A Boxing Day visit. We’ve had a lot of rain, but it paused for a day or so, so I went down to the plot – and fell over in the mud before I’d even reached my gate. Before the rain we had heavy snow, which saw off the chard at last. Not much else in the garden has been defeated yet.

I shall leave the kalettes in place until the spring, but at this point I’m not convinced they’re going to do much more than this. The individual sprouts are not up to much.

I cleared the chard and covered Bed 2, and ripped up the last few candytuft plants and covered Bed 9 too. The ground was getting somewhat churned up, so I didn’t pursue too much work.

Bed 3 has more bulbs coming up in it. It still clearly needs more compost in it, but with the bulbs all in place, I can’t just dump it in. I’m hoping I can continue to gradually creep it in around them during the year.

I decided to pull up a parsnip and was delighted  to find that the first one I came to had quite a big head. It then took ages to dig up because it was so long that it went down through the compost and into the clay, reaching the current water level! I took out the little one next to it too.  The big one was 7.5″ of parsnip plus about 12″ tail; the smaller one was about 5″ long.

I’ve all but finished clearing Bed 9. A couple of candytuft remain, which will either go to the compost, or into a border if there’s an easy place for them. Then coffee and cover.

The trellis bed is also cleared up now at last. Various weeds gone and another bit of bramble cut off that turned out to be much longer on the other side than I expected.

Bed 10 is properly clear now. The cosmos roots had loosened up a lot and I took the big clumps out for compost. Other lighter bits of material have been left in the soil. I had a look under the cover on Bed 11 and nothing much has happened to all the poppies under there.

I tidied up the compost that had been kicked out and got ¾ of a bucket of good stuff. That went onto Bed 2, which is low – but barely made any difference. It needs at least another bag on it.

Bed 7 is the main remaining challenge. I think I’ll see if I can clear almost of all of it, but leave the cornflowers at the end. If I do pumpkins here, they can fight it out amongst themselves.

Over in the mess of Plum Corner is a glorious snapdragon doing its own thing. Hopefully I won’t break it next spring when I’m clearing up the mess all around it.

There were carrot tops on door mat again and, sure enough, more big holes in the carrot bed, along with loose carrot tops. In order to stop them being wasted, I’ve pulled them all up. There were a few mad ones from the second sowing, which had grown as big balls.

All the poison in the bait station had been eaten, but there’s a small hole in the compost and a load of the good compost has been kicked out against the shed. I need to scrape that out, but you’re also not supposed to disturb the surrounding area too much.

There’s been a lot of rain recently, but temperatures have dropped and have evidently been low enough that the nasturtiums and marigolds have been killed off. The cerinthe on the bug hotel has recovered from its move and looks pretty good.

I emptied the buckets that were full of rain water and have put out the stepping stones to save the mud. The first concrete slab has sunk a little under the weight of the water butts. Perhaps it can be picked up a bit next summer when the water level is lower.

I cleared half of  Bed 9. I’m leaving some of the material as green manure and some is going to the compost bin. There will be loads of morning glory next year, there’s no way around it.

The kalettes are still maturing. I’m not sure the florets will ever get particularly big, but I can leave them a while longer.