Damn cold

In one of our first winters after we’d moved here we recorded a night time temperature of -16 centigrade, but then enjoyed a decade of relatively mild winters, and thought perhaps that such extremes had been consigned to meteorological history.

Last winter brought us back to reality with a start, but still didn’t challenge our “record” low.

When we woke up this morning to hear the TV weather man reporting overnight lows of -17c in Powys, and -13c in Shrewsbury, we had visions of our record being smashed….but didn’t quite make it!   As you can see from our photo, we dropped to about -15 degrees;   cold, but no cigar.

Perhaps more alarmingly, you can see that when this photo was taken at 10.30 this morning, it was still about -8c.

It’s not showing signs of warming up anytime soon!

Sometimes we watch the weather forecast, sometimes we just look out of the window.
This is the scene that greeted us this morning.   Today, it’s mostly going to be cold.

The weathermen are predicting this cold snap is going to continue for another 10 days, so it looks like we may be enjoying this view for sometime yet.

The temperature on the nursery dropped to -9 centigrade last night; luckily, Steve Nick and Louise spent most of Friday filling the front polytunnel with all our evergreen stock, so its safely tucked up for the duration.

We don’t mind seeing a gloriously frosty vista when we open the curtains of a morning, but we can’t help worrying that this might be a harbinger of a long cold winter ahead …. we’ve already had more frosts than we might have expected this autumn, and forecasters are warning of a repeat of last years bleak winter weather, so it’s time to batten down the hatches.

So cold, so early

Most of our evergreen stock will be moved under cover this week – not because its less than hardy, but if the root balls freeze for any length of time the plants can’t transpire, so they dehydrate, and then die.  This would not be good. The irrigation system will be drained so we don’t suffer too much frozen pipe damage, and we’ll start the horticultural equivalent of doing the hokey-cokey - opening and closing the polytunnels everyday. The plants need protection, but also ventilation, so as soon as the daytime temperature is above zero we open up, and as soon as it starts to approach freezing, we close again, and this shapes the rhythm of our days for the the next several months.

It’s taken rather longer than we expected it might, but the pile of wood can now be revealed in all its transmogrified glory….as a new sales office!

Well, okay, maybe more an alcove than an office, and maybe more a shed with a large hole than either of them, but shelter from the weather for us, customers, and all the sales paraphernalia that seems to accumulate around a till and credit card machine.

Cute, huh ?

With a window!

Pegged mortice and tenon!

on both sides!

The first photo looks as if it’s been photoshopped by David Dickinson, but it hasn’t – all the photos were taken within a few minutes of each other – the only difference is that the sun peeped from behind the clouds for the few fractions of a second during which the first picture was taken!

Barbarea vulgaris variegata

We started growing Barbarea vulgaris ‘variegata’ this year as an ornamental groundcover plant – its attractive variegation and dense low growth make it an interesting and unusual plant for the front of a herbaceous border.   But knowing that its leaves are also edible, we added a few to our potager to see how they’d perform as a salad plant.

And so far, they’ve proved very worthwhile – we’ve had several pickings from the plants for salad leaves, and they’ve added a very striking splash of colour to the plot.   They were looking a bit tired by the autumn, so we cut them hard back, and they’ve now recovered to rosettes like the one in the photo.   We reckon we’ll get another picking or two off them before winter sets in (when we think they’ll retreat underground – some catalogues list them as herbaceous, some as evergreen!).

They are also listed as both perennial and biennial in different seed catalogues, so we’re interested to see what they do next spring – if they prove to be reliably perennial, they’ll be a very easy and worthwhile addition to the veg garden.   And if they prove to be only biennial, they’ll still be worth growing – we’ve been picking leaves since late spring so they have a good long growing season, they have a lovely peppery water cress flavour, and they look nice (in the garden and on a plate!).