Christmas Eve musings, solstice hope and the priceless gift that is gardening
Well here it is – Merry Christmas! Everybody’s having fun…
Oh dear. Sorry about that. What can I say: I am a child of the 70s, and Slade is woven into the weft and warp of my childhood Christmases, along with Cliff Richard, Showaddywaddy, Mud and the rest. It was a terrible time, and the scars run deep.
Anyway: I hope this finds you poised and ready for a superb and joy-filled Christmas of family, friends, love and laughter. I doubt much gardening will get done, but a lot of food will be eaten: and since growing equals food in my house, the line between the two is kind of blurry anyway.
We are past the Winter equinox! Around 3am on Friday morning here in blowy south-west England, the earth began tipping infinitesimally slowly back towards the sun. The days are already a few minutes longer. Nubs of early spring bulbs puncture the soil like green punctuation marks of optimism. Even the smell of the garden has changed: I am twitching to get growing again.
Not yet. There are still hedges to be trimmed, fruit to be pruned, brambles to be mattocked and fences to be mended before I can put anything in the soil. The garden is sleeping still, tucked under its blanket of mulch, and I must wait till it wakes and be patient.
In between the present wrapping and braising of red cabbages I am thinking up new schemes for Greenery for next year. You’ll have noticed it’s gone a little quiet round here, for which my apologies: it’s a combination of hideous weather, meaning relatively little actually happening in the garden, plus the new job which has taken my previously serene routine and drop-kicked it into the middle distance. So I am having to reconstruct my weekly schedule and not everything is fitting in that easily. Anyway: there is a plan, of sorts, which I hope will improve matters going forward.
First of all: I need to decide what our growalong should be next season. This season’s Totally Tomatoes series has been such fun to do and I’ve really enjoyed experimenting: it’s really changed the way I’ll be doing things from here on in (that’s the great thing about gardening: you never stop learning). I hope you’ve been finding it’s helped you tweak your growing methods too.
So this year I’m sowing in February, but on my windowsills with grow lights to get the seedlings through the tricky late February – early March darkness. Then later, I’ll be training them as double cordons, using string for supports.
I’ll also be trying out a few new varieties once again to add to the Variety Directory – if you’ve found a new favourite yourself this season, do let me know and I’ll add it in as well.
Now I am trying to decide between a beany growalong, or maybe potatoes, or perhaps something a bit more tricky – pak choi, perhaps, or summer calabrese, or courgettes. Any particular requests – just drop me a line in the comments below!
The other thing I’m planning is a beginner’s veg growing course. I have a new book coming out in April (pre-order here!) – it’s a real nuts-and-bolts guide to growing veg in a greener way, taking a sustainable approach from the start.
It's all very well talking about fancy new kinds of vegetables or hi-falutin training tachniques – but it’s all pretty useless if you don’t know how to get your soil up to scratch, or how to grow lettuces without losing them all to the slugs.
So that’s what this course will be aimed at: I’ll take one topic a month and hold your hand right through the year, with a Q&A available at the end of each session (maybe chat, maybe comments on each feature – what do you think?) so you can run by me any difficulties you’re having as we progress through the course. If you’re about to start a new allotment, or setting up a veg patch for the first time – this is the course for you.
The course will be available to all paid subscribers – I’ll be keeping subscriptions low and affordable into 2024, so hopefully you will find it good value. More details to come in the New Year.
In the meantime: get your garlic in the ground if you haven’t already (what a great excuse to escape the Christmas Eve chaos and flee outside!) and fill your heart with gratitude that you have the gift of growing things: it is priceless.
Happy Christmas!
Definitely a beany growalong - beans are so important for nutrition and we all need to grow more for drying as a protein source to help us move to a plant based diet and help mitigate climate change.