Tag Archives: garlic

In the Green Mid Winter

The Winter Solstice.

Winter Table Decorations for the Local Farmshop Cafe

Eight and a half thousand people gathered to see the sun rise behind the Heel Stone and send its first rays into the heart of Stonehenge on the shortest day of the year.We assume the Ancients celebrated the Solstice because from now daylight hours will start to increase. In the middle of winter, we can just begin to feel a little hopeful, with spring just over the horizon.

Like an ancient pagan, I invest more hope in the solstice with each passing year. I will be looking at the garden for those green shoots which might be groping for the lengthening days. Goodness in the dark days of winter. For me, those green shoots would normally be garlic and onions, but in a change of tack in the Midlife Garden, we have not planted garlic this year.

The other day I saw tiny little bulbs sprouting on the top of three of the Allium Ping Pong I planted last year. In 2025 they only partially flowered, because of the dry summer. Instead, they have produced a plethora of baby bulbs. So, I have stuffed them into pots – and, with any luck, I hope to plant them out in the early spring, when they could provide some colour and, perhaps, some income.

Elsewhere in the garden, I am hopeful the five hundred tulips have settled in and are not rotting under the heavy autumnal rain. Whenever I see Monty Don planting tulips, he bangs on about the need for ‘free draining soil,’ as he shovels grit into his pots. No grit in my tulip bed, but I remain positive.

Free drainage is not a great feature of our clay soil, which was one reason I did follow Monty’s advice with my Dahlias. I lifted them before the frost, even washing the soil off them, as per MD’s advice, and left them in the greenhouse to dry off. Whereupon the hard frost bit them, panicking me into wrapping them up and storing them in the garage. But, as they were still a bit damp, I only succeeded in creating the perfect conditions for many of them to rot. Maybe next time I’ll follow local advice and leave them in the ground, well-mulched. Where, I guess, the rain can rot them instead.

It would be easy to get disheartened when stuff wilts, rots, or dies in the garden, but gardening, by definition, is a pragmatic and uplifting activity, even in the depths of winter. In the greenhouse, there are plenty of seedlings doing well, with sweet peas just coming up and antirrhinums standing strong in their pots, ready for the new season. They might not be flowering by the first wedding of the year on 2nd April (fingers crossed for the tulips on that one) but they will be going strong for a bride’s bouquet in July.

And that is what gardening does: it encourages us to look forward, with patience and positivity, and in the meantime, it keeps us stimulated and busy.

Like a Hot Knife

There’s a scene in the movie Crocodile Dundee when Paul Hogan is confronted by a mugger on a New York street. As his assailant threatens him with a knife, Hogan just laughs. 

Spursy Bed clear of weeds in May

“That’s not a knife.”, he says, “THAT’S a knife”, and reveals his own impressive blade.

The line has been repeating in my head ever since I acquired my new favourite gardening tool – my Hori Hori.  Described by its manufacturer, Niwaki, as a ‘weeding trowel’ it is, to all intents and purposes, a knife.  It even has its own ‘Canvas Sheath’.  But, whatever it is, it does a brilliant job weeding and even digging, particularly when the ground is as hard as it is.

It was on one of our “Cultural” Wednesdays that Mrs B and I visited the Niwaki HQ Showroom near Shaftesbury.  A friend had forewarned me that on entering the hallowed citadel of Japanese handcrafted tempered steel, I might “lose my shit”.  The advice was timely.  More of an exhibition space than a showroom, the small unit was packed full of precision Japanese gardening ironmongery, as well as clothing, footwear and even shaving razors, laid out in cabinets and perfectly aligned shelves. It lacked only a sign telling visitors “Please do not touch the exhibits”.

Merely driving there, we were in such a state of arousal that we turned in at the first sign that said Niwaki, to discover that we had followed the sign for the warehouse, rather than the retail outlet.  Once in the showroom / exhibition centre, it was only the limit on my credit card that prevented me buying the whole shop.  Instead, I had to restrict myself to a Hori Hori, a pair of snippers, and some gloves.  I had to leave the golden shovel and the insanely expensive shaving razor for another month.

Back home, I now refuse to use anything other than my snippers to cut my flowers.  They are immensely pleasing to use, as are the gloves. But, I had travelled specifically to buy the Hori Hori, and it has not disappointed.  The literal translation, according to the lovely lady in the showroom, is ‘dig dig’, so perhaps it is not welcome for the “No Dig” gardens.  But I’m not so fussy.   Who knew that a knife would prove to be the best trowel around?  With this precision weeder, I have removed copious amounts of bindweed, with less collateral seedling casualties than ever before. 

And, as for harvesting garlic and onions, the Hori Hori is the trowel you need.

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

Clearing the Litter

Winter arrived in the Midlife Garden with a vengeance in December.  It reminded me that I really should have been putting everything to bed for the fallow season, while planting and prepping stuff for the early spring risers.  But as often happens, I left it to the last minute and missed the opportunity to plant up pots with bulbs or get early broad beans in and all those other jobs that would have potentially borne fruit in the spring.

I did belatedly harvest the peppers from the greenhouse, albeit after the frost had got them, so they were consigned to the production of some murky looking chilli jam.  As usual, I lost last year’s award-winning recipe but I found it, shortly after I had got my jam on the boil, using a different recipe sourced from the internet.  Still, it does not taste too bad – a little milder and darker in colour than the Red-Hot version of yesteryear, but it will do.

Outside, my main preoccupation has been sweeping and collecting leaves.  The 300-year-old oak over the road has deposited the majority of its leaf litter in our back garden but I have been more organised on this front than in the past.  Inspired by the maxim “What would Monty Do?” I collected and mowed them to break them up. I have put them in dumpy bags, which should allow the rain in to keep them damp and enable them to break down to produce good leaf mould for the new season.  Last year I did not chop up the leaves with a mower, so even now they remained whole, pressed neatly in layers as if taken from an 18th century botanist’s collection. I mowed them and added them to the 2022 vintage.

With all this mulching and raking I became a little obsessed about collecting leaves pondering collecting more from around the lanes, but after the frosts of early mid-December, we got the deluge, which has put a dampener on my efforts.

Another job a did manage was to mulch the raised beds with cardboard, which should keep the weeds down ready for spring. I had been late in planting my autumn garlic (which I left until November), so planted them through the cardboard. They had the usual binary choice that Mrs B always suggests plants have: to live or to die. Despite rain, frost and more rain they miraculously they chose the latter and I was pleased to see plenty of sharp shoots poking up anaemically through the dark turf and cardboard yesterday. Nature finds a way.

Jars of the Good Stuff
Frezze / Thawed chillis
Winter afternoon walk
Lemon grass, chilli and the smallest aubergine (all home grown)
Frosty weather
Winter dawn walk
The mower doing its work
And then it rained. (look at all that leaf mould…)
Garlic against ll the odds
Working through the mulch

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?)

Provenance

First Tomatoes

The other day Mrs B came home with a new cook book. This not an entirely unusual occurrence: we both enjoy discovering new recipes, and Mrs B owns a Bookshop. You do the Math. Home Food, is written by Olia Hercules. She is Ukrainian, co-founder of #cookforukraine and in this, her latest book, she details many simple, delicious recipes. There was one that we were both drawn to describing a novel way of cooking aubergine, which was as simple as it was surprising. It involved steaming the aubergine whole for 40 minutes. That was it.

The (not particularly) tricky part of the recipe was making a dressing with which to smother the halved vegetable and provide some flavour to the mushy flesh inside. It was easy and yet so filled with flavour, and most of the ingredients were simple store cupboard items, like soy sauce, wine vinegar, lime juice, sesame oil and sesame seeds. And to add extra staisfaction to our implementation of the recipe, it also listed items which we could readily harvest from the garden, such as chillis and garlic, which has cropped early and heavy this year. I have over forty good bulbs, all produced from the bulbs I grew last year, so it has not only been plentiful, but virtually free, too.

But the pièce de résistance came at the end of the recipe, when the author instructed me to add some chopped mint. Thisis a bit of a no-brainer, as mint grows like a weed in any kitchen garden, and at this time of year it is young and zingy in its flavour. But, in a twist that was straight out of an M&S food advert, the author had decided to take it to another level and admitted that for the picture in the book, she had “got all fancy”, gone a bit rogue, and added some Peruvian mint. Now, I have have grown this for some years, but it is the first time I have ever seen Peruvian, or Black Mint as an ingredient in a mainstream cook book. So, after picking my spring onions, I stopped off in the greenhouse to pick a few leaves. It provided a subtly different flavour and look to the meal, but it also provided a massive geographical shift and validation for my persistence in growing apparently niche herbs from around the world.

The recipe also needed a spring onion, and lo and behold, I have a row of sping onions in the veg patch, so I just pottered out and pulled a couple.

This year, the Black Mint, Korean Mint and Pipiche (‘Bolivian Corander’) all germinated extremely well and we looked as if we would be getting a fine crop with plenty of seedlings to give to friends. It seemed that, unlike many of our seedlings, our Herbal Foreign Legion seemed immune to the local slugs, so I potted them on with little fear for the consequences. But the local slime balls had either rapidly developed their taste for overseas food, or had simply been playing a waiting game, as one morning I came out to see the pots decimated by the sluggy thugs. I gave my herbs made a tactical retreat to the relative safety of the greenhouse, potted on some of the previous rejects and have managed to nurture some replacements which are ‘doing well’.

I planted them out in a raised bed, interplanting amongst the sweetcorn, as tidy as an Inca’s allotment. To keep the slugs at bey, I have been organised enough to put in beer traps. I was not, however, organised enough to get some cheap beer in for the job (I reckon a malty porter does the trick), so had to use whatever came to hand. In this case it was a choice of some fancy “craft” IPA or a bottle of reliable Doom Bar. Despite evidence that the slugs have acquired a taste for foreign herbs, I did not think they would have refined their palates to go for an NEIPA made with Citra Hops, with a complex fruitiness and layers of tropical flavour. So Doom Bar it was, sacriligeous as that may be to some. But the results spoke for themselves, with half a dozen sozzled slugs floating in the jars of ale the next morning, like little Dukes of Clarence in Malmesey wine.

The herbs continue to flourish.

Too early or too hot?

Another hot, dry start to the summer, another discussion about climate change.  At the end of term I sat through several showings of documentaries on climate change which alarmed and depressed me in equal measure.  Alarming because the stats suggest we are going to global hell in a fossil-fuelled hand cart.  Depressing to hear climate change deniers like Nigel Lawson and American news channels, led from the front by The Donald, for whom  denying climate change suits their personal goals.  Nor was my dark mood alleviated by the attitude of the year 9 geographers who were more interested in trying to wind me up than discovering how to save the planet.

However, back at home Mrs B is leading our efforts to preserve Planet Earth for our descendants as we use our Bags for Life, watch our home-produced solar power being stored in our battery and even revert to soap-on-a-rope to reduce our consumption of single use plastics.  We can save the plantet….

Elsewhere, in the garden I have to cope with the change in crop behaviours as veg and flowers adapt (or not) to the latest hot dry spell.  And this summer – like last year – it feels as if a lot of the vegetables are out of kilter.  In the raised beds, only the early croppers did well such as garlic, onions, shallots and new potatoes, which thrived in the early summer warmth.

In contrast, the beans had all gone over by the time we returned from hols at the end of July, leaving us with knobbly Runners and Frenchies rather than the sweet tender pods we would normally harvest.  Perhaps I made an error in trying to reduce the wastage of previous years by planting just a wigwam or two, instead of serried ranks of them.  So when the purple beans got half way up the poles before stopping in their tracks, flowering and dying, I had no back up.

I have belatedly effected second plantings of lettuce and beans, but they have had a hard time of it with the slugs (and probably the dry weather).   Today I planted them out, giving them the same choices that Mrs B always tells me they have:  to live or to die.  I suspect the latter will be the inevitable path for them.

Of course, it might not be climate change or global warming that is the problem at all.  It might just be that I have simply not adhered to my father’s age old advice.  He always told me that I planted my runner beans too early.  So maybe it was just another case of “too early for runner beans”.

Garlic – showing the usual signs of rust
Drying garlic
First new potatoes
Potatoes and Broad beans (which had over-wintered)
Plaited garlic

Planting to the Music of Time

img_20181001_073029263.jpg
Lonely as a Cloud

The rhythm of the seasons is changing its beat as summer segues into autumn.  In the past, it was a time of year I would associate with final harvests of the summer and then closing down for the winter.  I would clear the veg patch and cover it over to suppress weeds, allowing only space for Brussels, leeks and broccoli to battle the winter.  I would uproot the deceased annuals in the borders and tidy the beds to wait till the warm weather returned.  This year I have even managed to pick some mushrooms from a local field.

But these days I have started the autumnal season with a sense of anticipation for the spring.  Like a tight rope walker looking straight ahead rather than down in order to make it successfully to the other side, I am planting stuff for harvesting and flowering in the spring.  If I keep my eyes on the early summer of next year, perhaps I won’t even notice winter.

So over the past few weeks I have been nurturing and planting out my own self-grown flowers, like Honesty, Foxgloves, Lupins, and Echinacea, as well as Sweet Williams.  I have sown Nigella and Phaecellia in the new bed out front.  Instead of a fallow time, it is a season to plant and nurture.  And to sit back and see everything shoot and take root in the still warm autumn.

In the raised beds I have planted a Curly Kale, garlic, shallots and broad beans.  Broad Beans were something The Old Man never planted in the autumn as he claimed the flavour was not as good as spring planted.  But considering the disastrous crop of spring grown Broadies I had this year, any kind of broad beans in 2019 would be an improvement – whatever the flavour.  But, to improve my chances I have sown two types:  Aquadulce and The Sutton.  The first in the raised bed, the second (dwarf variety) in pots.

So now, with any luck, I will have the benefit of watching stuff growing – even in the dead of winter – which is what this whole gardening lark is about, isn’t it?

 

 

Picked these from the fields nearby
Foxgloves and Honesty in trays
Curly Kale
Broad Beans and Garlic either side of the rows of leeks n Khol Rabi

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