​Winter Preparations

Monday 7th November
While I planned to work at tidying my Brussel Sprouts, I needed to check I had put the rotavator away properly and once I had opened up the store and pulled it out I decided to use it. It took very little time to cultivate three patches of my plot so the soil was lovely and crumbly and the mulch dug in.

This patch is where I grew my peas this year and will be next year's brassica patch once I have mulched it with horse litter for the winter. The pea haulms and weeds, together with a neighbour's garden waste of trimmings from her herbaceous border, went into the compost, a good balance for the grass cuttings I get so much of.
Having put the rotavator away - properly - I went on to do some harvesting.
I collected the fennel bulb I had left behind yesterday in the compost bin! Then I dug up some root crops. I lifted a huge beetroot, much too big but it may juice. So I also lifted a couple of smaller ones for normal consumption together with a couple of turnips.
I also tried pulling some carrots and had some very peculiar shapes. I hope they taste good!
Having had a frost I thought I would lift the first parsnips. The first one was an excellent conical shape but had been protected from the frost by a fleece cover, meant to be protection from carrot root fly, so I lifted the one outside the cover to find one that it was just about a usable shape.
Finally I pulled up a cauliflower which was a bit small but perfectly formed, much better than the 'All Year Round' caulis I had grown from seed myself which are producing a cluster of white sprouts with leaves growing out between them. Fortunately most of my plants I bought from the Trading Hut and crop much better.