December in the garden

There's not really very much going on in the garden at the moment. I think that this time of year's a restful time for gardeners. Time to sit by the fire with a mug of tea planning the plot for the coming year. I've been picking leaves from various brassicas for a few weeks now and was delighted yesterday to see that the Kale has started to regrow from the leaf scars. I only found out they did that the other day when watching one of 'Steve's Seaside Allotment' videos.  He is a wealth of knowledge and one of my 'go to' source's of information. There are several very knowledgeable gardeners on you Tube and I'm looking forward to receiving my new gardening book from Liz Zorab.  It won't be here until February though so I have a bit of a wait. My brussels sprouts are doing really well and will be lovely to have as button sprouts in a few weeks.  I planted them quite late as they were in the 'sick bay' of a local nursery.All they needed was a good drink and some decent soil and they romped away. The leaves from the sprout plants are gorgeous shredded and cooked in a little butter with salt and pepper. I intend to plant a lot more next year and use the leaves as a veg. If we get sprouts too it will be a bonus. The rainbow chard is doing great and that's another really useful veg. I simply take a few leaves from each plant. They are lovely eaten raw in salads but equally nice when shredded and stir fried. Don't discard the stalks.they are delicious too. Lettuce is doing really well but I am a little worried that the drizzle is going to rot them all. If it's reasonably dry later today I will pull a large sheet of clear polythene over the hoops to give it all some cover. The constant drizzle is far more worrying than the cold.