It's Saturday morning. You pull back the curtains to reveal a half-light of fog and frost everywhere. You know it's sub-zero outside. So the temptation is to assume there's nothing to be done on the plot and consider occupying the day indoors instead.
Wrong.
It's amazing just how many activities you can carry out in the depths of winter even when the weather itself is playing hardball.
Here was what I was confronted with this weekend (early January).
There was actually a light dusting of snow on the ground. The air temperature had been between -5 and +5 degrees centigrade all week so the ground was frozen solid and even if it had started to thaw, the previous week's rains would have still made it impossible to work with soil (digging or turning). The damp in the atmosphere also rules out any work with wood on site (cold frames, netted frames or just repairing borders) and the uneven paths (which I admit I have between beds) can't be levelled out as they'd be far too slippery to stand on and impossible to dig up.
So, what sort of activity can you do?
Well, of course there is always tidying to do around the plot. Whether it be the beds, paths and borders or, inside that plotholder essential, the shed - if you are lucky enough to have one.
(Note to self I've been writing this blog for nearly a year now and not done a single post on this icon of allotment tradition - must put that right!).
If you are only visiting the plot once a week or so (as I do), over the course of a year there'll probably be a serious need to sort, tidy, clean, recycle and/or dispose of a whole season's worth of 'stuff' (inside a shed or out) as what precious time you have each week is far more likely to be spent generating produce than sorting out drawers, pots containers and seed packets. Unless it's a day like today.
Not a job for me this week though, as I've made that particular task way more difficult for myself this year by planting my 2021 onions in the bed immediately in front, of the shed itself so I can't just empty all my contents out of the shed door and onto the ground. Need a bit more planning for that job before I start that particular challenge.
No, today was the perfect day for turning the compost heaps. I've blogged before
about the value of creating your own soil improver from kitchen peelings, shredded paper and the odd forkful of manure, but the reality is that although I have 6 compost 'pens' only 2 of them were being used for the purpose created. As you can see below two have got manure in, the middle blocks were just a store for various frames, canes and netting leaving me two for compost, of which one was completely full and overflowing...
So, a day like today was the perfect day for emptying the middle pens of their rubbish and then creating space for two new compost pens. And that's exactly what I did.
Two hours later the nearest pen (below) now has the 'pretty much ready' compost turned out of pen two and I will use this to improve the soil in some of my raised beds later in the spring.
The big job was to turn the overflowing compost (pen one) into two heaps, one of which is a little 'maturer than the other, with the waste well on the way to compost, leaving the original to be half emptied, turned and ready to take all the weekly fresh stuff this winter.
I'm always either topping up with roots and unwanted leaves when I am harvesting whilst on the plot, or each week bringing a mix of paper shreddings and kitchen waste from home. Every so often, I will add a 'layer' of fresh manure from our supply at the top of the allotment to add some heat to the pile and finally chuck in a few worms so that nature can do it's stuff
So there you are. After all that moving and turning I now have 2 half full compost pens, one pen of almost ready compost and 3 pens of fresh/rotting manure (which will probably reduce by around a half and be perfect for the potatoes in 2022!)
And even though it was still exactly freezing (0 degrees) when I finished, according to my fitbit I was already at 11000 steps for the day and I felt warmed up enough such that you really don't feel the temperature at all. Making the whole morning a healthy, useful and satisfying use of 3 hours in the fog and frost.
And just one final thing this week. One thing I love about working on the plot is the little relationships with nature that you build...and it seems that every Saturday morning in the winter months, I'm joined by this friendly robin looking to have a rummage wherever I have been working.
I have no idea what my little friend does during the rest of the week but he was particularly interested in what I was doing this week, jumping in and out of all the areas I was working in. He's been around for a few years now so I'm pretty sure that he'll be back next week looking to see how he can profit from whatever I choose to do next week...whatever the weather!
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