Planning for 2025

Wintertime gardening--I'm still not quite in active gardening mode.  Just a little bit of harvest once a week or so (leeks, radishes and swede this week).  I'm really enjoying having some fresh veg regularly;  most winters it's all run out by now, bar a small leek or two.  I credit this foresight to actually writing down a garden plan last winter.  I guess it's time to write the next one, though as the first was fairly successful I don't anticipate making any major changes.

I originally divided my available space into six major sections at the allotment, plus another two in the kitchen garden at home (a much smaller space).  I decided which crops I would focus on for these sections, going for bulk rather than variety.  The allotment:  tomatoes, beets, squash/corn (interplanted), beans, leeks, pickling cucumbers.  Home:  zucchini/salad cucumber (interplanted), brassicas (mainly kohlrabi, with cabbage and pak choi).  

I also allowed for succession planting, starting certain seeds later in the year to follow on;  for instance lettuce, pak choi and spring cauliflowers to follow the two beds in the kitchen garden.  I also put later sowings of radishes, turnips, beets to follow on from broad beans and snap peas.  This way, I was able to pad out my harvest totals, and keep the beds in production rather than going back to weeds.

This year the slight deviation will be to grow some potatoes.  We are a low carb family so I don't grow potatoes very often--every few years is plenty.  However, I'm ready to buy a small bag of seed potatoes for this spring, probably to grow in my big containers at the allotment.  I'll also try sowing all my beets directly this year (the first bed in the spring were all transplants), hopefully to increase my yields even more.  Other than maybe a few fine tweakings, my plan is ready to go.

After the ice

It did finally melt, though the last vestiges of ice took another several days after my last post.  However, I made it to the allotment to pull some big leeks, small turnips and baby beets--these last two from the late sowing in July/August (I picked all the big beets and turnips in early autumn, all the little ones in late autumn, and couldn't believe there were any roots left!).  I still have quite a few leeks left, but only a couple turnips now (and probably a few more baby beets too).  I also have a couple radishes both black and white, and a couple of swedes (rutabagas) ready for harvest;  my garlic bed is up and growing, as is the purple sprouting broccoli, both for harvest later this spring and summer.  

I also have recommenced sheet mulching, having been stalled by the weather: a few cardboard boxes at a time,  a couple times a week.  So far it's just the sheets, as I haven't been able to face digging out any more mulch (straw/manure from the stables at the one end of the allotment site). 

At home my overwintering cauliflower plants seem to have survived the weight of snow/ice on them for a week, as did the komatsuna, tiny pak choi and white radishes.  The few Savoy cabbages I have left weren't pressed down under the snow like the others;  these are fine--ready for harvest really, despite being small.  The lettuce however, looks like it bit the dust. 

I bought one bag of potting compost just before the ice, to start a few seeds with--so far I have a pot of onion seed, just starting to emerge.  Soon I'll be moving on to tomatoes and broad beans:  either at the end of this month or the beginning of February.  I haven't even finished yet and already it's time to start!

Frozen

 

The view from my back door, Jan 2025

After our two week break from school/work, we got a snowfall;  I was hoping it would melt in an ensuing rain, but there was too much snow and not enough rain--it froze and stayed that way for more than a week.  No harvesting vegetables in those conditions.  I'd missed our allotment visits the week before too as the daughter had been sick--in fact she had such a high temperature on Christmas day we took her to the hospital.  Thankfully she's fully recovered now but it meant no trips out until she recovered.  Then it snowed.

Cranberry flavor, Jan 2025

At least she (and the rest of us) were well enough to enjoy the surprise snowfall.  We made snow ice cream (above)!  I would have liked to make it with homegrown ingredients, but as we had such short notice, we made do with half a liter of cranberry juice poured over a bowl of snow. 

Made by the daughter (age 4), Jan 2025

The kids also made a snowman each, we had a short snowball fight out on the street, made hot chocolate and cookies, played board games...it was a fun snowy day.  It was the first day back at school the next day, so we tried to make the most of it.  

And since then, complete frost, with the whole garden iced over.  I had wanted to pick leeks and turnips at the allotment, but I knew they wouldn't come out until it melted;  I'll try to get over there later today.  I've got some cardboard to sheet mulch with too, but again, no point sheet mulching on top of snow.  I'll have to see if the turnips survived;  hopefully my overwintering cauliflowers at home are also ok, buried in snow with temps down to -6C at night.  In fact, I was so worried about the ducks in that cold, I let them have full free range including the patio and left the garage door open for them just in case (they won't normally sleep in a shelter;  they're waterproof after all and prefer to be in the open).  They were ok, as were the chickens who mainly stayed in their coop.

Grand total of garden food, 2024

Vegetables: 318 lb, 10.5 oz (incomplete)

Fruit:  2 lb, 7 oz (incomplete)

Eggs: 1262

What a year!  I broke my record of 2023, which was 277 lb.  However, I must state that some of 2023's veg wasn't recorded until 2024:  of the more than 100 lb of squash (!!), around 82 lb of it was grown in 2023.  We ate fresh squash every month of the year except August (and then we ate it from frozen!);  we ate our last 2023 squash in July of 2024.

Other notable amounts:  26 lb of plum tomatoes and 20 lb of cherry tomatoes (unlike the previous year, almost every tomato ripened by the end of the season), 16 lb of beet roots (plus 12 lb more of the greens) and 15 lb of kohlrabi.  I marked the total as incomplete as there are indeed some more squashes from 2024 to be weighed and eaten in 2025 (though probably not a full 82 lb).

Fruit was actually better than the previous year (though still rather sparse), but like most years I didn't record it faithfully, so the totals are similar.  We had probably 20 lb at least of apples, plus a couple more lb of raspberries, but I only recorded a few ounces of the berries, few figs and one pear.  I don't have a good method for recording fruit like I do vegetables, probably because I don't prepare fruit like vegetables (I weigh veg before cooking, but fruit rarely gets cooked in our house, just eaten).  

Our newest adopted four hens, the Specklies, did us proud and really bulked up the egg production in the last year, more than double the previous.  Sadly we've lost two of them this winter;  as a high-production breed, they are also short-lived.  Hopefully we can adopt another four to join our flock later in spring, when it warms up a little. 

See previous grand totals:  2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016