The frosty spell continues, and every morning I’m grateful for the crunchy trail of frozen leaves that grants safe passage across the treacherously slippery lane. Thus far I’ve managed to reach the vegetable garden and poultry runs without skittering and skidaddling on the ice, unlike Seeka, our two-year-old Heinz, who still, first thing, erupts from the door like an energised ballistic, to be swiftly taken out by her four paws shooting off on separate missions.
I have covered the salad crops with tunnels of fleece, despite their proving amazingly hardy last winter - they are sweeter and more tender when grown under protection. In the middle of the day I open up the beds for an airing, and so long as the blankets themselves don’t stick together with frost, it is only a matter of seconds to flip them closed before dusk.
Even as I grimace at the prickly pain of thawing frozen mitts once again this morning, I can’t help but welcome the benefits of a long, cold spell. The army of slugs that has proved enemy number one throughout 2008 is at last demobilised, and fungal diseases that thrive in warm, moist conditions are halted in their tracks. Vernalisation (the winter effect), is essential to trigger spring flowering in many wild and cultivated species, from commercial sugar beet and wheat to the apples and blackcurrants in my garden. In addition, the good number of ornamentals that, confused by recent mild winters, have been flowering out of turn, should appreciate nature’s realigning to their expectations.
I have covered the salad crops with tunnels of fleece, despite their proving amazingly hardy last winter - they are sweeter and more tender when grown under protection. In the middle of the day I open up the beds for an airing, and so long as the blankets themselves don’t stick together with frost, it is only a matter of seconds to flip them closed before dusk.
Even as I grimace at the prickly pain of thawing frozen mitts once again this morning, I can’t help but welcome the benefits of a long, cold spell. The army of slugs that has proved enemy number one throughout 2008 is at last demobilised, and fungal diseases that thrive in warm, moist conditions are halted in their tracks. Vernalisation (the winter effect), is essential to trigger spring flowering in many wild and cultivated species, from commercial sugar beet and wheat to the apples and blackcurrants in my garden. In addition, the good number of ornamentals that, confused by recent mild winters, have been flowering out of turn, should appreciate nature’s realigning to their expectations.
Nevertheless, I do hope this is not just the prelude to an exceptionally cold season, as South African dierama, Californian carpenteria and South American Acca might well not survive. Yikes, I’ve just remembered - the poor dahlias are still in the ground – it may not be a biodynamic ‘flower day’, but I must dig them up right away.
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