Since the middle of January, we’ve had very little rain so both the garden at home and the allotment have started to dry out enough to consider doing a little bit of early gardening. 

As far as I am concerned early February is too early to start gardening too seriously as we could still have some cold and nasty weather. 

At the allotment, it’s a case of more tidying up. After a couple of years, I’ve managed to dig over the old strawberry bed. Ideally, I wanted to do it through last summer but the ground was baked hard so I decided to leave it until it received some autumn or winter rain. As it turned out I only managed to dig half of the bed last autumn but I finished the job last week.

Whilst I was busy getting the strawberry bed dug over, Sue pruned back our buddleias. 

We now have a mountainous pile of debris to get rid of. I’m hoping to have a bonfire before we get any wet weather.

At home, it was more or less the same, clearing away all the dead stems from last year’s perennial border plants.

There were plenty of dry stems to cut back and clear away. Again it’s what to do with all the debris. I’ve bagged some up to take to the compost heap at the allotment and some has gone in the council green waste bin.

There’s still plenty of sorting out to do in this border but it’s going to have to wait for another day.