Reading the seasons is still tricky for us novices. Last year our first frost was in June. This year it was mid May but then followed by warm weather. Last year there had hardly been any rain by June. This year the paths are already squelching. At the same time some deciduous trees seem to be putting out buds for leaves, one of the young apple trees still hasn’t lost its leaves and some of the jonquils are flowering. Was all this predictable a few months ago? Economic forecasting is not very rewarding but with the right data you can make a decent go at the near term. But here I’m still a long long way from knowing what variables are most important (rain quantities? birds? flowers?) and which variables would be most useful to predict (the goal is a full bed of perfect wombok and another with enormous broccoli but there’s a lot of interim steps!). Maybe I should have invested in upskilling with some machine learning techniques after all!  A simpler and more attainable strategy (that I think many market gardeners follow) is just to diversify. 

Compared to last year we’ve had some hits and misses. This year I will have brussels sprouts by my birthday (albeit baby ones). But the beautiful-looking wombok have started bolting rather than forming heads. (But having a lot of kimchi is far from a disaster.) We don’t know why they didn’t form heads (some local fermentation gurus tell us it’s difficult to grow them so maybe we got lucky last year!) but it seems (via Google) that the sudden chill in May might have caused the bolting so next year we’ll cover them. As part of our learning-by-doing we’ve got a lot more beds covered in fleece which seems better than planting into plastic with holes. But I accidentally left the tunnel sides partly up one night which finished off the cucumber plants.

• 

• 

• 

The greenhouse remains theoretical. But our reprieve is about to end thanks to a friend with connections to an excavator. So we have an excuse to delay getting out pick and shovel for two weeks but then no more excuses to delay construction, which is daunting! In the meantime we could theoretically firm up the plans – I was so focused on understanding the trench and the bricks that I have no idea about the plans for rest of the walls, roof and doors, although that may be part of Alex’s grand plan!) There’s still a lot of weeding to catch up on, the last bed of the garlic to plant, more broad beans to sow, a garden plan to be made so seeds can be ordered (wonderful rainy day jobs) and more winter greens and herbs to propagate. Of course Alex would add that there is also compost to be turned.

• 

• 

•