2023 - What I did today

I planted potatoes
Had a lot of sprouting potatoes, too far gone to be worth saving for cooking, so, remembering my vow to plant every sprouted potato somewhere in the garden, I needed to find a spot that didn't involve much work to create - its too cold to be messing about outdoors for long. I wandered around with my bucket of spuds, finding only odd gaps that would take two or three spuds but none of them appealed to me. I considered chucking them in the waterlogged pond as an experiment, wondering whether they would rot before they rooted and how it would smell if they did? Discounted that idea!
Turning round, I found the solution - about a dozen large containers, all 30 litres or more, that had been filled with fresh woodchip a couple of months ago. Because the woodchip had got wet, the containers were heavy to lift, so I'd left them there, hoping they'd rot down in situ. Not so far although there's plenty of white mycelium halfway down, as I found when I planted 3 potatoes in each pot.
Has anyone tried to grow spuds in woodchip before - at the end of November?

Not tried in wood chip. Did try sawdust this year……… don’t do that . They really don’t like it   . I don’t think planting them in sawdust in November would have helped   . Good luck.

After doing something completely new to me this morning, going out for breakfast and pigging out, I thought I ought to be productive this afternoon. I tidied up the flower border by cutting down dead stuff, planted some surplus paper white bulbs in the verge across the road. Mulched the penstemons with shredded copper beech leaves in the hope it will help them survive the winter. I fear the blackbirds will scatter the mulch to the four winds.

Nowt gardening related today but I did have a bit of a laugh!  

There was a knock on the door and the postie handed me a largish box. I was at a loss to think what I had ordered but proceeded to open the box. Inside the box was a large zipped hesian bag with another box inside. Inside the other box was a small leather bag with a string tie.Inside the small bag and sfter a bit of searching was a small gold earing thingy with a diamond that clips onto the back of your earlobe.
The Daughter-in-Law asked for this in her Secret Santa and I didn't realise it would be so small and in such a large box!

Definitely a Secret Santa Gift wrapping! Hope you're going to wrap the largish box for your daughter so that she has to go through all the unwrapping too.

5 cubic meters of logs delivered today in 1 meter lengths. Guess what I did today? Log tossed and stacked about half of it!!!

Definitely a Secret Santa Gift wrapping! Hope you're going to wrap the largish box for your daughter so that she has to go through all the unwrapping too.

Too right I am!

Sorted some seeds for my friends Christmas present.

Made the most of the woodburner. Boiled the kettle several times and filled all the thermos flasks I could find (6 in a variety of sizes).
Then melted some old candle wax and poured it into 3 containers, each with a wick. Had to improvise with clothes pegs, elastic bands, bits of wood and cardboard, in order to keep the wicks straight and centralised. Its my first attempt at making candles - feeling pleased with myself.

P & I spent much of the day outside in the freezing cold defrosting nextdoor's (the empty one) air source heat thingy. It’s kept ticking over at about 15° to keep the house free of damp & cold but the outside fan thingy doesn't like the minus temps. Having defrosted the outside fan with fan heaters we consulted the manual, which leaves a lot to be desired, and were no wiser. The service engineer had left it with the domestic hot water disabled, understandably, but we thought the machine 'borrows' heated water from the hot water to defrost itself, so we tried to figure out how to turn the hot water on. After hours of figuring how the touchscreen control worked and being very conscious of not buggering the whole thing up, P finally cracked it and slept easy knowing it was safe. The temperatures have now risen, so perhaps he needn't have worried after all, neverthelesswe'reprepared for next time.