On the plot and in the garden we have continued the big tidy-up. Weeds continue to grow and so dealing with them is still a major chore.
Whitefly are everywhere and are constantly being disturbed by our activities. This year they have arrived fairly late but seem to have reached plague proportions. Clouds of them rise into the air as soon any growing thing is touched. I suppose what we need are a few keen frosts to deal with them.

Our parnsips also need a little help from frost to enhance their flavour. We couldn’t wait to find out if there was any root beneath the soil or whether they would turn out to be top heavy so we dug a couple this week. We were happy with the size but the flavour was rather bland. They need to be frosted so that most of the starch is turned to sugars but at least we now know we have something to look forward to.
Mild weather is helping the winter onions to grow although there is no sign of the spring onions that were sown along with winter lettuce and radish. For some reason we haven’t had much success with spring onions this year: most have just failed to geminate.
In the plot greenhouse most of the garlic cloves are now shooting.

We are now rather squirrel-like in that most of our fruit and vegetables are being taken from storage rather than fresh from the plot, although we are still managing some fresh harvesting.
Harvested this week:
Vegetables:
• Cabbage – Picador
• Parsnips – Gladiator
• Lettuce – Iceberg
• Salad Leaves – Baby Leaf Salad Mixed
• Winter Radish – Hild’s Blauer Herbst und Winter
• Spring Onion – Guardsman

Fruit:
• Grapes – Himrod
• Alpine strawberry – Mignonette & Alexandria
• Strawberry – Flamenco