February in the Garden

Well we’re now well into March and I’ve just remembered my February update, so here it is. The beginning of February was very cold here, and I mean VERY cold, the coldest the locals have known it! We had lots of snow and ice and the warmest it got at one point for several days was minus 5, with night time temperatures down to minus 16. Now that’s cold. Luckily myself and the ankle biters happened to be in the relative warmer climes of the UK for the worst of it.

My poor veggie patch was a frozen white abyss for most of the month, though luckily thanks to our destroyer chickens, there wasn’t much out there to worry about. Though my broad bean plants seem to be on their way out, they’re a mottling of brown (dead) and green (hope), so we’ll have to see.

At the end of the month when the weather warmed up a good deal, Gilles our trusty neighbour, friend, mayor and tractor owner came along to start rotavating the plot, it’s going to be considerably bigger than last year. He’s coming back again next week to finely rotavate it ready for use. I’m very excited!

Last week I was busy sowing lots of seeds, tomatoes (three sorts, cherry, plum and beef), celery (hoping I have more germination success than last year which was a dissappointing zero), peppers, aubergines, thyme and basil.

Philipe bought me a book this week, a guide to planting by the moon, or biodynamics as its known in England. Biodynamics is huge in France and this is the top selling book. In theory I’m going to give it a good go, but I know in practice my time for sowing and planting is limited to any precious snippets I can possibly find, and it won’t always be possible to wait for the moon.

That’s it for my Feb round up, not a huge amount of action I’m afraid but March will be a good deal busier. So excited that’s it’s gardening time again!

Until next month,

Louisa