I made sure that I read my last year’s diary of sowing and planting out – there were times I was a bit too keen to get going. Some of my plants suffered some frost damage last spring so I wanted to avoid it.

All the same, the kohl rabi germinated very quickly and grew into sturdy plants. I had to plant them out and the first batch went to the raised bed with the net cover. There is double protection, the bed isn’t full to the top and the net offers a bit of protection after all. They have grown quite a bit.

That gave me another idea – I would like to plant some of my cabbage and kale  plants into the original net tunnel and thought to create more protection. I have loads of garden fleece – from the days when they offered two for the price of one etc. The tunnel has a very convenient horizontal rail and I managed to fix the fleece to it with zip ties and buried the bottom in the soil. Perfect solution and I’m sure it’ll keep the plants protected – not only from the cold but mainly from any cold wind.

Today was a day of innovations – the asian pear looks like it might have quite a bit of fruit and one of the branches is at an angle and I was afraid that, when the fruit starts getting heavy, it might break. As I cut down a long branch of my eucalyptus tree in the back garden yesterday I turned it upside down, pushed the pointy end into soil, nailed a flat piece of wood to the thicker end and tied the branch to this with a soft piece of material. That way it cannot move and hopefully I saved the branch (and the fruit).