Self-Sufficient Veg: December Calendar

Blackbird ‘Oscar’ with his sultanas

If you haven’t yet done all your winter chores on the land by now, then you have my sympathy but please be very, very choosy about when and what you do. Walking on wet, recently dug soil compacts it, making it hard for roots to penetrate. Better to wait till the ground is hopefully drier. This is more important on heavy clay soils than light sandy soils, but important on both, nonetheless.

You can still be clearing trees, shrubs, brambles and the like from ground you plan to dig but I wouldn’t do any digging now unless the soil is quite dry (unlikely in most places). If you do have a lot to do before spring then you should probably crack on with what you can now, January and February are usually worse.

Think of the birds, too! Winter is often hard for them and many succumb – a bowl of water when the weather’s freezing, crumbed bread, cookies, cake, left over cooked rice and the like. Starlings enjoy a bit of something spicy like curry or chilli with their rice, blackbirds LOVE sultanas and dried fruit. Look after them now and they’ll help you keep your garden pests down in spring and summer.

This is the best time to get all the bits and pieces clean and maintained ready for next season. Get those seed trays and pots clean. Check, clean, sharpen and oil if necessary all your tools. If you’ve any tools or devices that need replacing or that you’d really like, well now’s the time to tell anyone that might give you a present – but do make sure you are very specific, it’s no good having a tool that doesn’t work for you.

It’s much nicer to be thinking and planning for your next season at this time of year. If you’ve grown crops this year then you should assess and evaluate. What crops and varieties did well or badly? Which were due to the weather, disease or pests or you? Where can you make improvements? If you feed other people then do ask them too, it could be they didn’t want all those carrots! What new things might you try next year?

Are you keeping enough data to make proper evaluation? Probably not, and nor do I most of the time! Now is a good time to jot down some subjective notes about how well crops and varieties performed – before you forget (if you’re like me). Then think what your important criteria for the success of different crops are and resolve to monitor that more closely next season…

Sometimes cropping earlier is more important than a later, higher volume, crop. Maybe try to squeeze an early variety to crop a couple of weeks earlier using cloches. Could be some varieties had short cropping seasons – successionally sow smaller amounts or try different varieties? What worked and what didn’t? What have you learned from this year?

2007 was my first season in northern Scotland, I have learned an immense amount, but every year – even in my back garden which I’ve cultivated for over a decade – I make ‘mistakes’ and learn a good deal. If you haven’t learned anything important about growing veg this year then you aren’t looking hard enough.

Time to check through your existing seed stocks, work out what and where you plan to grow, what seed you might require, and begin to devise your seed order. Here in UK the earliest seed I’d sow is onions in late January so no rush to order just yet unless there are some specific hard to get varieties that you really want. I’ll have a bit to say about ordering and keeping seeds, including suggested UK and US suppliers, later in December.

Last thought: as you circulate this festive season network with other local and online growers, share your experiences and ideas, learn from theirs’. Even more important, enthuse any that might start to grow stuff: offer your help, knowledge and even some of your time and effort get them started – you never know, you might be saving their lives before too long and they might save yours. What goes round comes round.

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