The days have lengthened and spring seems to have arrived right on cue, with the first snowdrops shyly lifting themselves out of the cold earth at the beginning of February. The primroses followed suit brazenly showing off their yellow beauty, whilst the crocuses emerged dreamily from their subterranean lair. The golden catkins on the hazel trees hang elegantly, every now and again swaying rapidly under the enthusiasm of Great and Blue Tits frolicking in the branches.

The birdsong is now made up of spring tunes; the Great Tits announce themselves in a bold rocking call, the Wood Pigeons add their gentle cooing and the Great Spotted Woodpecker provides the background drumming. At night a local Barn Owl screeches out its nightmarish bloodcurdling cries, outdoing the Tawny Owl's hoots, gliding over the garden in the early morning light, flaunting its ghostly mysteriousness. In the greenhouse a little wren has made its nest in the Chilean Glory Vine, taking advantage of the extra warmth and providing feathery company.

The promise of new life is being unleashed, never more so than this time of year when nature is waking up from her winter slumber. I love this time of year when the seed sowing begins. It is a joy to sow the seeds, the future offspring, of plants that you have known and nurtured throughout their life-cycle, placing as seeds themselves onto the soil, covering them, attending to every step of their growth, and eaten their fruit and leaves, or just gazed at their beauty; the next generation ready to burst forth.

The seed sowing started with the onions early at the beginning of February. This was followed with the first sowing of peppers and aubergines, and then by the first sowing of leeks. Early carrots and parsnips will be next, followed by celery and celeriac.

Many of our seeds are from our own self-saved stock. We selected many of our vegetable seeds from fruits that were larger than average, a good colour, particularly good tasting, unusually shaped, or plants that were strong and vigorous, selecting the genes that we favour. Many others, particularly flowers, were randomly selected. We lost some of our drying seeds to hungry mice (they especially favoured poppy seeds, perhaps creating their own opium den as a way of amusing themselves during the long winter). Soft fruited plants such as squashes, melons and cucumbers were washed by placing under running water in a sieve, then dried to prevent mould or germination. Dry-seeded plants such as brassicas, beans, peas, onions, poppies, foxgloves were dried directly after harvesting. After drying, the process can be rather painstaking, separating the debris from the seeds themselves, sometimes opening the seed pods to release the seed first. Small seeds with much debris (such as our leek seeds) could take two hours to prepare just a teaspoon of seed! This certainly kept us occupied during the long winter nights (along with gazing longingly at certain entries in seed catalogues. We gardeners don't get out much)!

This year, we hope to increase our range of unusual plants. Sitting snugly in the greenhouse at present are our prehistoric-looking Ephedras. These are low-growing leafless shrubs from China, used in the treatment of asthma and hay fever. Nearby on the heated bench are our Ashwagandhas (Withania somnifera) from the Solanaceae family. These small evergreen shrubs are used in Ayurvedic medicine with a very vast range of medicinal benefits.

The winter weather and frozen ground has stalled our digging operations but we have been able to spend this time pruning our apple trees. This will allow for light access to all the ripening apples later in the year, encourage good sized fruit, and allow for easier picking. It has also meant that the trees are looking quite lovely after their manicures, and are well balanced shapes. It is rather unfortunate that apple canker has infected many of our apple trees, a common problem that can only be remedied by cutting off and burning any infected branches. Sadly, it's too late for some of our trees.

Our Victorian walled garden is now almost 100 per cent in cultivation. All the overgrowth has been tackled and new beds created. We have 5 smart new raised beds made during our January Garden Work Week. We have a new polytunnel waiting to be erected, the ground being dug through in preparation with a generous helping of local horse manure added. This is also being incorporated into the rest of the vegetable garden, enriching the soil. Leaf mould collected from the road last year and our own delicious compost has also been added, these ingredients providing life-force and micro-organism activity to grow good strong healthy crops.

After all the work that has happened in the garden, we plan to expand out onto the South-facing slope below the garden, just to grow potatoes and perhaps some leeks for this year. It will require some ploughing first. It's an exciting project as this area of land has not been cultivated before and it will mean that we can grow crops on a small field scale.

With the extra growing space we hope that a small vegetable box scheme can be set up for this year, an idea I find very exciting, providing local people with fresh, healthy, organic vegetables. The extra polytunnel will also mean that we can grow cucumbers and melons again. The other two tunnels have been infected by the fungus disease Fusarium wilt that attacks roots (it can last several years in the soil). It can also affect peppers and aubergines, among other crops.

Although the garden looks rather bare at this time of year, we are still harvesting leeks, kale, celeriac and parsnips. Oriental salad greens in the polytunnel are looking full of life, having put on a spurt of growth with the increasing daylight hours. Our purple cauliflower will soon be ready to harvest, along with purple sprouting spears. Our carrots are laying all tucked-up in a duvet of sheep's wool in a clamp dug into the ground in the garden. This seems to be an effective way of storing them. So far, the mice have stayed at bay, hopefully keeping to their own nests and having not yet found a paradise of juicy carrots all wrapped up in luxurious warm layers of fleece: a palace for a mouse king. We will have to eat these carrots soon, before warmer weather and longer days encourage the mice out on expeditions.

The longer days bring with them hope for a good year. Now that the garden is fully under cultivation, it provides a greater range of growing opportunities and I am hopeful that this year will be a very successful one.

Kitchen Cookpot

Hi guys, welcome back to the spring edition and it seems like spring is really here!  As fast as the garden grows we are munching its delicious produce, and filling the kitchen with wonderful cooking smells.  I'm especially excited to have an abundance of lovely fresh salad again after a few months that were lean on the green stuff.  We're also enjoying the last of the winter leeks and parsnips, in plenty of wholesome soups and stews, and we're starting to get my absolute favourite vegetable... purple sprouting broccoli!  A strange choice you might think, but have you tried it stir-fried with tamari, or lightly steamed with creamy pasta?

I'm Hannah the new cook at Monkton and it's been a very exciting few months of settling in for me as I get used to the routine of life here at the Court.  I'm thrilled to be working in such a beautiful old kitchen (you can feel the rich history in here) and I'm looking forward to many new challenges and opportunities to expand my skills in this role.  It's a delight to work with such a committed team on a project we can really sink our teeth into!  The kitchen has been in full swing since I got here in January, catering for visitors, guests, and course participants, as well as a hungry, hard-working community!  The Permaculture Design course brought another 16 mouths to feed (and what a lovely group they were!), and we've seen a steady flow of lovely willing workers.  All the volunteers do at least one day working in our kitchen, where we swap stories and recipes as well as jobs.  Linda from Greece gifted the kitchen with her own recipe book of classic Greek recipes, rejiggered for vegetarians, and Mariana's vegan chocolate mousse was a big hit.

For me, the best kitchen fun I've had so far was catering for our 'Spanish Night' event in February.  We offered vegetarian 'tapas', taking influence from classic Spanish cuisine and ingredients but giving them our own twist.  Of course, anyone who has eaten tapas in Spain will know the truth - there is virtually no such thing as 'vegetarian tapas'!  But I think we pulled it off.  The whole team pulled together to host this lovely night and at one point I think we had 7 or 8 people rushing around in the kitchen!  I love it when the atmosphere in the kitchen is almost as much of a party as out in the dining hall!  With a CD of Spanish guitar music playing all day, we were well in the mood by serving up time and we proved once again that hard work and service can be high fun.  We're looking forward to the next of these monthly dinner and music evenings.

[See Events Report for details!]

Another activity that has kept the kitchen occupied is, of course, Seville orange season!  After three huge batches you'd think I'd never want to see another orange, but it's such a pleasure to fill the kitchen with the delicious smell of marmalade.  It took two solid days to make those batches, and yes, we've ordered in some more oranges.  There's nothing like fresh homemade marmalade on your morning toast (except possibly fresh homemade marmalade on a fresh warm sponge cake!).  I've been experimenting with orange and ginger marmalade, and with lemon curd, too.  To the left is the recipe I used for this year's Seville orange and ginger marmalade.  Highly recommended!