Tag Archives: Elephant garlic

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?)

The secret of good timing

Michaelmas Daisies
Michaelmas Daisies

When my parents were developing the garden and working it up to produce vegetables on an industrial scale they used to start to plan their holidays around the seasons in the garden so that they would not be away when any particular veg was likely to be cropping, resulting in several tons of valuable fodder going to waste.

This is a state of mind that I have so far tried to avoid – with spectacular results if last year was anything to go by, as I spent most of July and August abroad, and the garden did its best to return to wilderness in my absence.

Where are the peas?
Where are the peas?

I did not learn my lesson this year:  at the start of July we decided to jet off to Cyprus – to the villa owned by my favourite brother-in-law.  The mangetout and sugar snap peas were peaking and by the time we returned the brief season was over apart from some very bumpy mangetout in amongst the weeds.  But I am pleased to say that my attempt at succession planting seems to have, well, succeeded so the later wave has enabled us to harvest plenty of peas over the last week or two.  By now though, they are beginning to gain the size and consistency of marbles.

Garlic in the barrow
Garlic in the barrow

Other stuff has happened to be ready to harvest while we were around, such as the shallots and garlic.  The shallots are fab and some of the garlic has been awesome – such as the Early Purple Wight and the Elephant Garlic.  The Lautrec Wight gave us smaller bulbs, but that might be something to do with it being a hard neck variety.

A trifle premature?
A trifle premature?

I have also gathered my onions in as the tops of some of them had “fallen” over so I thought I’d dig them all up. That might have been a trifle premature, but as the whole onion patch (along with the rest of the veg patch) was totally overrun with mature weeds, it was a bit difficult to to find the onions, let alone get an accurate estimate of their maturity.  I’m letting them dry a little before I store them.

On the upside, as they say stateside, ten days in Cyprus appears to have been the miracle cure for my back.  I still don’t know the extent of the damage as I had an MRI on 16th July but am still awaiting the results. But at least my vertebral column no longer feels as precarious as the piles of crockery in the Sword in the Stone kitchen scene so I have set to and cleared much of the undergrowth. I now have plenty of fresh soil to cultivate.  I can get back to the fun stuff now, planting and all that.  The leeks have gone in (finally – don’t know how they survived so long in a seed tray) and we will get some biannual flowers sorted too.  But there does suddenly seem to be a lot of spare garden and I have an overwhelming urge to plant.

So with a wave of the gardening wand…Higitus, Figitus…

 

Plans for the New Year

Winter Walk
Winter Walk

Since November I have not posted.  There are a number of drafts still on hold, but the idea of posting every day during November rapidly became an end in its own right: like a dog’s incessant barking, publishing a blog post every day was just so much pointless twitter.  Combine that with the end of term and the appearance of Christmas on the horizon and gardening and writing took a back seat.

So a quick update on the garden sees more of the same, really.  Ella has twice managed to get into the chicken run, and on each occasion has brought down a hen, catching a bird then trying to gum it to death in her soft retriever’s mouth.  The hens have been vocal in their outrage and called the emergency services (me) to save them from the Black Death Eater.  Verity, Josh and I spent some time translating just what it was they were saying:  “f-king HURTS!” was our best guess, though we thought they were simply having a laugh at Ella’s inability to deliver the coup de gras.  The second time I arrived to find three chickens in the hen-house, and the other two standing with their heads in the ivy, looking like the world’s worst exponents of hide and seek.  Ella had one of the Sussex Stars in her mouth but was good enough to let it go when I told her.

The Hen Run - Dog Proofed
The Hen Run – Dog Proofed

Just as with the previous time, the bird was, to all intents and purposes, playing dead.  But with a nudge from my foot she got up and got on with life.  Ella received a severe reprimand, but I do not think that will have much effect on her.  So on Christmas day I worked off lunch making the fences dog proof once again.

Elsewhere in the garden I tidied up after the storms that we have had.  A couple of panes of glass were blown out of the top greenhouse, though fortunately neither was broken.  The cracked bits in the end of the greenhouse also fell out, but I managed to mend all without any assistance from the Old Man.  Proper grown up, me.

Winter Oak
Winter Oak

And down the end of the garden today I bundled up all the stakes and other bits and bobs of netting etc that had blown over under the oak tree.  One thing leads to another and I came to the realisation that storing stuff around the oak rather detracted from what is a really lovely tree.  I mean, how many people are lucky enough to have a good sized oak tree in one corner of their garden?  It looks a lot better now.  I was thinking of planting some bulbs around it but it’s probably a little late now – plus, the chances are my idiot black puppy will in all likelihood dig them all up, as she was hard at work digging there as I was trying to clear the posts.

One thing I will have to do later than last year is plant the garlic, which will now have to be a spring planting.  We have been cooking with our own garlic all autumn – and only recently starting buying onions. It has been interesting to see the difference in flavours of each type, though I cannot remember which is which as the labels I wrote whited before I harvested them.  The Elephant garlic was great.   That one is not too difficult to spot, on account of its size, and though not strictly speaking a garlic, it has a lovely mild flavour.  But as to the others, who knows.  I will have to make a cunning plan for the spring.