Tag Archives: beans

Freezing in the Heatwave

When my parents were looking for a house in the second half of the 1970s, their choice was influenced, in large part, by thoughts of self-sufficiency.  They bought the new house because it had been a smallholding, and they proceeded to grow vegetables on an industrial scale.  My teenage experience of ‘helping’ in the veg patch informs much of what I did when I started the Midlife Garden.   Initially, I was rebelling, trying to do things differently from what my father did, but increasingly I have come to grudgingly accept that much of what he did in the garden was actually sensible and effective. 

My father’s quest for self-sufficiency stemmed from the bad old days of the early seventies with the threat of nuclear war and the challenge of oil supplies from OPEC.  But these days not everyone looks back at the seventies with horror.  Our two erstwhile candidates for the post of Leader of the Conservative Party hark back to the election of 1979 and are in a race to the bottom to prove that they are the real Spirit of Thatcher, competing to see who can promise the lowest taxes, the most Grammar Schools and fewest immigrants. 

In 2022 my own desire to grow more veg has been sharpened by concerns similar to TOM’s, over oil prices, inflation and even the thought of nuclear obliteration.  So, in another nod to my parents’ efforts I have begun blanching and freezing our excess crops, starting with the peas.  In the past we have not always been as diligent as we could have been in preserving our full crop of veg.  Rumour has it we have had to import two thirds of our own vegetables. Only five words to describe that situation: That. Is. A. Dis. Grace.

Of course, at the Old Place we also raised pigs which meant a plentiful supply of meat for the family.  Our opening up of the Midlife Pork Market went some way to filling the freezer, but now that we eat less meat at MLG, we are more reliant on veg, so blanching and freezing is back the hot topic around here.

Unfortunately, it does not look as if we will have much surplus in many crops.  The beans are a case in question.  Very much the Rishi Sunaks of the veg patch, they were looking good at the start of July, but they have since bolted, appear increasingly desperate and are unlikely to be as successful as we first thought. 

Instead, we have a great crop of tomatoes (yes, it’s a good season for trusses, you will be pleased to hear).  And also peppers are doing well in the greenhouse.  But, if the tomatoes are on Trusses, they might struggle to find their way out of the greenhouse…

While the indoors is thriving, the hot dry spell has left the raised beds looking arid and many crops are wilting.  But fear not, as many online trolls have pointed out, it is no worse than the “Long Hot Summer of 76”, so why worry?  Don’t be distracted by so-called experts at the Met Office (what do they know?).  Let’s get back to the 70s, when we elected our first female Prime Minister.  Maybe that is what the Midlife Garden needs: Iron Lady II – the War on Garden Waste.  Blanche and Freeze to our heart’s desire, and let’s party like it’s 1979.

The Dry

Two weeks ago I started this post.  I don’t know what got in the way of me completing it.  Perhaps it was the end of term which passed in a whir of school trips, successive cover lessons involving repeat showings of Blue Planet or feature films and the year eight boys going mob-handedly feral at lunchtime.  Family matters have also been an issue with Mrs B’s mother slipping from this mortal coil (four days after celebrating her 70th Wedding anniversary).  But the circle of life was shown to be rotating strongly with the graduation of our little girl to the rank of qualified medical practitioner.  That’s a doctor to you or me. (No, not a nurse, nor even a pharmacist.  A proper doctor).

Time is passing so fast these days and yet what I wrote two weeks ago unsurprisingly fits well for now:

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Today I saw the first rumours of hose pipe bans coming into force – though not, thankfully down here in the wet West Country.  Surprisingly, they are talking about the North West being the place they will need to impose the restrictions.  I always thought Manchester and Liverpool got more than their fair share of rain, but then I guess they also have more than their fair share of residents to drink all the water from the tap (like the Tiger Who Came to Tea).

I am not sure how the garden would cope if I were able to water it regularly via a hose pipe.  When I started the garden in the winter, it was chucking down with rain and I was more concerned with drying the clay soil out rather than retaining water.  But regular watering is a fact of life at the moment and the veg have hit their stride.  We now have courgettes, potatoes, green beans, runner beans, mangetout, kale, carrots, onions and shallots.  And we have salad coming out of our ears as well as raspberries and blueberries starting to ripen.

Tomatoes will be in plentiful supply soon, but we’re just waiting for the first sweet million to ripen, then they will all go off like a firework.

Yields have not been as good as I might have expected at the old place, but for a first season on a new plot I feel pretty pleased.

 

French, Runners, carrots, mangetouts, courgettes
Blueberries
Sunflowers – in their element
Greenhouse – peppers, lettuce and toms
Green Millions
Jersey Devil

End of Term report

161009-21
Sunflower in the cutting patch

It’s that time of the year again when the evening chill sharpens, the leaves start to turn and we spend a fruitless Sunday morning trying to purchase Glastonbury tickets.  And it has been months since I delivered any sort of news on this blog.

Some acquaintances cannot understand the reasons for writing the rubbish I do on this page, but I find a certain sense of unburdening happening when I write.  Essentially this is no more than an open diary – in which I record what I am doing in the garden, as well as describing the antics of dogs and other companions as they illuminate my life.  If people want to read it, so be it, but having a readership of sorts does give me another reason to do it.  So as each year wheels around into another I am able to look back and build on my experiences to ensure that the next garden season will be better than the last.

So what has gone well this summer and what lessons have I learnt in the last couple of months?

My peas and beans were excellent, albeit briefly.  Next year I am promising myself I will really get the hang of succession planting.  A fortnight’s glut is not the sensible way to harvest these things.

The winter leeks were left too long and ultimately ended up like a small petrified forest with the texture of fossilised wood.  But the pigs seemed to appreciate them as they munched their way through the lot.

Elsewhere the purple sprouting, cabbages and brussels look absolutely fabulous, which is because of this year’s other wonder crop.  I had read about nasturtiums as a “sacrificial” plant to keep the cabbage white butterflies off the Brassicas and I could not believe the effect that they had.  While the nasturtiums were being lacerated, the cabbages, PSB and brussels went unscathed.  If I had been trying to cultivate a good crop of nasturtiums I might have been peeved at the shredding of the leaves, but there were still enough flowers to adorn the regular green salads – which were another success this year (an area in which I did manage to achieve some sort of succession, with salad still flourishing in greenhouse and garden).

Experience has helped me grow a good batch of onions – where the return of the Red Barron brought a good crop, that is storing well too.  The same goes for garlic – with enough to see us through the next year – and shallots, which I have not only harvested, but have also learnt to use in cookery to good effect, and not be too precious with them.

The decision to plant early or late came under scrutiny once again this year. The OM would warn against being too preciptate with my planting (“Too early for runner beans”) and – weirdly – this year there seemed some truth in his seemingly inflexible ways with regard to the tomatoes.  The early Shirley plants suffered from the extremities of cold nights and warm days and never recovered while the later Sweet Millions were excellent and we will still have a few more to harvest this week before they finally succumb to the colder nights and shorter days.  (Mrs B’s pressure to plant early tomatoes to keep up with our horticultural neghbours should, perhaps, be resisted).  The beans all did well but are another which could do with a second crop of late planters

The cutting patch for flowers proved to be abundant this year and next season, with a decent marketing strategy, we might actually sell jam jar posies and other bunches of proper British Flowers.

More recently I harvested the squashes which were a mixued bunch – but again, probably enough to see us through the winter with plenty of heart soups!  But teh stand out crop of the moment are the chillis which are still growing adn ripening in the greenhouse in abundance.

So next season will be so much better, but like a really good round of golf  it is never perfect. We will continue to practice and strive for perfection.

Red Barron Onions
Garlic
Shallots
Small crop of squashes
Pigs consuming greenery
Chillis: Hungarian Hot Wax, Bolivian Rainbow and Joe’s Super Long

 

Of Mice and Moles

160504 (3)The sun lay on the grass and warmed it.  And across the expanse of green the midlife gardener looked and saw the soft volcanic shaped mounds of light brown earth stretching before him.  The moles had been working hard over the past week, striving to excavate their tunnels under the lawn and pushing the soil from the darkness to the harsh sunlight above.

The man walked wearily over the once lush lawn as he looked for the old rusted shovel and the wheel barrow into which he would clear the mole hills.  Ants worked the soil too, on the edge of the borders, where more mole casts converged with the flower beds and grass and the once crisply cut border edge was now covered in the extruded soil, spilling like an over-filled tub.  And the man sighed as he saw the damage done to his flowers which were wilting with the lack of soil around their roots and the dust swirled in eddies between the yellowed stalks.

The cold spring had been preceded by a mild winter and the mammals of the garden had – like the slugs and snails – survived the dark nights and short days in greater numbers than previously and they were now reeking damage on so much of what had previously been well-managed vegetable plots.  The mice had laid waste to the peas and beans and broccoli seedlings that the midlifegardener had sown weeks before.  And as the cold spring had given way to the long early summer days that bore intimations of drought and global warming in the time to come, the man had taken action to combat the ravages of the mice.  For four days straight his traps had been successful and this morning as he walked though the kohl rabi patch towards the newly planted cabbages and broccoli and brussels he pondered what he might find.

It was with mixed emotions he looked down to see another mouse caught, dead, in the jaws of the plastic trap.  He rigged some protection for the young plants, fashioned from the timber window frames from the old house, with ancient sheets of glass – unequal in thickness due to the slow flow over time.  He wanted to avoid the need to trap more rodents.  It had worked in previous years – but would it work in this changing, unpredictable world?  Only time would tell.

He picked up the shovel and went back to the lawn.

Live and let live

White Rose
White Rose – black spot

The garden is coming on a-pace at this time of year and the new seedlings have managed to hang in there despite some rough weather. At the beginning of May we had high winds to contend with and more recently another area of low pressure has tested the resolve of the pea plants and the young cabbages and brussels. What the latest anticyclone did bring was some welcome rain as the ground was beginning to look a little parched in the intervening dry spell. That’s not to say that it has been warm – far from it – with this having been a very cold May.

Runners and French ready to climb
Runners and French ready to climb

And there have only been minor incursions from critters intent on ruining the planting. In the flower beds which we have planted with perennials and annuals, we have put chicken wire to stop the rabbits eating the cosmos, and this also discourages Ella with her size 15 paws from trampling them too. She seems to understand that jumping over chicken wire is a bad thing after being shouted at a few times when taking an “as the crow flies” route across the veg patch.

The evidence of badger foraging
The evidence of badger foraging

The only major incident of pest control has involved the rose that we transplanted from a tub to the hotch potch border. When putting the rose in its new home I thought I would give it the best chance of survival by using some blood and bone fertilizer around the roots.  Unfortunately I had forgotten b n b is attractive to omnivores such as dogs, who tend to take it from the pots of roses.  This pilfering of plant food was taken to a new level by another intruder – I assume a badger – which dug a monumental hole under the newly transplanted rose.  It looked like some sort of Great Escape tunnel, it was that well constructed, though the earth had been less well concealed, being sent across the grass rather than subtly kicked into the dirt of the exercise yard.

Elsewhere we are looking to contain an outbreak of leaf spot on the roses, and the first black fly are beginning to appear on the broad beans and – I am disappointed to see – on the Sea Holly.  This comes at a time when the Sea Holly (Eryngium) is finally beginning to look like the illustrations suggested, as up till now the leaves have been more oval and broad than I was hoping.  But they have finally settled into their new environment and sent up a central spike which is actually showing spiky leaves.  I thought I had been sold a dud, but now it looks as if a separate plant has been grafted on the base.    It’s all such a voyage of discovery.  You never know what’s round the corner with this lot.

Outside we have not – so far – had any mice eating the young plants so have not had to put up too many barricades as yet but in the greenhouse the row of Pak Choi shows signs of rodent attack, while down the borders (well I know) the lupins will just fail to show.  The heads have been eaten.  I am not suspecting mice – perhaps some little weevil I guess.

But the predators do not have it all their own way as I did find a dead mole on the grass – apparently giving itself up to the authorities, hands in air.   Ella has an occasional go at digging them up, so maybe I just leave it to her to police the beds.

Live and let die.