This month has been surprisingly warm and sunny and my little indoor garden is showing the effects: all the plants from large seeds – the garlic, peas and beans – are bucketing away with masses of growth, especially the broad beans which are shouting that they’d like to be planted out soon!

And the peas, a little behind. They’re just fine whether in or out, so a few will be planted out out but most will stay indoors until March.

Radishes are now tall and strong, and if they are to grow nice fat bulbs I’ll try putting them close to a radiator during the evenings and see if a bit if heat will make a difference

All the plants go out on sunny days when I have time, so they can get the maximum light, and now I’VE STOPPED WATERING THEM ALL. Some of the smaller lettuces died because too much water just means the plants all have their toes in freezing cold water: they don’t need watering more than once, meanly, every few weeks, and the soil will become dryish but that’s fine. Growth will now slow almost to a halt because of the lack of light and warmth, so thetask is just to keep them happy until they are ready to start growing again somewhen in March.

Meanwhile a few lettuce and mizuna leaves have got big enough to pick and have made three or four good salads, which pleases me enormously.

Spinach is quite big, and those will be repotted into big pots to give them room to grow. So far, although I haven’t had a whole lot of food, it’s been really instructive to see how plants will go on producing a little bit of food even though its deep into winter now.

With the cardboard box garden, it’s gone rather quiet except for the garlic which is ramping away, and the others have hardly changed since they were planted in November so some patience will be needed while waiting for them to start catching up again. Now we’re in January and the days are getting longer all the plants will spend some time near the radiators and that, with a bit more daylight, should have all the plants ready to take off growing in late February or early March.

Progress report in due course…..