Famous last words - never underestimate the weather

I don't mean "never underestimate the weather" are anybody's famous last words. Though they may have cropped up in a lightning storm and I might suggest them to Michael Fish (will we never let him forget dismissing reports of a hurricane? I probably won't).

I mean that it was only 10 days ago that I was thinking how mild it was and had bought countless bags of potatoes and was even considering recklessly planting them in February when, out of nowhere, along came snow. 

To be fair, it wasn't really a surprise - they had predicted it for over a week and we'd had a chilly period ahead of it. We'd even starting mocking the weather men as there was no sight of snow on Saturday evening. It was only as we started driving across town that the snow started in earnest. Damn.

But a day and half later, the snow man's head has rolled off it's body in a snowy parody of the French revolution and things are returning to normal. Except I STILL haven't sowed the broad beans, cut down the raspberries or prepared the potato beds.

In the mean time I have been reading gardening magazines. One feature on whether to dig or not (which appears in most magazines at this time of year) appealed greatly.  Clearly my lazy self favours the no dig method but only if it means that I don't find myself 'mini digging' throughout the rest of the year to get rid of roots and pernicious weeds. There is also something quite satisfying about digging over a plot (at least at the beginning before your back feels like it is breaking. Technique, I know, blah blah blah).

As it is, I did little bits of digging to neaten things up and then promptly made things messy again by upending a whole compost tardis (sadly not really rotted down enough). Fingers crossed the snow will have had a magical effect on the contents otherwise I can see me pleading with Tom to put the heap back into the tub whence it came. 

A dilapidated wheelbarrow and laziness are also the reason I haven't hoarded the manure that was recently(ish) delivered to the plot.  I did pick up some in the autumn and that will have to do for the moment on the pony poo front.

My friend Carol who has a plot in Thornton Heath has had great success with some winter green manure seeds I gave her to help control the weeds and protecting the soil from losing minerals over the winter. I just always worried they'd end up being more worrisome than the weeds...