July 2012 – Garden Gate Flowers

We should label things

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA — Sprouting brocoli.

Peter Cook and Dudley Moore had – as their alter egos Derek and Clive – an expletive-laden conversation regarding the lack of labelling on important household items (such as motorbikes and sunglasses – getting them mixed up can be awkward, it seems) and I often find myself reciting the lines in my head as I go around the garden looking at rows of green stuff sprouting up, trying to remember what they are or how I should be harvesting / nurturing them.

The brocoli we planted is sprouting nicely, though not in one big head. As these are the plants that Lynn gave to us we are not too sure what type they are, so I am second guessing what to do. Perhaps they are “cut and come again” brocoli which I can just take off florets and more grow. But they are just the size of purple sprouting and at the moment we don’t get much of a meal from them.

The tomatoes are another issue – I have been patiently waiting for the first one to ripen to its full red bloom, only to discover that this type are naturally orange in colour and will not turn red. Change the label to orange tomato.

Mind you, even with a label and instructions, life does not always work out. My coriander seeds which the packet told me would take something stupid like a matter of hours between sowing and harvesting, have taken months to only produce three pathetic seedlings. It don’t always do what it says on the tin.

And even when your plants do well, you cannot always be sure what you will harvest. Lynn kindly provided us with a whole host of different chitting spuds, from Belle de Fontenay second earlies to Sarpo Mira Main Crop. I carefully planted each type in its own row and assiduously labelled each one accordingly. What soon became apparent when the spuds came up was that they were not necessarily uniform rows: the tops were clearly different, and since the destruction of the plants by blight, I havent’ a clue what I am going to find. This week we dug several roots of potatoes that are like no other we have planted – so while one root is clearly Setana, the next is bright red – maybe Duke of Yorks? Who knows. But it brings even more excitement to an otherwise mundane task fo digging spuds.

As Derek and Clive said “If people would label things…you’d know where you were”.

Don’t Say What You See

Prince Charles has been ridiculed in the past for his admission that he talks to his plants to encourage growth. Looking over my desolated veg patch this week, if HRH had had a look he could have been forgiven for thinking that I might have been saying rather nasty things to my plants. The broad beans are black and increasingly wizened, and the potatoes, with nothing above ground, now look like Iron Age long barrows, awaiting grave robbers to dig up the treasure within. If anyone has been talking to these plants, it would probably have been someone from the John Terry school of elocution. What might pass for “banter” on the professional football pitch would definitely be banned in the allotment.

Admittedly, the more banal explanation for the sorry state of the beans (and spuds) will be the weather – in particular the position of the jet stream which is doing its very best to break every precipitation record in the book this summer. But talk of the weather is also banned in our house. Claire has been threatening to put a sign up in the bookshop to warn potential customers that “yes – we know it is raining outside, that it has been a crap summer and we too are fed up with it. But most of all we are fed up with every single (JT expletive deleted) customer telling us this”.

The other reason we are not discussing the weather in our house is because our Silver Wedding Celebration is planned for this Saturday – in the garden. Jim told me yesterday that he thought that we should be OK this week-end, and coming from a man who has spent his life working outdoors on farms, I was heartened to hear an expert opinion on the subject. Unfortunately, he undermined this voice of authority by saying “well that was what it said on the ‘Countryfile‘ forecast”. AAAhhhh…. that’ll be same TV programme we watch on Sundays – a glossy magazine of picture postcard farming for city dwellers who think cows are the size of a large dog (genuine overheard conversation that one) where the rare breed piglets on Adam’s Farm get a little sun cream on the ears to prevent burning.

No that does not inspire great confidence, so we are not trying too hard to guess the size of the next weather front and are avoiding false hopes and discussion about high pressure over England this week-end.

But in the absence any weather to discuss, what can we Brits talk about?

Well, I reckon second on the list, is gardening, so a quick resume of what’s growing on in the borders. Well, Claire planted out the Sweet Williams and I put the parsnips out. Both now look rather sodden and sad, but are surviving. The Heritage Peas have grown magnificently – straight and tall. Unfortunately, they forgot to flower, so there are five feet of leafy, spindly growth, with six inches of flowering plant on top. So a couple of handfuls of peas are the best we can hope for. But only if the bees are able to get out and pollinate, but they are seemingly hive-bound because of – you guessed it – the weather.

The pigs are happy as….well pigs in mud really. They have discovered that if they dig deep enough they can get to the roots of the blue cedar. The other morning I discovered them up to their shoulders shovelling away with their snouts – looking intent on digging a tunnel out of there. Perhaps they are trying to escape this crap weather. When they ask for a wooden horse for practising their gymnastics I will start to worry.

They are managing to keep themselves busy with rootling around amid signs that they are getting adolescent urges as the smaller puny pig keeps trying to mount his larger brother. Some sex education might be in order here, but in a blog that is intended to be read by the whole family, I think we will leave it there. To paraphrase from last week’s court case: he’s a rutting ginger runt.

Elsewhere sex education is also in short supply with the hens who are laying three eggs per day, but Sydney the Speckled Sussex has been broody for weeks. Sydney clearly does not understand that however long she sits on those eggs, they ain’t gonna hatch.

But then again, perhaps it’s not the eggs that make her stay indoors – perhaps she too is just fed up with the WEATHER.

But we’re not going to mention that are we? Just try not to comment on the bleeding obvious.

Blighted

My depiction of war in the garden and use of historical references – such as the clearances – sprang to mind on Wednesday as I walked down the garden to see two thirds of the potatoes had been struck down with blight. My thoughts turned to A-level Irish history and accounts of the Irish potato famine.

The speed with which this has struck is breathtaking. We had not noticed anything particularly untoward a couple of days ago, but on Wednesday morning the rows of Kestrel, Setana, Belle De Fontenay, and Wilja were covered in tell-tale brown spots and in some cases the plants were already turning to mush. Even the Arran Victory had taken a “hell of a beating” and looked defeated. The only spuds that seemed to be surviving the onslaught were the Sarpo Mira: the spuds that we had intended to buy in bulk but – due to Lynn’s munificence when going to the potato day at the Consti club – we just ended up with two rows and an interesting array of other varieties.

In retrospect this looks like we were right all along, but who could have guessed that we would have SUCH a wet summer and anyway, isn’t it good to try a range in your first year? But all is not lost yet: the Sarpos still look mostly healthy today, despite the small brown patches on the leaves.

So what is this blight? I read that it is a fungal infection Phytophthora infestans that can also infect other members of the potato family, Solanaceae such as tomatoes. It spreads through the air and is particularly virulent in damp weather. If that does not fit your idea of a typical British summer, then you clearly do not live in these Isles. So in retrospect I should not be surprised by the turn of events.

Apparently it is possible to predict the occurrence of blight by “Smith Periods” – in which the temperature remains above 10 degrees along with 90% humidity during a 48 hour period. And that is exactly what we had in the previous two days: misty, drizzly weather that when I went into school the previous day to teach athletics to year 10 I had finally snapped and declared that I had had enough. No more cheery “crap weather again hey!”, or “anyone for tennis” laughing at the tennis coaches braving it in wind and rain. The weather was no longer a subject of ironic mirth. I was fed up with being constantly wet or changing lesson plans according to the position of the jet stream. Well thanks very much Jet stream – you can sod off back to Scandinavia, your work is done. My potato crop is ruined.

So that would explain the potato blight on Wednesday morning. I told Claire and we both trudged down the garden and cleared the tops off the plants. That is the beauty of the internet: I could google blight, and after getting a brief history of the Irish potato famine, I could get good advice on what to do if you do end up like a 19th century Irish tenant farmer. Get rid fo the infected foliage and hope it has not got into the tubers. We did that – though left the self-righteously healthy Sarpos to prosper a little longer. We had it done by 8 a.m. ostensibly so I could get to school on time, but, you know, I was convinced the blight was spreading before my eyes and we had to act now. To lighten the gloom I joked that either we got rid of this problem and saved our potato crop, or else we up sticks and emigrate to America…

So we await the outcome of our swift action. Dunno what spuds will be left, but I think we did the right thing. Dad’s reaction was that it must have been weed killer or something to have done them in so fast, but after sharing the results of my googling with him he takes my word that it was blight – and even understands about Smith Periods. By next week he will be telling me the same things as if it was he who knew all along about such things.

In the meantime I can feel like I am – in my father’s eyes – a grown up who is actually managing to cope with the vicissitudes of life in the garden.

Who’s been eating my broccoli?

After our last report, we are sorry to report that further damage has been sustained to the veg patch. Well – mainly to the Old Man’s patch. We noticed that most of our brussels, broccoli and purple sprouting had taken direct hits from an unidentified assailant. It was not initially clear what had done the damage: I thought that maybe a smart pigeon had somehow managed to fly in under the radar and the netting to peck the succulent leaves off. Claire was of the opinion that slugs – which have been numerous in this sodden summer – but The Old Man was suspicious of rodent mammalian infiltration. Either small rabbits who had dodged his air rifle pellets and got through the large gauge netting or perhaps mice.

So, smaller netting was put in place and fresh brussels plants were put in. Over the path in our patch we already had tighter fencing in place, but we gave a liberal sprinkling of the slug equivalent of liquorice allsorts to turn them to mush.

One small victim at the scene of his crime

The next day we had got one slug, but the new brussels in the small allotment were nibbled again. This time TOM brought out the ultimate weapon against rodents – his mouse traps. I had never seen these before: they look like plastic castanets or even sets of dentures lying around the veg patch. But the next day they had done their job. Lying there with castanets on their heads were two mice. Well, that is not strictly accurate. One small grey mouse was truly dead with a set of dentures round its neck. The other was larger, browner, and had the castanets over its nose. And it was still alive. I put it out of its misery.

I’ve never been very relaxed about putting animals into the afterlife. I recall meeting our local female doctor out as she was walking her dog one time when it caught and failed to wholly despatch a rabbit. Without breaking off our conversation Judith put her foot on the neck of the failed extra from Watership Down, and twisted its head through 360 degrees, tossed the body into the hedge, and continued the walk. While I stood in aghast in awe at her dispassionate approach to the rabbit’s demise. She was simply annoyed that her dog had failed to complete the job it started.

Another one bites the mouse

But my father was right: it was mice that were destroying his sprouts. Or rather I thought the larger one looked more like a small rat. I left the corpses for him to dispose of. Although one has to be quick around here: the other day he shot a rabbit then went for lunch (such is the casual nature with which we take away life these days) and when he came back, a couple of magpies were already picking at the choice cuts themselves. Reminded me of the scene from film Excalibur when the knights are searching through the famished land for the grail, and there is a scene in which a crow picks the eye from a corpse. Yummmmm.

I was later informed that my “small rat” was actually a “large field mouse”. That made me feel a little guilty. Field mouse conjures images of fluffy rodents (and their young) nibbling gently at golden ears of wheat under azure skies. Admittedly, just prior to combine harvesters mashing them, but I guess they are fairly numerous and anyway they should just “get off my land!

Well, I am glad to say that there have been no more gnashers on mice and all the brussels, broccs and purps are beginning to recover from the rodent blitzkrieg.

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Weeding: little and often is best!

At the weekend Claire was concerned that the garden was getting overgrown with weeds. She was not wrong: it has been so wet and I have been busy with end of term at school and other coaching work, so the veg lines were looking shaggy. I set to, weeding three rows of broad beans, two rows of runners and climbing french and our brussels, brocs and purps. Like I always say, if a job is worth doing. it is worth doing quickly. Unfortunately, in my haste, I did the unthinkable, taking off a borlotti bean and two pea plants at ground level with the Holy Blade of the Super Hoe. Oops. That upset me more than killing field mice, but the garden is looking better tended now albeit rather more denuded.

Survival of the fittest around here.

Monthly Archives: July 2012

We should label things

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Don’t Say What You See

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Blighted

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Garden Clearances Continue

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