Today and tomorrow are said to be good days in the phases of the moon for sowing broad beans. Conditions in the garden were good for this too, after rain at the weekend and the horse manure we’d spread over the bean bed the previous weekend. We sowed the rest of a packet I bought last year of Sevilla broad (fava) beans, as well as some we had saved from last year’s crop. The plants sown in the autumn are doing well and don’t seem to have suffered from the cold as they did in last year’s severe frosts.
The rosemary has been in flower all through the winter, the garlic is growing well and there is bright green new growth on the olive trees following the pruning.
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The chard and spinach plants seem to be starting to grow again, the red cabbages are hearting up and a few small turnips were ready to eat for lunch today.
In most of the vineyards around the village there was a lot of slow, cold work going on. Each vine has to be pruned by hand, one at a time, between November and March, when the viticulteur/euse chooses which are the best shoots to bear this year’s crop. In the picture below, these old vines (probably about 50 years old) have not yet been pruned. In the background there’s an olive grove and a mimosa tree in flower. A typical view of early spring in the Languedoc.
2 comments:
I don't think I'm going to sow any more broad beans, just fill in a couple of gaps in the winter sown ones. The second sowing never seems to do as well as the earlier sown ones.
Unlike yours my Olive tree has lost a lot of its leaves following our extremely cold winter. I am wondering if it will survive. The ground is slowly being prepared for our Broad Beans but it is still below freezing here most days which does not encourage working outdoors!
Always interesting to see how seasons differ in other parts of the world.
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