Start of the growing year

My seeds have arrived! Some years I buy in a gardening shop; this year, like most, though, I ordered them online from the Organic Gardening Catalogue. These will supplement what's left from last year & the year before. One evening in early January, I sat down with my allotment notebook, a bag full of half-empty seed packets from last year, and the catalogue, to list what I already have and decide what I want to grow this year. It's the time you can plan to try new things, or rely on old trusted favourites. 

Last year I dreadfully neglected the allotment - too busy doing other nice things, as the inexhaustible progress of couch grass and horsetail proved. Although it was also not a brilliant year for growing things, with lots of seeds germinating but then mysteriously not growing (my French beans...), and so wet that half my strawberries rotted on the plants, and the slugs were rampant so early they ate all the brassica seedlings before I got round to protecting them. There were successes, though: most of the fruit did brilliantly (I've still got bags of damsons and gooseberries in the freezer...), and all the flowers I was trying out for the first time were fantastic. 

So that sets the tone for this year. I'm going to be sticking with things that are easy to grow and don't need much attention, because I'm pretty sure that once again I won't be spending as much time as I'd like at the plot. I'll be growing flowers again - they're pretty self sufficient, and I'll get continual bunches to bring home: cosmos, cornflowers, candytuft, larkspur, poppies, sunflowers and chrysanthemums. I'm rotating Charlotte potatoes onto the brassica bed; the Tuscan kale and Spike broccoli will move to the bean bed - and I'll get their slug protection in early; I have reliable runner beans again instead of the trickier French; and lots and lots of onions (red and white) and shallots. Apart from chitting the potatoes, nothing much is going to happen now for the next couple of months, but come March I'll be out there with renewed enthusiasm. One of the best things about growing your own is that every year is a fresh start.