Tag Archives: chillis

Spud You Like

Someone Told me to wash my silver birch...
Someone suggested cleaning my silver birch…

The February half term break feels like a significant moment in the horticultural year.  Mrs B is fed up with the cold weather, but finally it seems the days are lengthening, and March is nearly upon us, which, nominally at least, is the start of spring.  The growing season is imminent, but now I start waking in the night worrying that it is too late to sow annuals and veg seeds.

Last month Mrs B and I braved the winter chill to make the annual Potato Day pilgrimage to Caryford Hall, joining the line of fellow pilgrims earnestly shuffling past the colour-coded plastic tubs of first and second earlies or main crop chitters.  Unusually, I went with little planning or forethought on what I wanted, or perhaps it signifies how I kinda know what I want these days, without having to overthink it.  No plan was probably wise, as many of the spuds I would have grown in the past were not available, not even anything Arran based, so I randomly selected Jazzy, Pentland Javelin, and Caledonian Pearl.  All of them are earlies, as these days I tend to agree with Mrs B’s view that main crop do not justify their space in the raised beds. 

As we stood in line, I heard rumblings of discontent among the Potato Day punters. 

“They’ve got no International Kidney and no Pink Fir Apple”, muttered one middle aged lady. 

“Hmm.  It’s a pretty crap year” was her husband’s considered reply, which I thought was little harsh, as the Pennard Plants staff always offered a couple of alternatives, but that just led to more earnest debates on their relative merits.

“What do you think love, Marvel, or Sunset?”

Apart from potatoes, I bought some chilli seeds and aubergine seeds, as they need an early start, and I am pleased to say they are already germinating.  It is always exciting to see the first seedlings poking through.  I never tire of this horticultural ‘miracle of birth’ which spurs me on to sow lots of annual flowers.  The flowers seeds are germinating in the greenhouse, but I started the chillis and aubergines on the heated floor of the bathroom, which probably helped them, but created an element of jeopardy and mild peril for any nighttime trip to the toilet. 

Just another reason why Mrs B cannot wait for the warmer weather arrive.

Serried ranks of garlic
Aubergines
Chillis love a bit of heat
Tulips are coming
Love that shiny clean bark
Calendula always do well (to start)
Broad Beans
Rhubarb looking good this year

Autumn / Winter Collection

The Weekend Walk

Autumn has turned to winter in the blink of a Long Dog’s eye.  A fortnight ago I was harvesting chillis for jam and last weekend I walked the dogs over crisp frosted fields, under coppered leaves glinting in the sun as they somersaulted from the trees. 

But now it is cold, wet and dark; the trees are skeletons under the sky’s grey shroud.

It is the end of the calendar year, but also the start of the horticultural one.  I have sown sweet peas ready for summer and now the first tips peek from the duvet of their compost in the cool greenhouse, like tiny benevolent Grinches.

The frost has knocked back the last of the summer blooms, but the sweet peas are safe for now, in their glazed home, readying themselves to take centre stage (or table) in July.

Chillis on the plant…
…on the kitchen table…
…and in the jam pan.
Frozen Pesicaria
Two batches, jam with sweet pepper and tomato, and (original) pure chilli Jam (bit solid with too much pectin)
Yellow Rose of Texas in frost
Alstroemeria
Achillea
Delphinium
Freshly sown pots of Sweet Peas
Shooting up
Happy Grinches

One Tomato, Two Tomato

Last year’s chillis under this year’s tomatoes

The clocks have gone back, so maybe summer is finally over. The harvest should have been safely gathered in, although the recent warm air currents seem to suggest there is still more growing to do. I cleared two of the vegetable beds at the weekend, getting rid of the dead sweet peas and the tired courgettes. The courgettes, like the beans did not do well this summer, perhaps unable to cope with the long dry spell. The sweet peas, similarly, went to seed very rapidly, and the sound of their pods “popping” in the sun were one of the sounds of the summer, for me.

The most prolific vegetable producing area was the greenhouse, where tomatoes went balistic and we are still harvesting green (and red) peppers, with chillis still to come. The sheer volume of tomatoes had me scratching my head for ways of perserving them and I came up with three methods.

First of all, we made ratatouille, using up our own dodgy onions and oversized courgettes with the excellent MLG garlic. When the courgettes and onions were finished (or rotted) we went on to making the first MLG passata, which seemed pretty decent too.

But our most satisfying preserving method was our own sun-dried tomatoes. Well, strictly speaking they were oven-dried, but the results were very pleasing, all be it a little on the small side. I guess it should not be too big a suprise that dried tomatoes take up considerably less volume than the originals, but four baking trays of halved cherry tomatoes only made three jars of the sun-dried version. We swamped them in a little olive oil and loaded them with quartered garlic cloves and the results were spectacular.

Now I include my sun dried tomatoes with everything: ham sandwiches, cheese and biscuits, corn flakes (ok, maybe not corn flakes, although, but then again, why not?)

Pre-season training

Basil?!

We are into March. The days are lengthening.  The February seeds have germinated and are looking sprightly: the race to produce those early tomatoes has started and the chillis are up too.  We need to make sure they are in good shape for the summer ahead.

The change of month means that I can now allow myself to open those packets of veg and flowers seeds that advised sowing from March onwards.   Having a greenhouse is a boon at this time of the year, but before the seedlings graduate to this I have been starting some in the warmth of the spare bedroom before putting them in the conservatory which is no more than a giant leaky cold frame at this time of the year, but still marginally warmer than the greenhouse at night.

It’s not all seeds in trays, though:  I’ve sown a couple of rows of peas and sugar snaps in the raised beds.  The peas will once again be Hurst Greenshaft – The Old Man’s favourite.  I keep a picture on my desk of him proudly standing alongside the Greatest Peas Of All Time.  It is something to which I can aspire.  The key might be the soil – which was a friable fecund tilth at the old place: the result of decades of cultivation.  My one year old raised beds are composed of a thin layer of compost overlaying the claggy clay topsoil I bought last spring.  I have put some well-rotted manure in with the peas but I fear it will take many more years’ work before it gets anywhere near as fertile as the last place.

We’ll wait to see if their early form is good enough to ensure good performance this season, whatever the ground..

Jalapeno Chilli
Seedlings in Cold Frame
Chilli Caldero
Others have been busy in the garden (or bird bath)
Nicotiana
Pea Trench between late leeks and early broad beans
Cosmos sown
Back Bed with daffodils

Early Birds Seeds

Irises in the snow

Winter arrived at the end of January with the snow and frost, but before it did, I had managed to plant some extra irises and a Delphinium from the Old Place in the herbaceous border in the back garden.  I don’t know how they will tie in with the Hesperis, aquilegia, Rudbeckia and other established shrubs.  I am nowhere near being a garden designer – I am just someone who plants stuff in borders and hopes for the best.

With little to do in the garden, planning is what this time of year is about.  There is an anticipation of what might be, which is why all those seed catalogues land on your door mat post-Christmas.  It is a time for some horticultural pornography, turning the pages with your hot sweaty fingers (better than them being frozen in the garden) as you imagine  which hot chilli is going to steam up your greenhouse this summer.

I ordered up some of the early planters from a major seed company for convenience, but have also ordered some of my favourite niche herbs – like Pipiche and Korean mint – from Real Seeds.  And of course the annual Red Letter day for veg gardeners round these parts was the Castle Cary Potato Day when Pennard Plants rolled into town like the horticultural circus with the finest range of seed potatoes to wow the thronging hordes.  We duly went and paid our dues.

And last night, when doing boarding duty at school, I took a few minutes away from watching dull-witted Beautiful Young Things bitching and flirting on “Shipwrecked” to buy some flower seeds from Higgledy Garden.  If I have bought an excess of seeds I will blame it on a temporary paralysis of reason caused by the stun-gun effect of listening to bronze-skinned, bikini-clad structured reality TV.  But the flowers will look wonderful (in my imagination, at least, which has little structure, or reality).

Sarpo Mira – in the bag
Real Seeds
Bulbs coming up around the Greengage
Snow Drops. (No shit Sherlock)
Snowy garden – this will be a blaze of colour in June…
Different Seeds being appreciated
Walking the back road to Mrs B’s Old Man
White Snow on Blueberries

 

 

 

Late news from late summer

Sunrise on a wet field

It was a wet end to the summer and I never really got the garden under the level of control I might in other years have demanded.  I wrote this piece back in October, before a lot of other stuff happened so I will simply post this and update my loyal readership (both of you) about some of the goings on in my life in the next few posts. Here’s what I had to say in October:

I have continued to reap whatever I have sown, so we are, despite a certain lack of motivation, still harvesting a fine range of autumnal produce.

Some of the squashes are looking good, although I should probably have pruned them a little more:  they have produced an abundance of green foliage drawing on the rich soil in the pig pen, but there have not been a great many fruit.  The butternuts all failed to ripen properly, and I am seriously thinking about never growing them again.  The Uchiki Kuri have been pretty good (the ones that have survived the mice, that is) and the Crown Prince have produced some excellent candidates.  The plants grew up and over the fence and lelandii hedge and I discovered a couple of fruit on top of it this morning.

But looking ahead, I am increasingly like The Old Man:  just grow the reliable Crown Prince – stick to what you know.  They produce large, well ripened fruit that store well and so far as I am concerned, taste just as good as butternut.

It is a constant surprise to me that I can go into a pretty tangled mess of a plot and still come back with a trug full of vegetable joy.  Parsnips, beans, beetroot, tomatoes, green peppers (best ever) all complement the stored items such as potatoes, onions, garlic and shallots.  Our food bills are minimal at the moment.

I have taken steps to use what we have.  I plan to dry some chillis, but have this year actually made some green tomato chutney.  But will it be as good Mrs Chippington’s green tomato chutney which my flatmate would bring back at the beginning of each term at university?  I doubt it – Mrs Chips’s chutney was legendary.

 

One Month On

170614 (3)It’s been a month since I put finger to keyboard (or for some I know it would be thumbs to keyboard).   It is an interesting comparison to see how stuff has panned out in the past 30 days.

A month ago it was raining, I was at the end of half term, looking forward to a mad month of end of term activities and report writing. Now the sun is shining and I am on holiday looking forward to weeks of no school and starting to reap the harvest from the springtime planting, potting on and general nurturing.

In June I was worried the garlic was going over and rotting. It was suffering rust (was it the rain?)  and some did – but most are now drying nicely and have been joined by the shallots, spread out in the garage, away from the joists where the swallow fledglings sit and shit.  The Old Man’s reaction to the harvesting of shallots was typical:

“It’s a bit early for shallots”.

“Try telling the shallots” I replied: “they’re falling over”.

It’s been a good year for them (early or not) and many are the size of decent onions. I wish I had planted more now.

Up the top of the garden, a month ago the pig pen was a tangled mess of three foot high weeds.  I put my back into clearing a particularly fertile area of the pen (resulting in a trip to the osteopath) but I reckon it was worth the effort:  the new squash patch is thriving on what I cleared and what the pigs left behind.

Early June the runner beans were just beginning to grasp the canes.  Now they are over-topping them.  The first beans are formed.  The curly kale was being protected by boards – now the kale is big enough to stand by itself and the boards are protecting the cabbages, which suffered some mouse damage.

Mid-June saw the first Cosmos and sweet peas – ahead of the regular 10th July Sweet Pea Day.  And veggies came on stream: courgettes, new potatoes, peas, mangetout and any amount of kale.  And second plantings of lettuce leaves are in full swing when they were non-existent a month ago.

While the over-wintered chillies were originally small and red, they became large and yellow in June and have graduated to orange to proper sized red chillis now.   And this year’s new chillis are starting to bud.

And….much to my relief and Mrs B’s delight…we have the first tomatoes.

(A bit early for tomatoes wouldn’t you say?)

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

 

New Term

160407 (11)And so here’s the summer, and what have we done? Another Easter over and a new term begun…

Easter is an exciting time of year, with the greenhouse beginning to burst at the seams with seed trays which themselves start to creak under the weight of rapidly shooting plants. The earth is beginning to warm under the longer days of a more powerful sun.

Not that the Old Man thinks that we should be thinking about planting anything out right now – way too cold. And my age is showing as I was in a mind to agree with him.  But Mrs B went on a day course to learn about preparing flowers for weddings (not one in our family I hasten do add) with Georgie Newberry at Common Farm Flowers (author of several books on flower farming – available, as always at Bailey Hill bookshop). Georgie was firmly of the opinion that down here in Somerset we are able to start planting seeds outside as we are not likely to get anything like a major frost. So what do I and the Old Man know about it?

So I will shortly be planting all sorts of exciting things in the garden, but in the meantime I have, over my luxuriatingly long school holiday, managed to plant and germinate a whole host of stuff:

160407 (7)Courgettes (two types), Chillis (three types), Purple sprouting, Brokali, Peas, Sugar snaps and mangetout, Broad Beans, Runner Beans, French climbing beans, Squash (three types), Aubergines, Sweet peppers, Brussels Sprouts, Cabbages, Leeks, Basil, rocket, lettuce and tomatoes.  In addition there are some random seeds that came as a surprise package from the seed company such as celery and melons.  I have also planted numerous flowers to stock our cut flower patch:  zinnias, Rudbeckia, Nicotiona, Cape Daisy, and some marigolds which are being grown to be a companion plants.

We did plant stuff in the great outdoors over Easter getting the potatoes in on time and also onions and shallots.  And this weekend we broke out from the greenhouse by planting the broad beans and sweet peas.  Fingers crossed we don’t get that late April cold snap the old gardeners like to warn us of..

Please throw the ball

 

Looking to spring

Young Toms
Young Toms

Back from half term we have had some frosts in Somerset which has knocked everything a little. I actually brought my sweet peas in from the greenhouse just in case they get nipped by the frost.  The temperatures did not dip low enough for the Old Man to need his water turned off in the lean-to, so I guess I was worrying needlessly.

Anyway, before I went up to Arran I had planted tomatoes in order to avoid the tomato tensions of last year, when Mrs B was gazing longingly at other Gardeners Delights and comparing them unfavourably with my Sweet Millions (looking more like sad singletons).

Aubergines going in
Aubergines going in

And hey presto, the toms are up.  The problem now is trying to make sure they don’t get too leggy as they strain for the dim light coming through the study window.  Do I put them in the greenhouse and risk losing them in the cold?

One thing that will not be going in the greenhouse any time soon are the chillis and aubergines that I planted at the same time.  Even Monty on Gardeners World  (hoorah – new series started Friday….middle aged?  Moi?) was saying that planting chillis was a job for this weekend, but  mine have steadfastly refused to germinate so far.  I’ll try again next weekend if they have not come up by then.

In the meantime, I have a Sunday which I will spend finally cleaning the greenhouses – then perhaps I will risk those long-legged supermodel tomatoes out there.