Plant Patch
Winter
It’s the middle of winter nothing much seems to be happening in the garden .One would think that all the pests were hibernating.
Mice
Christmas day as I was picking the few sprouts I salvaged from the cabbage caterpillars I noticed that the broad beans sown on November 5th were pushing through the soil. Several of them had the newly emerged shoots bitten off and lying on the soil and there were a series of holes dug beside the newly emerging plants. Something knows that below each emerging shoot is a big fat bean seed. It is almost certainly a mouse .Why bite off the top? Perhaps this is how it identifies what is planted beneath.
This is a fairly regular occurrence and it is not unusual for them to ruin the crop if unchecked. Luckily I had sown extra seed which I will transplant to fill the gaps. Covering with fleece or mesh may help to keep them out until the plants have grown away. An old remedy was to soak the seeds in paraffin before sowing the smell deterred the mouse from digging and did not affect the germination of the seeds.
Coming ready or not!
The leeks planted last summer are now ready for pulling and eating. The purple sprouting are looking fine and should be forming heads sometime around the end of February if the pigeons don’t find them. Spring cabbage is looking decidedly sick and seems to have made little growth since it was planted in end of October. Perhaps that was too late. They will have some fertilizer early in march and perhaps that will give them a boost.
Soft Fruit
I missed planting blackcurrants and gooseberries in the autumn but now that the soil has dried out I am going to plant any day now.
Winter Pruning
Now is also a good time to prune apples and pears have a bramley apple that has produced lots of vigorous upright growth it may look good but the tree is going to get out of hand and unproductive so it’s out with the saw and loppers. That’s a story for another day.
Plant Patch 04 January 2006