It's January and the ground is far too wet for me to be able to do anything at the allotment so now is a good time to reflect on the last year, and contemplate the year to come.

In some ways, 2015 was a repeat of 2014. I planted the potatoes in a bed which I had dug over for the first time and the ground was far to poor for them to grow. The first earlies I planted did ok but by the time I got the maincrop planted out, the ground was rock hard. I couldn't plant them as deep as I would have liked. And when it came to harvesting, I had to wait until it rained before I could get a fork into the ground.

But the upside is that this was the first year I had been able to use that bed. I'm confident most of the couch grass has gone (it will always come back round the edges but I can cope with that). The bind weed and dandelions will need a lot more work yet. After the first earlies came out I sowed mustard as a green manure. Once that was cut down I applied a layer of newspaper followed by a thin layer of leaf mould then cardboard and finally a nice think layer of manure. The side where the main crop potatoes were still has the mustard growing, and I shall add the same organic matter here once I chop the mustard down.

Bed half-manured and half with mustard growing

I know already that my potato crop for 2016 won't be great as I will be planting them in a bed that is full of couch grass. But the bed has had some organic matter added to it so hopefully it will be easier to dig over. I also intend to plant less potatoes and space the rows out enough to be able to earth them up this time round!

And 2015 was a repeat performance of 2014 for my onions too - the badgers dug them all up. Badgers don't usually go for onions and many of the plot holders here have wonderful crops but the badgers wanted to use that particular bed as a latrine. In all honesty, the soil there wasn't good enough to grow onions anyway and I should never have planted them. I have decided for 2016 there will be no onions, I have to wait until I have better soil. 

Once the onions had been dispersed far and wide, I covered the bed over in a bid to keep the badgers off. But of course that only meant they moved on to the next bed. The bed in question is planted up with some shrubs and perennial flowers that I use for cut flowers. It was only planted up in 2014 so is still establishing. I kept on top of the weeding (lots of bind weed and dandelions) for a while but in the end I was put off by the pooh. I need to pluck up the courage to tackle it somehow. All the digging the badgers did has meant my lovely clean edges have disappeared and the couch grass is coming back in.

Here is the bed in May with nice clean edges and no weeds

The same bed today - what a mess

I didn't grow many annuals in 2015 as the soil is still too lumpy to try and direct sow. But between this plot and my other plot, I am beginning to establish a good quantity of perennials and shrubs to use for cutting. I am very poor at taking photos of my cut flowers so I aim to improve in 2016 (also aim to improve my flowering-arranging skills). I had a good amount of flowers for most of the year - in June the house was over-run with them but in the first two weeks of July there was a real dearth. Hopefully this year I will have annuals to fill that gap.

A harvest of cut flowers in June

Now I think about it, I should do a post just about my cut flowers. I am tending towards them more than veg at the moment.

I also need to report on my new polytunnel and 'orchard'! More soon!