Monday 14th November
FROST! At last. Hopefully now things will die back. Haven´t been to lottie for a while: though yesterday was lovely weatherwise, I elected to remove ankle-deep sycamore leaves from the garden instead. Now have 3 bin bags of nice shredded leaves to compost down (and there´s still lots of leaves still on the trees). I definitely need to make a leaf bin at the lottie!

The Grand Plan for next year:

So far I´ve got the overwintering brassica by the shed, the electric onions and the garlic planted. Spuds 2 and tomatoes may switch depending on the onions currently in the Spud 2 bed. And winter broccoli is once again a dead loss! Oh well, at least it means I´ll be able to manure that bed ahead of time. The second winter onion bed isn´t yet planted - must acquire some more sets!

Wednesday November 16th
Traded an afternoon at work for an evening at work due to having to meet a US-time deadline, and shot up to the lottie to make the best of the hour or so´s sunlight. Did some more tidying, now that the frosts have arrived. And how - the courgettes have collapsed nicely, and the runners, so both got tidied onto the compost heap. So did the last of the minipop sweetcorn, so I have now cleared the old tomato bed completely. Finished manuring it so the worms have the winter to mix it in for me. Severely pruned the wretched forsythia so I can actually walk past it again. Cut a cabbage, pulled several carrots (mostly mutie ones that had been in too long and exploded!), a parsnip :) and found one lone courgette that the frost hadn´t pulped for some reason. The spring cabbages are starting to heart - help!
Pulled the first two leeks, then went home and made leek, carrot and coriander soup. Yum. Another hard frost due overnight, and the car was already frozen up at 10pm when I came out of the Allotment Society AGM. Lots of new folk!

Sunday November 20th
Still frozen solid, so just got enough plastic to cover the manure heap and a sack of half-price daffs (no idea where they´ll go!). Has been down to -5^oC most of the week. Brrr!

Sunday November 27th
Quick dash up to the lottie to see what I could grab, and also to put down the plastic. Managed to unfurl it, but it wasn´t really wide enough to cover the heap properly. Still, better than it was. Found a couple of bricks to keep it in place as well as the rusty windowframe I found on plot 2, and was donated a piece of paving by Kate and Yvonne (and I hope my dreadful memory has got their names right!). Then pulled a parsnip (3" across and almost spherical), a few carrots (including a mutie white one), and a large leek. Finally went over to the cabbage bed and picked the two largest red cabbages, which were just the right size to make a nice batch for Christmas dinner. Then went home, dug out mum-in-law´s red cabbage recipe and got cooking...