It would have been a shame not to go and work on the allotment.

First of all I decided to dig out the rest of my parsnips. They survived very well in the ground and the soil wasn’t either too frozen today or too soft. The result – reasonably clean parsnips. I had so many of them I could only carry half of them home, in my nice new bag (a Christmas present –  I’m that obvious).

Tha nice weather and the state of the soil encouraged me to do more. I had a nice area covered in horse manure. That has been there most of the winter so I decided to fork it in. The soil was just lovely and I managed to do it without compacting the ground at all.

If the weather keeps, as the forecast says, I could have it all done by Friday. There is only one small area to dig – it has green manure on it and I’d like to get it ready for the potatoes.

My raised beds are empty now, I had some swede there which I had to cover to protect from our ever present pigeons. The harvest was good but now I cannot have brassicas there. I have decided to put my courgettes there and make them climb. Two of the beds will be filled with the courgettes, one has some strawberries in and the last one, which has a net structure over it, will house my outdoor tomatoes and peppers.

First two beds were topped with a lot of leaf mold which I just forked in and in one of them I erected a climbing frame for the courgettes. Tromboncino will love it, they do very well, I know that from last year.

The last thing was to prune the Asian pear. I had a great harvest last year, fantastic fruit. One of my gardening magazines – Kitchen Garden-  suggested how to do it. I think I managed to follow the instructions, it all makes sense and I hope we’ll have some more fruit. However, if it’ll behave like other fruit trees, it might have a rest this year. Watch this space.