What do you do on an allotment when it is snowing and freezing to boot? One of those days that make your eyes water, nose run and ears sting. Most people would stay at home. We didn't. The greenhouses were dark with snow laying on the roof - surprising how something so white can restrict the flow of light so much. So we swept the greenhouse roofs and in the time it took to do a few other bits and a cup of tea in front of the gas fire in the shed, the roofs were covered again.

So far only minor losses in the greenhouse from the cold spell. Hollyhocks don't like the cold and an odd sweet pea is RIP despite a paraffin heater that we set up over the weekend. Some of our radish seedlings have died but a lot in the pot remain alive so we will see what happens with them. We are potting up the onion seedlings sown at beginning of January along with summer broccoli and cabbage into twelve cell trays. The January sowing list is complete and we are waiting to start February's list which is longer.
Our stored butternut squashes have started to go rotten so they are now chopped up and frozen ready to make butternut squash and apple soup. The onions in store are doing well although we were unable to get anything out of the ground to eat because it was frozen. Thankfully all thawed out now.
Back to buying potatoes from the supermarket. We left a lot in the ground and they have rotted. We are going to buy the first lot of seed potatoes tomorrow from the spud fair. Early spuds going in big pots in the greenhouse for our first new potatoes in June. The rest will chit in the shed well wrapped up in fleece.

In an attempt to reduce our manure bill for next year we have begun collecting stable manure to rot down over summer. 4 car loads and approx 100 bags later we have two large compost bins rotting away. In true dedication to the cause we are hoping to keep up the fortnightly trips and to build another couple of bins to accommodate it all. In the coldest of last week's weather our manure piles were steaming away, testimony to the good stuff within.
Outside bulbs continue to grow and snow drops have flowers on them. The bellis flowers were the only colour in the snow last weekend along with an odd pansy flower. The sedum is budding and tree buds are getting fatter slowly but surely. The promise of better things to come - better get on with those jobs then ....

With Christmas and new year over it is time to really get down to thinking about the growing season ahead, which for us starts now. As you can see from the picture below we did as we said we would on Christmas morning, and visited a rather wet allotment to pick some veg for dinner and some greenery for a table centre piece. This had bay, rosemary, privet, holly and some variegated stuff, all off the plot. This would have cost a small fortune from a florist, but cost us the price of a candle and a piece of oasis.

   During the winter months, I find myself digging out (no pun intended) my old allotment books. I have just finished reading Terry Walton's My Life on a Hillside Allotment. A pleasant enough read but rather uncharismatically written and portrayed. It does however give an overview of what needs doing season by season and gets the brain thinking about the year ahead. My absolute favourite and a book that I turn to for comfort again and again is "Digger's Diary" by Victor Osbourne. A beautifully written description of some of the characters on his allotment site and the things he does month by month, the successes and failures and his observations about what is magical about having an allotment. If you don't have one then you probably won't appreciate the delights of this book.

   The weekend between Christmas and new year saw us making our first sowings of the new year. A tray of early peas, climbing peas and onions, a pot of belstar broccoli and greyhound cabbage and a few pots of sweet peas: all of them germinated in less than a week. Cleaned a greenhouse out this morning and done the minor repairs and bits and pieces to keep it in good condition. Bubble wrap going in tomorrow and the newly emerged seedlings will hopefully survive the cold weather. 

   We are disappointed with our over wintering broccoli plants which have been getting a bit on the big side. Four of them have started to produce heads because they had outgrown their pots. We probably grew them too early last year. We have re-potted the remaining ones in the hope they won't grow too much before we can plant them out in March. Another pot sown anyway just in case. We usually get broccoli in June from the over wintered stuff so it's worth doing.

   We will be working hard now for a few hours every dry weekend to get the ground dug, cleared, manured and composted before planting kicks off big time. On the 27th January it is the annual Potato Fair in Sydenham where you can buy spuds as single tubers. We buy rows of various different types, some turn out nice and others don't. Last year we lost our seed tubers because we put them in a shed and the prolonged frost in February affected them badly. We won't make the same mistake again. We bought five micro tubers of a blue potato last year, lost four of them and planted the one survivor to get some decent size tubers to grow this year. They did well and we have loads of purple tubers to plant this year. We'll let you know what they look like (if they ever reach a plate). Normally we would have shallot bulbs growing in the greenhouse in six cell trays. This gives them the opportunity to grow roots before planting outside and gives them a good head start on the worst of the winter weather and allows us to get them out of the ground a bit earlier at a good size so we can use the ground for something else. However we decided not to save from last year's crop as we had been saving our own for years and the crop wasn't great this time round. New stock then this year.

Our plot plans are now complete and up on the shed wall and our aspirations for 2013 clear. We wish our readers a happy new year and hope that your aspirations are fulfilled.