Best Laid Plans...

We have been having strange weather here in the UK; heavy snow before Christmas and then another load after Christmas. I have two cloches in the garden protecting winter salad plants with the hope of eating fresh salad leaves at least once a week throughout the winter and getting a head start on lettuce for the hunger gap months in spring, or should I say I had two cloches. I woke a few days ago to find the longer hoop cloche (shown above) had been broken by the sheer weight of snow. Underneath most of the plants were crushed beyond recovery.

As the heavy snow had managed to shear off whole branches off trees all around our small town, I suppose I should not have been surprised. The smaller cloche survived the onslaught. so I still have some lettuce to pick from.

In addition I had also planted some winter-resistant salad plants without cover. These were two oriental mustards (green in the snow and komatsuna), winter density lettuce and Czech winter spinach. I reckoned that if the latter could survive a Czech winter it would laugh at an English one and it did. The others plats have also survived the snow, though not so spectacularly. 

I put it all down to experience. I am just a learner, I tell myself. I will plan for snow next year, I promise, but then next year there might not be any snow. I suppose I will always be a learner and the first lesson is that the best laid plans oft go awry.