A Frost Sets In as thoughts turn to Spring Growth

We're in the middle of another cold snap. Days and nights have been crisp for almost a week now and the ground has remained solid.

I'm well aware that there may be people around the world reading this who would barely raise an eyebrow at this, but temperatures have been down to 5 and 6 below at night (Centigrade, not Fahrenheit). And today, for the first time in this spell, the temperature never actually rose above freezing point even during the day.

Amazingly we've not had a flake of snow yet this winter, but the seasonal chill is on the whole welcome. We don't always get seasonal weather any more, or at least it comes in the wrong season.

Unfortunately I am now of the age where the cold very quickly gets into my bones, though I'm OK if I wear five or six layers of increasing thickness. My fingers suffer though and I find it difficult to do any gardening chores with more than one pair of gloves on. I have however discovered that I get A LOT fewer cuts and grazes on my hands when I wear a pair of work gloves.

Jobs on the list for this week were (with the emphasis on were) pruning orchard trees, coppicing willows and planting new cuttings, shifting more woodchip and digging up some of the tuber crops such as Chinese artichoke (crosnes) and yacon. Unfortunately none of that is very feasible when the air is icy, the ground is rock hard and there's a good couple of inches of ice on all water surfaces.

So instead I've turned my hand to seed sowing. Last year I played it patient, went late on everything in the knowledge that it would catch up and overtake and that seedlings wouldn't end up leggy. As it turned out, we didn't have a single frost past the end of April and hardly even any during that month. Then there followed an extended period of drought culminating in a summer where the thermometer tipped the scales at 40 degrees (Centigrade again!). This, for Britain, was a record.

I wished some of those seedlings had been further down the road. Many perished in the heat and the dry conditions and it was too late to start again.

So this year I am displaying a massive over-reaction and going super early with everything. I've got a huge choice of set ups to regulate seedling growth (all improvised, no fancy grow-lights or anything like that, just different rooms, different temperatures, different light levels, different protection). And if we get failures, at least there'll be time for another attempt.

I have already sown 12 types of onions. They are on heat mats until they germinate, then they can move somewhere a tad cooler. I've sown quite a few perennials too - in general they appreciate a period of cold before the germinate as the soil warms up. Next it will be aubergines which require a long growing seasons but will need to be mollycoddled through to May like the tender little things they are.

Meanwhile I am trying to think of an easy way to transfer some of the heat from the woodchip piles to the polytunnel. In one place I've got 50 degrees centigrade of smoking heat. Not far away I've got temperatures hovering around zero. 

There must be an easy way.

This year I am going to be super organised (I've never said that before!)

Anyway, I'll leave you with another picture of today's hoar frost.