The kitchen garden has had a quiet week this week as the weather has been cold and wet and the leaves have now blanketed the garden again, another job to do for today.
The cold weather also means that the woodfire is now being used in the house and we regularly collect the ash to use in the kitchen garden. The wood ash is a great helper in the vegetable garden as it also contains salt so deters slugs and snails and is a good source of lime and potassium.
The green leafy brassicas such as Brussel sprouts, kale and spinach loves the ash too so we gave them a generous helping. Do bear in mind when applying it that it will raise the PH level in your soil due to the lime so keep well away from acid loving plants such as blueberries. Beans also love this by-product so if you have already planted your broad beans out you can give them a dose and add it to the soil where you plan to plant the rest of the beans such as French and Runner Beans.
The winter protection fleece is doing a grand job in the garden and everything is well protected and growing well. Our early cauliflowers have sprouted in the greenhouse and the broad beans are peeking through in the cold frame.
In the rest of the garden it has been a week of roses. We have had a large delivery of Gentle Hermione roses that have all now been planted. They all had a sprinkle of mycorrhizal fungi to get them off to a good start, we can’t wait to see them bloom next year.
