Harvest winter vegetables.
Continue winter digging if conditions permit; generally this is difficult between mid December and the end of January.
In severe weather, protect emerging winter broad beans - these should stand a minimum temperature of -5 degrees.
Sit at home on Christmas day and remember all the lovely vegetables and fruit you have harvested over the year with a drink!!!
One of the questions facing all gardeners, and particularly new ones, is the spacing of crops. Too close and your crops don’t have space to reach a good size or to produce a good yield; too far apart and you are wasting ground.Most seed packets and gardening books will give instructions about spacing and it is probably worth keeping a note-book/diary with planting dates and spacings to refer to later.
With potatoes my Dad always put his rows the length of a spade handle apart. One year when I had early blight, Peter Parr suggested that I had planted my potatoes too close. However, early potatoes can be planted closer in the row than main crop.
With carrots, sow the seeds thinly. This year I must have had nearly 100% germination and as I don’t thin carrots I have got a massive crop of mini carrots.
With beetroots, harvest the larger ones first to give the smaller ones room to grow on. However with carrots, thinning can attract carrot root fly.
Find out what works best for you!
Happy Christmas to you all and happy planting in 2010!
Andrew Hawkins, Chairman