2023 - Plans & Hopes

Last year's crops were mostly disappointing. For the outdoor stuff, I had stripped off the turf from lawn, forked it over, bit of fertilizer, planted. Nothing did very well. I think the soil was too thin. When I dug up the leeks earlier this month, I found that the roots had grown upwards from the base, along the stalk, instead of spreading out into the soil.

So over the last week, I have deep dug both veg beds after spreading a generous amount of pelleted chicken manure and granular fertilizer, then put some more chicken pellets on the top and finishing off with a good three-inch layer of home made compost. I'm hoping that this will give everything a good start.

Last year's carrots were infested with the carrot fly despite being covered in debris netting, so for this year I'm using enviromesh.

The grapevine in the greenhouse looked good last year until the fruit started to swell, but then it was overcome with mildew and all I got was raisins. So in 2023 I'm going to pay more attention to watering and keep a close eye open for mildew and red spider.

I don't think I've ever been better prepared for a season, so bring on Spring!