Finally it is cold now, the perfect weather to do some autumn/winter digging. Unfortunately though the soil is still very wet so managed to dig just enough to plant some broad bean seeds in. And of course as I was hoping that perhaps the soil will be a bit dryer next week it has started to rain again. Well, the story of 2012 still lives on: wet, cold makes it hard to garden and grow anything.
Enough of moaning though now and let’s see what are the advantages of winter digging. All the seeds what are on the surface will go deep down and won’t germinate first thing in the spring. Even in May I had the winter dug beds ready for planting, all I had to do is loosen the soil a little bit with a fork, as my soil is quite heavy, but it was pretty much weed free. Also in the spring there are lots of other jobs to do what you cannot do in the winter. And finally I do like digging in the cold, warms the body up and is so nice to have a sip of hot tea from the flask, hmm… okay I do sneak in a drop of rum sometimes.
Oh and back in early summer I found this wonderful Verbascum plant at the end of the allotment site, and now one just appeared on my plot on its own. I better watch it or I’ll have hundreds of it in a years time.
