December this year has been very mild. Indeed, the Met Office are reporting that here in England it has been the warmest December since records began in 1910. We have certainly seen that here in our garden and elsewhere. With daytime temperatures between 10 and 14°C, many of our strawberry plants are convinced that it’s spring, as the photo above shows.

With no threat of frosts we have left many of our beetroots to be harvested and we are still picking them fresh as and when we require them.

Fresh beetroot harvested on Boxing Day

Even our dwarf clementine tree still sits in the front garden (we would usually have brought it in by now), and we have only today harvested the last of its fruit.

Our dwarf clementine tree is content outdoors in this unseasonably warm December

In the few weeks since its fruits were harvested, the pumpkin patch is now playing host to new life in the form of an assortment of weeds:

Our pumpkin patch, now host to a variety of weeds that have taken advantage of this very warm December

This month we harvested our remaining three parsnips, just in time for the festive season. I was really pleased with them. I doubt they’d win any prizes, but they were a decent size and very delicious. I was particularly pleased since the trauma of their roots being coiled around those paper pots I germinated them in clearly did them no harm.

Our homegrown parsnips – they won’t win any awards, but we’re very happy with them!

Aside from that it’s been quite quiet here in our garden. We do plan to get outside in the remaining few days before I go back to work to take advantage of the mild conditions and start preparing the currently baron areas for next year’s growing. I remember this time last year helping my dad at the allotment and meeting early in the morning to do some digging only to find it the soil was frozen solid. According to the forecast we shouldn’t have to worry about that for the next week or so.