Tag Archives: Nigella

Grow, Grow, Grow

I was as excited as any other birdwatcher when I read about the Bearded Vulture that has been spotted in the Peak District and Yorkshire. Also known as a Lammergeier, this is only the second time such a bird has been spotted in Britain this century. Which makes it almost as rare as a Cabinet Minister telling the truth. Or a Special Advisor admitting an error. It is thought that this is a juvenile Lammergeier that has simply got a bit blown off course – admittedly by a few thousand miles. The bird obviously thinks that we still live in a Europe of open borders and no distrust of foreign immigrants. Oh, the naivety of youth.

When I was a naive youth, the Lammergeier was top of my must-see list of birds on the occasions when our family French camping holidays took us to the Pyrenees. We saw lots of other eagles and vultures, but never a Lammergeier. It would be amazing to spot one, but I will not be making the trip to Yorkshire to try and see it. Even without the lockdown restrictions having been lifted (for those of us who abided by them in the first place) I will not be leaving the garden for any of length of time at the moment. Because this is the time of the year when the hard graft finally pays off. It is the time of the year when my parents would say that there was no way they could go on holiday, because the peas will need picking, then the beans, the courgettes and all the other veg that they grew on an industrial scale.

And I now understand their sentiments. The scale of my veg and flower patch is nothing to compare with theirs. Mrs B and I are not interested in the long hours of blanching and bagging veg which my parents engaged in, to enable them to freeze enough greens to see them through the winter. But we currently have more peas, sugar snaps, courgettes, kale, carrots and runner beans and french beans than we could shake a big Tory Lie at. Not to mention salad leaves, cucumbers and, this week, the first tomatoes in the greenhouse.

The sighting of a rare vulture in Britain is a relief from the other depressing news (although it also brought into focus the illegal persecution of birds of prey such as the hen harrier on nearby grouse moors). Being in the garden has also provided solace for me and Mrs B. The flowers are looking particularly fine at the moment and Josh’s Spursy Border is performing far better than I had any right to expect in its first season.

All this has happened not because we made any spurious promises or deadlines, or pretended we had seeds in stock when, in fact we had not. We did not double count plants or make up random straplines like “We will get digging done” or “pick, pick, pick”. No: we just got on with it.

And now, like the Lammergeier in Yorkshire, who must have been a bit tired after its long journey over half of Europe, we will take stock and enjoy the fruits of our labour.

Planting to the Music of Time

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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

Shoot Em Up

Today I managed to take another leaf out of my father’s book, to follow in his footsteps, be the unwitting victim of the power of fate and to once more be filled with the horror (the horror) of the dread of heredity.

The final day of the Premier League football season proved to be possibly the most crazed and nail-biting that any one can remember, with twists and turns of fortune throughout the afternoon.  I, as a classic Man U fan (never been to a home fixture etc etc – you know the sort) was offered the chance to watch the excitement on TV, but I instead opted for an afternoon in the garden with the radio to give me the pictures.

Sarpo Mira

I could not help noticing the similarity with 1966 when, on the day that Enlgand had a chance to lift the world cup, my father could not stand the tension of the moment and instead spent the afternoon digging in the allotment.  I have never been able to understand how he missed the greatest moment in England’s footballing history.  And yet, as I planted cosmos and nasturtiums this afternoon while Man City did their best to refuse to accept the title from united, the parallels were too close ignore.

In my defence, it was about the best day of the year so far, and the simple matter of being outside instead of in was overwhelmingly attractive.  So an afternoon spent planting flowers – nasturtiums, cosmos, cornflowers and Nigella – into the borders to brighten them up later in the summer.  And I will forever look upon the lavender beds next to the sundial with mixed emotions as it was there that I was weeding when City scored twice in the dying moments to clinch an amazing victory.

Elsewhere, the potatoes are really shooting up, with the parsley also actually arriving at the party, after weeks of sitting miserably in the wet cold soil.  I am beginning to get some idea of the variations in germination for plants.  All pretty basic stuff, but I did not realise how long the parsley – which has seeds like large bits of grit – would take to sprout compared with, say, the radishes next to it.  But it has finally done so.

Belle De Fontenay

Meanwhile in the greenhouse, extra ruby chard I planted has just sprung up, compared with pin points of ruby in the beds, while the brussels and purple sprouting are jumping out of the soil in their seed trays.  I might have to do something similar with the parsnips which I sowed, as per the packet instructions, one per 30 cms in rows outside, only to be solemnly informed by my “gardening conscience” (the old man) that parsnips have  notoriously poor germination rates.  So I am thinking that I might have to wait months only to discover that I have one parsnip to last me a year!

Never mind, I think I will plant some in

Arran Victory

seed trays, in newspaper cones (I am advised on Saturday night by Piers and Hazel), so I can transplant easily.  Might do the YouTube video “how to grow parsnips in paper” or some such title.  Or maybe I will just sit outside avoiding telly, watching the garden grow – and all those different potatoes.