Hello,
My name is George, I’ve been lurking around here and other sites for a while now, having got a half plot here in clay soil Bedfordshire at the end of 2018. I was fortunate in that my plot came recently maintained although only about 2/3rds of it was in use. I bought a couple of John’s books last year, so those have helped me along a bit too.
I had a reasonable go last year, with potatoes, carrots and beetroot being my successes - for some reason the parsnips never appeared. Life took over a bit later in the year and I didn’t get the plot tidied and prepared for 2020, I even had thoughts of giving it up when I went up there on a miserable January afternoon!
Thankfully I didn’t and instead got reading, tidying up the plot and have actually ended up bringing most of it to a stage where I can plant things. Already in are some potatoes, carrots, beetroot and parsnip - it’s all coming along except the parsnips, again!!! What I have neglected is the proper manuring/compost etc so I suspect I’ll have mixed results this year, but I have got planning well ahead for next year and that will include some sizeable changes to the layout (to help with rotation and make plans for composting etc).
After much reading and buying some of those little greenhouse things from Wilcos (sneaking them out as essentials under lockdown....). I have quite a lot growing which will soon need to be going in the plot. So, that’s where I’ll leave my introduction and at some point over the weekend I’ll be back begging advise such as ‘do these Brussels look ready to plant?’ and ‘what do I do next with this celery?’. The problem I’m finding is that the seed packets tell you what to do with things but not much about what you should expect them to look like at any given stage.
Anyway, looking forward to chipping in a bit here and there.