1st Job - rescue the strawberries !!

I wasn't exagerating when I said that the strawberry bed needed rescuing - as you can see from the picture below.



After two hours hard work and a sack full full of couch grass later the bed was looking much improved. Even though they had been completed choked up with couch the strawberries have still managed to spring into life and are showing plenty of sturdy growth for the new season.

Last Christmas as always, I had a real christmas tree. Some people argue that the environmental impact of christmas tree farming is unethical but I feel that as long as you make full use of the tree then the impact can be lessened.

This year on our way home from our caravan in Newquay (Wales) we passed a christmas tree farm - we popped in, tromped across muddy tracks and chose our tree, it was cut down from the field and then up and decorated within five hours. Local, sustainable and transported on journey that had to be made any way.

What is the point of this story you may be thinking, well ... to recycle an 8ft tree can be a bit awkward - however - I cut the branches off and pack then into a large box leave them until about now and the needles have mostly fallen off. Scatter these all around your strawberries, it enhances the flavour (or so I have read) and also acts as a slight deterant to slugs although beer traps are still needed to catch the determined slime balls. The large trunk and any thicker branches that remain get chopped up and burnt on the woodburner in case you were wondering !