KW-09 Frutarianism

llama man, llama man, does everything a llama can

There is always a very nice week at the Barracks, weatherwise, at some point in March. This is the week where we try to steal an advantage on the summer by weeding the soft fruits, maybe taking cuttings, re-cutting the edges to make them look pretty and generally doing a bit of tidy up.

expanding, tidying and fixing some errant turf-free spots

The rhubarbs will start showing, and half of them will get covered with big-ol’ pots and hidden away from the light to force long, thin, sweet and tasty, string-free dark pink shoots. I’ll take out about a quarter of the mature strawberry plants, and all of the baby ones. They all get thrown on the compost heap, excepting enough of the latter which replace the former. I’ll probably top-dress with a thin layer of compost and the asparagus will get some salt, and the blueberries some wood ash.

If this happens in March, then awesome. It will snow again, and when it finally melts in April or May (I say finally… you can never know which one is the last one), it’s a lovely surprise to see that they are all ready to go.

Well, I started all of this last week. Which, as far as I know, is still February.

It’s a little bit crazy.

I also plan to chop the rest of this this week. I forgot to mention that.

But also:

I have been unhappy with the permanent beds / soft fruit beds for a while. They are all the wrong proportion. I saw it from a drone shot first, but now I can’t unsee it even from ground level. So I decided to make them a better shape. To be honest, I wanted to do this anyway since I dug the grapevine bed, but the overhead view really convinced me. So, I am expanding them all 1m40 to the right and 40cm to the left. As there 8 of them, and this is essentially an eighth bigger, it’s a whole new bed! Except I am planning on two more of those as well. This has been the plan for the last 5 years, and I think I will dig at least one of them this year, but more likely two. I want to bring the strawberries all the way to the front. Visually, the shortest should be at the front, with the plants and bushes getting taller and denser towards the back. At least a little more so than they are now.

So how about you, my pirates? Is the rest of the northern-hemisphere being unseasonably warm?

I cycled a different way home on this day. I think I am going to be cycling this way more often.

Last year, I made two weather / climate predictions. The first was that the last day of winter would be March 16th. The other was that at least one month in 2024 would hit an average of 2 degrees above blah blah, you know what. I made these in September or October. They sounded ridiculous and far fetched. I’m not sure I went far enough.

This week, I am going to be mostly in the wood shop. I really can’t tell you why. And then, on Thursday, I am going to the UK for a few days. I’ll tell you about both next week.

Until then, be loving

Your, Pirate Ben

xoxo