavy snow. You can read more about that here and here.
The whole month was a write-off as far as I was concerned. When the weather was good enough to go outside, I was busy working on Women’s Lives in Bristol. When I had a break in my writing schedule, the weather was so bad, it put the garden out of bounds. There’s no point sowing seeds into freezing, waterlogged soil. With the greenhouse door either frozen shut or blocked by snowdrifts, I left it well alone. The only action going on inside was the flowering of the apricot (you can read more about that here) and nectarine trees. My visits were restricted to checking the heater, and bringing bowls of bulbs in from Tottering Towers, as they finished flowering.
This Easter weekend means a fresh, if late, start. The first purple sprouting broccoli will be ready to pick (I’m thinking broccoli and stilton flan…). The compacted, airless soil around the garlic and shallots needs freshening up. A winter’s worth of pesky weeds needs to be decapitated. My first job will be to sharpen the blade of my hoe. Then it will slice through those infant hordes before they can set seed. One year’s seeds means seven years of weeds, don’t forget!
Once the weeding’s done, I can plant my potatoes. Good Friday is the traditional time for that job, not for any superstitious reason but because in the past, religious festivals were the only time working people managed to get a day off. I’ve tried loads of different potato varieties in the past, but this year the season is so late I’m relying on some tried-and-trusted favourites. I’m growing Rocket, which will produce new potatoes in about ten weeks, Duke of York, another early but which will take a bit longer, and Pink Fir Apple which is a late maincrop variety. It won’t be ready for lifting until the autumn, but the distinctive long pink tubers will give us that distinctive new potato flavour into the New Year.
I’ll also be making the first outdoor vegetable sowing, which will be parsnips. I’ve had some soil covered for them to warm it up and dry it out, but once the seeds are in I’ll leave the protection off. They’re tough enough to stand whatever April can throw at them.
Have you got anything special planned for this holiday weekend?