Oh my goodness, how much wild weather have we had this winter? For a while it seemed as though every few days there was another storm. Thankfully the weather forecast is looking more settled for early February, with more dry days, seasonally appropriate frost and even some sun.
Storm Darragh caused quite a lot of damage here at the homestead, with gusts of 90mph including smashing four panes of glass in the greenhouse, ripping off part of three shed roofs and, somehow, ripping established brassicas out of the ground, never to be seen again. Presumably they ended up in a nearby field, no doubt to the delight of the local sheep. We were without electricity for several days, which also meant no heating as the oil fired central heating relies on electricity to operate (*) Fortunately the woodburner kept one of the rooms warm, and I could cook on top of it. Lots of soup and stews.

(* Many rural properties have oil or liquid gas central heating. Heat pumps and so forth are unfortunately not a practical option here just now, and obviously they wouldn’t have worked either without electricity.)

A huge number of trees blew down within the village. The damage has been incredible and some local properties were without power for a week or more. Many lanes were impassable, blocked by enormous fallen trees.

Since then we have had several periods of stormy weather, battering my already battered garden, but fortunately nothing like Darragh.

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It has been a strange start to the year, because I have been really very poorly. What I assumed was just tiredness after having the family here for Christmas turned out to be The Dreaded Lurgy. There have been an awful lot of bugs about this winter, and the one I got was very determined to stay and I didn’t start to feel well again for over three weeks. I haven’t been that poorly for years, having essentially ‘lost’ a month. As a freelancer, it is incredibly difficult to take any time off due to ill health, but I literally couldn’t work. All of my plans for new projects in January, and also the repairs to the garden, had to be shelved too as I focused on trying to get better.

Now that I am well again, every day has been spent trying to catch up with everything. I am almost there now, and by the end of the first week of February I should be back up to date and hopefully can finally sort out repairing the greenhouse and sheds. Obviously not working also means not earning any money, not ideal when there’s only one income coming into the house – mine!

The lurgy also means that I have not been able to set up the online workshops yet. It just hasn’t been humanly possible to do that and catch up with all the deadlines for the articles I write and work on the edits for Next Book. Thank you for your queries and hopefully very soon! Thank you also to everyone who has booked on the Gardening and Homesteading courses here this spring and summer, and to the groups booking Zoom and in-person talks and workshops. The calendar is starting to fill up!

The open-to-the-public talks booked so far this year include several in Wales – Llandovery Literature Festival, a workshop at the marvellous estate at Hafod, and The Flower Meadow festival.  Over in England, events include the National Amateur Gardening Show in June and BBC Gardeners’ World Live in late August. I’ll post details about these as they are become available.

I have many plans for the garden this year which I am looking forward to sharing via my blog here, on social media (I mostly post on Instagram) and my You Tube channel. In addition to my own projects, which include creating more undercover growing space and a new growing area in a part of the garden which has so far been untouched since I moved here, I am very excited to be working on a (Top Secret for now!) project with BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine.

Meanwhile, the greenhouse is starting to fill up with the first sowings of the year: aubergines, chillies, sweet peppers, onions, some lettuce, and sweet peas. The heat loving aubergines, chillies and sweet peppers need warmth to thrive and are on heat mats. Now that most of them have sprouted and been pricked out, I’ll be putting up a grow light to help them thrive over the next few weeks, when the days are still fairly short for these plants.

Mid-February is a special time: daylight starts to exceed 10 hours a day, great for all kinds of plants. Here’s my list of what to sow in February, divided into early in the month, and after February 14th. Apart from the aubergines, chillies and sweet peppers, which really do need sowing by the end of February, everything else will be fine sown in March. There is no rush. Timings vary from place to place, and you need to take your location and weather conditions into account.

Temperatures remind us that it is still very much wintertime, but there are signs of spring on its way. My ducks have finally started laying, after months of being freeloaders! In the village, the first lambs have been born. The witch hazel is in blossom and snow drops are blooming. We’ve had hard frosts, and, most importantly, some dry weather, after almost 18 months of incredibly wet weather. Last year was rather disastrous gardening-weather-wise but I am feeling optimistic about the growing year in 2025. There’s no other way to be, really. We have to have hope ☀️