Brilliant Brassicas!

It's been pretty mild for the past two or three weeks, considering we are 'in the deep midwinter' - but it has been frosty this week, and too cold for this wimp to go to the Hill today.

I've been working away at my paths though, the last two or three weekends, and I am almost ready for a new batch of chippings - which I will only be able to collect from the park when the Christmas trees have been chipped.

So the only thing to do is to take pickings of purple sprouting broccoli, which is UTTERLY DELICIOUS - can't think why I haven't grown it before - and sprouts.

The sprouts are a bit of a revelation too - this is the first year that the plants have been great. I have been organised enough to get (admittedly, purchased) seedlings planted out (into a nursery bed) then transplanted to their final homes once I took the pea wigwams down, and it's worked really well.

The sprouts are firm and small to medium sized - which suits me. I can't be doing with the cabbage-sized sprouts which the supermarkets sell which when you cook them go soggy on the outside before the middles are tender.

I must also have a go at winter cabbage next year - at the beginning of the month, while I was turning the paths into the beds, Richard from three plots down wandered up to see how I was getting on and asked if I'd like a red cabbage. "I've got quite a few good sized ones, but when I took one home last week, the wife said she didn't like it as it tasted 'funny'".

Well, I didn't need asking twice. Good value is cabbage - this one is the size of my head, weighs about the same as a medicine ball and is still in the fridge having lasted quite happily with me carving great chunks off for shredding for meal after meal. Brilliant!

And tomorrow it is the annual potato day and seed swap at Ryton Organic Gardens. I've spent a merry afternoon poring over the potato varieties to choose what I'd like to grow this year, and then popping spare bean seeds into envelopes to take to swap for whatever takes my fancy.

I've been going for the past four years and it has always been either exceptionally wet, or exceptionally cold - and tomorrow's forecast suggests the latter. I'm looking forward to it - but I'll be wrapping up well!