Winter work

Winter has finally arrived with fairly frequent frosts, though temperatures have not been lower than -4C with warmer spells in between.  My niece Sarah and her baby son came to visit for two weeks and they both assisted in the garden 😀  Here digging the last of the second planting of potatoes.
They also helped prune the raspberries and top up the beds with manure.
Last week we had  lovely cold, but sunny, days  which meant I could get lots of manure moved to top up all the raised beds and the pumpkin patch  too. Almost done – I never dig in the manure – I break it up roughly then leave it on the surface to decompose. The “lasagne” in the foreground is composting materials to fill the slope between the raised beds and the pumpkin patch.

The peas and bean have started to sprout – amazing how they grow even when it is so cold. A peek under the fleece reveal this: sprouts pushing their way through the manure mulch. Yay!  The blue pellets are for slugs which are still around – we need colder weather to get rid of them, although if it gets too cold I will lose some of the peas. The broad beans are more robust.