January 2024. New month, new gardening year. Allotments and vegetable plots will be mostly empty. Just the more stubborn growers tending hardier crops. Keeping the slinking foxes company.
Perhaps, though, a time to tidy. To lightly hoe a few wilder weeds. Sharpen and clean up any tools left untended.
It is the month I will clean our saved seeds. Bulging envelopes scattered on shelves. Most collected by Howard and me. Some gifted by family and friends.
Nasturtium seed, gathered by Kala from her garden. A totem flower sown every year. Added to calendula, the constants in any space we sow. Tagetes seedheads too to be gently sorted through.
Cosmos sulphureus, a newer companion. It happily sorts itself. There are dried poppy heads picked by the side of the road. I am unsure of the colour of the flower they’ll become. Nigella seeds, too, shared by a friend.
All these are to be added to seeds hoarded from favoured smaller and specialist suppliers. I have no immunity to a late-season offer. I tell myself they need the support, which of course is true. It is their future, too, I’m investing in.
I swerved the garlic, shallots and onions this year. But I am starting to wonder about seed potatoes. It has been a long time. I may start scanning for Seedy Sundays.
I planted yellow daffodils at the end of November. A first for the plot. The thought of bright late-winter colour was too alluring to resist (I snuck them in while Howard was away). Dudley grew daffs and they remind me of my mum in their Devon garden. It is, of course, obvious to say we regrow our memories but it took me a long while to realise.
Now what about your plans for the year?
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