Tuesday, 31 January 2017

January in the garden - not an attractive sight

OK, it could look worse, but it's actually somewhat improved by the sudden and unexpected shower of hail.
The plants down the left-hand side are largely mustard with some rocket, all of which self-seeded, which is interesting, because previously I've found rocket difficult to grow from seed. I plan to keep any rocket that's growing in next year's brassica patch because I'm hoping it will produce its own seeds that are ideally suited to the conditions in my garden and growing it from seed will then be less of a challenge. Plus, I've had so much difficulty growing it from seed, existing plants are very welcome and a guarantee of actually getting some rocket.
From the moment I saw the seedlings, I knew one of my brassicas had self-seeded because of their classic brassica-style seed leaves. I incorrectly assumed it was entirely my mustard.

I discovered it was a mix of mustard and rocket when I saw the proper leaves. Or so I originally thought. I later picked some of the frilly leaves and they all tasted of mustard.
I left it growing because I know people grow mustard in the winter as a green manure and as far as I'm aware it doesn't matter which type of mustard you grow.
Elsewhere in the garden things have deteriorated. In particular the shed has decided to send a strong message that this is the year to replace it by letting one of the front boards that retains what's left of its roof sag off.
I'm not sure how that happened. We were away. But this hole is surely animal-made:
Turns out the gnome is no guard-gnome. He was standing next to it the whole time. My other half points out that if I would insist on painting parrots and butterflies on him instead of giving him a face, what did I expect?
In other animal damage, worms have pooed all over my lawn.



I'm in two minds about this. Worms and worm poo (or "worm castings" as people who want to avoid the word "poo" and/or sound more academic call them) are extremely good for your soil, but they make your lawn look even tattier that my half-hearted attempts to have a multi-plant lawn, where it now mainly looks like I don't keep my grass weed-free rather than like I've intentionally introduced other plants. Ah well, January is rarely an attractive sight in a vegetable garden anyhow. At least the worm poo is good for the soil and a sign of a thriving body of worms (they're currently now even outnumbering the slugs in my compost heap through no efforts of my own, which is excellent news).