What is it that tempts porn sites to try and put links and back links into this blog? I've just rejected another one! Perhaps because there have been no entries for a while they think it's an untended garden. Well they are wrong. I've just been hibernating because it's been too cold, frozen or wet to get outside. The garden is looking very sad and when we had a dry day a couple of days ago I thought that it was time to resurrect the 30 mins a day in the garden routine but a bitterly cold wind put me off that idea pretty quickly. Instead I stay in the warm and plan for the months ahead.
A few weeks ago I chased Marshall's to find out why the clumping raspberry hadn't been delivered at the end of last year. I was told it will come next month so I will need to get out soon to prepare a space for it. Fortunately the broad beans seem to have managed to survive both the big freeze and the digging of neighbourhood cats. Likewise the onions.

Originally posted 29th November

I have been unable to delete or disable the backlink to the porn website that was put in the comment to the post on 29th November so I have deleted the post altogether. Here is the original text.

What weather! We have escaped with only minor damage - a few missing tiles on the roof, some smashed pots, broken fence panels and a garden light smashed when the bench was blown onto it.

The garden is looking rather soggy and sorry for itself at the moment and there is not much to report except for progress on the onions and broad beans I planted a few weeks ago. The onions have some healthy looking sprouts and the beans are just beginning to show through.

The comment to the previous post has been deleted because it was in Chinese and had a link to a girlie porn site. I will be moderating comments from now on (on all my blogs) and will not allow any that are unwholesome or are promoting websites that I would not wish to be associated with. You have been warned!

Over the past week I cleared a part of the vegetable patch and put in some onion sets, garlic and broad beans. I had bought the onion sets from Marshalls and they arived a month or so ago in a net bag inside a padded envelop. I had opened the packet but left the sets inside it. The envelop had resealed itself so when I opened it some of the sets had rotted and many were already sprouting. I think that I got to them in the nick of time! We don't have a lot of space so I planted them about 6 inches apart in short rows.

I didn't buy new garlic this year. Instead I split up one of the largest bulbs that I lifted at the end of the summer into individual cloves and planted them.

The broad beans are the variety Aquadulce Claudia which are for autumn planting. I have put in a double row planting the beans 8 inches apart in two rows 12 inches apart.

And I finished clearing out the drainage grills around the garage. I know that there are still a lot of leaves  on the trees to come down but our worst time for fallen leaves is late March when the beech hedge suddenly looses all of it's leaves in a week or two.

When weather permits I have been getting on with some of the seasonal tasks in the garden. The wind chime has been brought in, washed and the wood given a feed of lemon oil. The fountain on the patio has been drained, the pump removed, cleaned and put away and the unit covered with plastic to give it a bit of protection from the worst of the winter weather. I have made a start on clearing out the drainage grill that runs around the garage and across the drive.

The orange chrysanth that looked so fantastic just a few weeks ago is looking sorry for itself. The flowers had finished and were beginning to rot on the plant so I cut them all off. Then the strong winds that we had on Saturday night blew the pot over smashing it. The poor thing is now temporarily propped up in a large flower pot until I can repot it properly.

In September I started to feed the birds again to help them put on weight for the winter and so that they know where to find food in bad weather. There is a robin that puts in an appearance whenever any turning over of soil is going on. Mark was doing some weeding earlier in the week and caught this picture of the little fellow. You wonder how those tiny legs can hold him up!

Well, it's been pretty wet here for the last few days so I've not been able to get out to do much in the garden. Before the rain arrived I had got started on some tidying up jobs. Until the garage was built a few years ago we had a large oak barrel in which we collected rainwater from the roof. Since the garage has been built there is not enough room for it by the downpipe. It has been sat on the path ever since, occasionally with a container with flowers in it placed on the top to cheer the corner up. I noticed that the top was looking a bit rotten so I had the idea of taking out the top and letting the rainwater collect in it and then getting the water out by dipping the watering can in. I took a sledgehammer to the top and it came out quite easily. Having removed the top I could see quite alot of daylight through the gaps - more than would be closed by the wood swelling when it had water in it. So I decided to demolish the whole thing. My first thought was to give the wood to a friend for their wood burner but then Mark reminded me that Bonfire night is coming so we're saving it for then. The barrel was originally an old whiskey barrel so I'm hoping that an essence of that will remain and that the wood will burn fragrantly!

Mark's sister has given us two small standard olive trees. We haven't decided on the final position of them yet but at the moment they are either side of the path onto the patio. I will have to get some fleece to wrap around them and the pots to protect them from frost. We have a large standard olive in a half barrel just outside the back door. It gets some sun in the summer (at midsummer the drive which is aligned E/W gets the sun all day) but not enough most of the time. The arrival of the new plants has been the spur to do something about moving it to somewhere where it can get more sun. The only place we can really put it where it will get more light is up on the back terrace. This involves making space and moving the immoveable plant and container! There was a climbing rose on the back wall. It had attractive flowers but was very prone to blackspot and only bore flowers high up. So I have whipped that out and tidied up the bed it was in. The plan is to put the olive tree in front of this little bed. I will manure the soil before next summer and then decide what to plant around the olive. We have yet to actually move the olive. Rain stopped play. It is at least a one man + one woman job. We are going to have to get the tree out of the barrel and move barrel and tree separately. Not a job I am relishing!

I picked some baby spinach the other day. As it isn't growing quickly and there are no sign of the replacement carrot seeds coming up in the little trough I decided that it was too late to sow more spinach in the half barrel that the kenyan beans had been growing in. I put in some hyacinth bulbs instead. We can feed our sense of smell and sight rather than our bellies!

Well, the heavy rain at the end of last week finally did for the tomatoes remaining on plants outside. It was a double whammy. The extra water caused some fruits to split and the dampness brought out myriads of slugs and snails which gorged on them. So I rescued what I could and brought them in to finish ripening on the window sill or, if they were ripe and split, to cook them straight away.

So that's the end of the tomatoes. The kenyan beans are also finished. I have left the roots in the half barrel and am going to fork in some chicken manure pellets and try sowing some more spinach. I hope to do that in the next few days while the weather is fairly good. The runner beans are really over too and most of them I have taken down but two or three plants still had some baby beans which I couldn't bear to cut down. So now all we have left in the garden that's edible at the moment are the carrots in pots; the baby spinach (also in a pot) which is just about ready to pick the first few leaves and the courgettes in the ground which aren't doing much at present.

I have put in a few cauliflowers to overwinter. The one's I put in earlier in the year grew well but got attacked by beasties, pitted by the weather and I didn't get the hang of turning over the leaves to prevent discolouring (they kept popping open again) and apart from a couple most of the curds were inedible. I am hoping for better things this time around!

I mentioned previously that the carrots in one of the troughs had been chomped away. There were also some self-sown tagetes in the trough which were eaten and suprisingly they have shown signs of recovery. Not much sign of the carrots recovering though so I have sown more in the same trough.  

The rain also did for the gorgeous chrysanth in the pot. The dahlias seemed to stand up to the weather better but I think they could do with further tying up.