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!Now I'm busily into planting up all the winter and spring crops - all my brassicas including kale, cabbages and purple-sprouting broccoli. My young purple-sprouting looks glorious - really well grown and leafy, though I do say so myself. But I always

be surprised to hear that this week I couldn't wait to get up to the plot and start picking. Even Paul braved the icy winds to give me a hand with the harvest. And why were we so excited? Because the purple sprouting broccoli was ready.Luscious green, purple

produced flower buds and the purple-sprouting broccoli which was cropping fabulously only a couple of weeks ago has gone to flower.It seems only a couple of weeks ago that I was harvesting tight clusters of purple-sprouting for the steamer but almost

I have a confession to make. After raving about the arrival of the purple sprouting broccoli and extolling the virtues of winter veg in my blog last week I realised that I had forgotten to mention red cabbages. Not only are red cabbages easy to grow

and watering too often!It's all starting to make me think about next season and what my plot might have to offer. Okay the purple sprouting is underway and I've a few cabbages in the ground but not enough frankly. In my book you just can't have enough cabbages

and turn a blind eye to other areas of the plot that need attention. My purple sprouting broccoli, for example, is now in full flower. I won't be using that bed until I'm ready to plant sweetcorn, so I may as well leave the blooming broccoli to provide

to slug damage when sown directly into the ground. So now, I have a huge number of brassicas to transplant: purple sprouting broccoli, two varieties of kale, Brussels sprouts, calabrese and Romanesco broccoli(which is, strictly speaking, a cauliflower

of leaves, only to emerge during the harvest of crops such as winter kale or purple-sprouting broccoli.Hopefully vine weevil larvae and chafer grubs will also be seriously diminished by the cold snap. I'm also crossing my fingers that hungry birds

and potato soup. The green tops add so much flavour to soup and stock and it saves wasting them. My soup tasted much better than the carton of ready-made I bought the week before.The leeks have fared better than my catastrophic purple-sprouting broccoli

- a couple of cabbages, red cabbage, kale and purple sprouting broccoli, but no sprouts. Paul stared at me aghast when I told him. "What! No sprouts for Christmas dinner?" I didn't even think he was that keen on them. "I'm not" he said, "but you have