Both allotments dug & manured apart from the half bed that has my winter greens in it!
The Garlic and Autumn sown onions are planted out.
The beds in the three greenhouses on the plots are prepared ready for next year!
The garden at home is tidied up for the winter.
Wallflower & Sweet William planted out.
The shrubs that required moving have been transplanted elsewhere and new plants put in their place.
My potting compost (8 bags) and various fertilisers arrived today so they are under cover until required.
My seed order also arrived today, so I have made up my sowing plan and sorted the seed packets into sowing order in a biscuit tin. So these have been stored away until the second week in January!
All I can think I have to do now is wash a few pots and trays that I didn't get round to washing earlier in the season.
2016I have found 2016 a very trying year, some stuff was very good but other stuff was rubbish by my standards.
My Potatoes caught early blight so I had the tuber numbers, but the size was quite small so these might be finished by around Xmas time whereas in a normal year my crop would last me to around Easter.
For the first time ever my Brussel Sprouts failed me, I know why, and it is down to me in so far as I planted them out in the wrong place.
They were planted out to suit my rotation plan but this involved planting them in the only shaded part of my allotment, so as I said....my fault!
Tomatoes & Sweet Peppers were not up to their usual standard in so far as they seemed to take ages to ripen despite using increased feeding to help the issue.
To sum up: I think all the problems started from April onward.
As you will recall April was quite warm with summer like temperatures then in May it was the reverse with some very cold weather, particularly overnight.
I think the pollinators came out early because of the April weather but the cold weather in May killed many of them off. I can't recall seeing any aphids this year, have you?
But slugs & snails have had a bumper year. I have never seen so many or lost so much stuff as a result of their feeding on it!
I put this down to the mild winter we had earlier on in the year, I think the slugs laid there usual number of eggs but the survival / hatching rate was higher than previous years because it was less cold, plus the birds had plenty other stuff to forage on,
I also think blight was earlier this year due to the mixed up weather patterns, particularly with the periods of quite high humidity which to my mind encouraged the onset of blight.
So all in all 2016 will not go down as one of my better years.
Now I will have a couple of months off, with my plan being to start 2017 off in the second week in January.
I will start off by sowing onions. I am going back to seed sown onions as opposed to setts, as I have found setts to be less prolific than they used to be, but then again that might be my imagination! What I do know is my onion crops over the last two or three years has been relatively poor.
So that is it folks the outdoor stuff is completed so now I will get down to doing a few more indoor tasks.
ps. Just as an aside: How did you find 2016?