Hello again! 👋
Welcome to 2024 at the Anaesthetist’s Allotment. This is the second post of the Year in the Anaesthetist’s Allotment. It is a fairly quiet period of the year in the garden, so this post will be on the shortish side.
Disclaimer: I’m a professional anaesthetist, not a professional gardener. I do a bit of gardening and cycling in my spare time. I have grown veggies for many years and have learnt what works for me (sometimes!). These are my ramblings! I would be honoured to be corrected / advised by those with more knowledge than me!
General:
We are well into the throws of winter in the North of Scotland.
The weather continues to be awful. We have had more named-storms battering us this year, so far, than ever before.
The second to last one, Storm Isha was indeed Eish (for those non-Southern Africans, this is a very descriptive word for amazingly painful / dreadful / awful). We had very heavy rains and winds of over 100mph. These winds decided that my roof should no longer remain intact and very kindly removed a tile.
Storm Isha was followed after only a couple of days by Storm Jocelyn. Fortunately, she had not visited the North Atlantic gym quite as much as Isha, and left our newly repaired roof intact.
In the greenhouse:
The snow has disappeared in the Veggie Garden now. We are still harvesting some of last year’s crops:
– Brussels Sprout
– Winter Cabbage
– Leeks
– Beetroot
– Potatoes
These winter vegetables are wonderful. Full of flavour and will last us right through until spring when we start to get our first harvests from this year’s crops.
In summer, I have a full irrigation system installed in the greenhouse which is connected to the mains water supply. This ensures that watering is maintained even when we are away. In winter, however, this is not possible as the pipes would freeze and burst.
We are going on holiday in the next few months and it will still be way too cold to connect up the mains irrigation system. So I have put in a new battery powered watering system which gets its water from a 100 litre water butt inside the greenhouse. This should not freeze as it is inside the greenhouse – as long as my greenhouse heater doesn’t pack up 😬! It seemed to work OK at the first attempt, and I’m now running it under daily observation to get the settings right before we go on holiday.
Rest of the garden:
January is often a very cold depressing month in the North of Scotland. Cold, rainy, snow. Wind howling. Very short days and long dark nights. Everything in the garden looks brown, bare, dead!
I’m not selling it, am I? 😉
And then, signs of life, start to appear, promising the beginnings of better times to come………..
Crocuses have started peeping their sprouts above the soil surface down the driveway and await their time
In amoungst the Daffodils, Snowdrops, which appeared last week, have opened fully. They are the first of the bulbs to flower. They are one of my very favourite.
Snowdrops are now coming out down the driveway. One of clumps is getting quite impressive and has even started seeding naturally around itself, with snowdrops appearing in the middle of the path 😊
The hardy Cyclemen have now emerged from under the snow.
Beautiful 😍!
And……
The days have definitely started getting longer! 🥳. It’s now longer pitch black dark at 1530, and even at 1700, there’s still a glimmer of light in the Western Sky 😊
Hopefully, I will not get quite as tied up in work again this year and will be able to keep you updated on developments in The Anaesthetists Allotment regularly throughout the year
See you next time!
Dr Doug (Douglas) McKendrick 