The scent of spring, forgiving failures and the joy of overwintered chilli plants
Just one day: that’s all it takes to restore your faith. One day of sunshine, and gentle breezes; a day when it doesn’t rain. A day when you can be outside until it gets too dark to see; a day when the birds are singing again, and little nubs of green poke from the ground here and there, and you can feel your heart swell with hope.
The scent of spring is in the air: faint, and it comes and goes, but it’s there. I know it’s still a month away and we may have more bad weather yet to come but there’s a tangible sense that something is just beneath the surface and ready to burst forth: it’s hard to put your finger on it, a shift in perception, a tone change in sound. I don’t know how I know it: I just do.
The trouble is that once you raise your bowed head from the onslaught of winter enough to look around you, it dawns on you just how much you have left to do before you can get the garden up and running properly again. I was meant to have repaired the motheaten rabbit fences in the veg garden and re-hung the gate; I was supposed to have washed the greenhouses and pruned all the fruit by now. It was impossible, of course: you can’t repair fences in stair-rodding rain that’s turned the ground to liquid, and nor should you as you won’t do a good job and a bad job is worse than no job at all.
So I have about a month to get done what I thought I might just about manage in four or five, which inevitably means I probably won’t get around to most of it before the spring rush begins. This happens almost every year, leaving me patching holes and propping up wonky fenceposts all summer and cursing my failure to sort it out in a more timely, efficient and thorough manner. There’s no better recipe for self-loathing and feelings of inadequacy.
But this year (remind me of this in summer when I’m back to cursing again) I will be kinder and more forgiving to myself. I will look back over these posts documenting the endless days of mind-numbing, action-sapping rain, the soil sloshing with wet and the hard freezes in between. And I will be sympathetic to my winter self, and try (but not too hard) to remember what it was like.
This is actually my last newsletter of winter proper as next time I write the horrors of January will be over and I will be starting off just a few seeds here and there – nothing major yet, just a few greenhouse crops plus shallots out in the garden, and a couple of trays of broad beans since the mice were rude enough to eat my first batch of overwintering beans sown last autumn. I did resow one tray full – this time inside my mouse-proof cage where they have remained unmolested – and they’re coming up now but one tray isn’t quite enough to keep me well supplied.
I am not keen on sowing broad beans in spring as this shunts growth far enough into summer to coincide with blackfly attacks, and in my garden chocolate spot too which is an annoying fungal disease which lays broad bean plants low within weeks. Sowing in autumn means you’ve already harvested long before either problem takes a hold. But needs must: and sowing very early, in February, is a good compromise.
I think I may leave the tomatoes till March this year: in our experiments during the Totally Tomatoes growalong last year I couldn’t see it made a lot of difference. Seedlings sown in February and March produced a crop at more or less the same time, yet the February-sown seedlings needed grow lights to get them through the dark days just after germination. The March seedlings had April sunlight to enjoy, and so had a much more natural (and low resources, so greener) start to life.
The exceptions I will make are chillies, sweet peppers and aubergines which I find hard enough to get going even with a long season. I have managed to overwinter two or three chilli plants on my windowsills this year which is wonderful as they always do better in their second year – so I’m already ahead. But I will also sow a sprinkle of seeds in a pot and put them on the windowsills indoors, probably by a radiator for the extra warmth, and then crack open the grow lights again to see them through the gloomy days of early spring.
In other news: my new book has arrived! I am so pleased with it – I think it’s the best-looking of all the books I’ve written, and probably the most practical. I have poured out everything I know onto these pages: all those experiments with plastic-free growing, low-energy solutions, reducing resource use to a minimum and generally gardening as closely in tune with the natural world as it’s possible to do. It’s not published properly till April but it is such a thrill to hold the finished book in my hands at last. I hope you love it as much as I do: it’s available to preorder here, and I’ll bring you little snippets just to whet your appetite over the next few weeks too.
I hope you’ve been enjoying the little chats we’ve been having on the Foodie Friday threads: so far we’ve talked squash recipes, how to grow ginger, drying beans and growing mushrooms. Do join in the next one this coming Friday – who knows where the chat will go next! These threads are open to all – you should get an email when it’s open, or you can click on the chat icon in the Substack app to join in. See you there!