Tag Archives: Onions

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.

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

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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

“Oh The Summertime is Coming..”

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Amelanchier in bloom – briefly

What a difference a month makes. In the space of what feels like a few brief days we have gone from a cold spring to the heat of midsummer. The Beast from the East has departed, with last month’s snowy downfall trailing in its wake, leaving us basking in warm sun this past weekend.  The grass is greening up and the trees are gently blooming, with Amelanchier blossom been and gone. Mind you, the speed with which the flowers went was mostly down to the impressive thunder-storm we had on Saturday evening which decimated the delicate blooms in one evening downpour.  But the thunder was timely as it meant I did not have to water in the veg patch that I had put together that afternoon.

Of course we know it will not last so I took the opportunity to take a significant step forward in the development of the new garden as I tried to get a lot of “done”.  On Friday the rotavator was delivered back to our place.  In a neat trick to avoid requesting favours of friends with trailers I asked the good mower man to collect the machine from one address, service it, then return it to another.

The Howard 350 Rotavator was one of the first things the parents bought when the Old Garden was being cultivated.  It is a legendary piece of equipment and still gets the job done over forty years later.  As a teenager I struggled to keep control of the beast and I was never too happy using it as TOM or my siblings were always likely to cast a critical eye over my efforts.  Maturity should lend some confidence to how I go about things now, but I was still a little self-conscious about trying to control the machine as I drove it onto the front garden. Saying I drove it suggests I was in charge.  It still feels to me as if it has a mind of its own, moving along like an old prop forward mindlessly trundling forward with little awareness of me trying to steer it.  It certainly draws attention to itself, sounding like a large tractor, and the clutch has a tendency to whine and slip.  And I had also forgotten how the prongs make the machine lurch alarmingly forward if they hit hard ground – and there was plenty of that underneath the lawn I was digging up.  I eventually crisscrossed the proposed potato bed six times trying to break up the clay soil, ending up with a collection of hashed lawn, earth and clay marbles.

Afterwards I drove it towards the entrance to the back garden, knocking through the latch as the clutch slipped and the beast nearly took the gate off its hinges.  But the job was done.

The next morning Richard arrived with a trailer load of compost.  A ton of compost does not go far, but it is a start.  And I was finally able to spend my Saturday afternoon planting  onions, shallots and potatoes.

Just in time to be watered in by the cacophanous downpour.

Potatoes in
The Beast resting after its work
Sweet Peas
Squashes
First Courgettes
“Salad Days are coming…”
Cav Nero already potted with Toms, Basil et al, behind
Magpies – the ruination of many small birds’ nests

Potato Day 2017

Your Potato Day Experience Starts Here
Your Potato Day Experience Starts Here

Today was Potato Day in Castle Cary and once again Mrs B and I pottered along to Caryford Hall to grab our annual selection of little chitters.  It used to be in the Consti Club where we would enjoy the raffish charm of the old place but  Caryford Hall seems too clean and well-ordered to be hosting a bunch of mostly middle-aged and elderly gardeners rummaging through multi-coloured tubs of spuds.

Mrs B mentioned our plans to The Old Man this morning which set him off on an initial criticism of the event as somewhere that people went to buy some fancy-dan hoity-toity potatoes that would ultimately fail, and inferred that we would be doing the same. Mrs B (who handles situations with TOM with the cool detachment of a seasoned daughter-in-law) put him right on that score, informing him that we knew exactly what we were going to purchase, based on previous experience and detailed plans for the season ahead. He seemed  impressed with the answer and in an effort to offer advice, resorted to the tried and tested “Pink Fir Apples are delicious and I always found you can’t go far wrong with Wilja for an all round potato”.

It is for that very reason we have never planted Wilja since we took over the garden.

This year we planned a repeat performance of the plantings of recent years, with Cherie (1st Early), Belle De Fontenay (2nd Early), King Edwards (a high risk / high reward kind of spud), Sarpo Axona (Blight-resistant main crop) and Arran Victory (1st early:  our one vanity potato – historically and geographically significant to us). The plan back-fired slightly with no Cherie on offer, so we threw in another wild card chitter by taking some Swift instead. So maybe The OM was correct after all as we were suckered into buying random spuds on impulse.

Your Potato Journey Starts here
Stand in line – no queue jumping

Pennard Plants run a smooth Potato Event,  but swift is not the word to describe the method of selecting your chitters.  They were alphabetically arranged in plastic trugs with colour-coded labels for earlies or mains.  Everyone dutifully shuffled clockwise round the tables picking their spuds as they passed them.  Skipping ahead to go from C for Cherie to K for King Edwards was not recommended and it is amazing how tightly packed a line of septuagenarian gardeners can be.  If Stoke City had had a few of these yesterday to form a defensive wall, Wayne Rooney would still be waiting to break Bobby Charlton’s record.

Waiting to pick out a few scoops of shallots and onions, the gardeners in front of me took an age to make their own choices.  They approached the trugs in the same manner a major predator stalks it prey:  eyes fixed on the sets (in case they attempted a sudden escape?), moving with feline precision, but at a snail’s pace.  I was willing them to make their choice between Longor or Vigamor, to pounce, take a scoop and move on but I lost my nerve and upset the hunt by elbowing my way in to grab my prey and take my shallots triumphantly back to Mrs B.  Oh, the joy of sets.

Returning home with our booty, I was interrogated once more by TOM who asked what I had bought.  I started to list them but he interrupted to suggest that he assumed we had bought some Pink Fir Apple too?  “No” I said.  I felt mean to be denying garden space to one of The Old Man’s favourite spuds – but frankly they are a pain to clean and peel.

Or did I still feel some sort of residual duty to do as my father advises?

“No” is the resounding answer to that one.

 

End of Term report

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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

 

When the Living is Easy

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Veg Box: Peas, Courgettes, Potatoes, Black Kale, Radishes and Lettuce

The garden is in full swing giving up its gifts after the spring preparations and planting. In the past few weeks I have harvested garlic, shallots and onions.  While I see this as a continuation of what has been done in this patch for decades, I take some smug satisfaction from the fact that all three of these vegetables are crops with which I seem to have far more success than the Old the Man did in his day. He tells me that they never managed to get good hard onions which would store well and the garlic he tried only produced small bulbs of poor quality.

If this were a proper gardening bliog and I a proper gardener, this is where I would offer advice and some insight into my secrets for producing great crops.  Perhaps it is the spacing, the type of compost I use, or the thoroughness of my hoeing techniques. Maybe I make sure I harvest them only after three successive days of temperatures above 20 degrees and humidity below 50 per cent or maybe it’s how I dry them in a clean pine shed laid on galvanized steel netting three and a half inches off the floor.

But no – like most of my gardening exploits it is down to Google, hunch, and plain dumb luck. But it is always refreshing to hear TOM giving me praise on what I do and describing my efforts as superior to his. I don’t tire of receiving such accolades:  giving praise face to face to his off-spring is a habit which has taken him many decades to develop.  I will accept it with modesty and try to avoid the vanity and swell-headedness that it was assumed would inevitably follow any paternal approbation.

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…

 

April Unfurls

Easter Buns
My Easter Buns

It’s Easter and bunnies are very much of the moment around here as Ella once again caught her very own Easter Bunny when VB took her for a walk. In Ella’s defence (and the rabbit’s for getting caught by a lugubrious black lab in open grassland twenty hops from the safety of the burrow) there is a lot of myxomatosis around at the moment. So perhaps Ella is doing a merciful task putting rabbits beyond pain before they become too sick. A canine Dignitas for rabbits – though not so dignified for Verity who struggled to get her retriever to drop the still warm, possibly breathing, rabbit.

Who's been digging in my bed?
Who’s been digging in my bed?

Down the garden there was evidence of rabbits in the garden as one part of the chicken wire seemed to have been pushed down before a couple of random holes were dug in the onions.  No onions were harmed in the skirmish but I have since got another couple of rolls of chicken wire from Swift Huts and renewed the rabbit proof fencing around both veg patches.

The  main item on the list of jobs is PLANTING.  The greenhouse is fit to bursting with seed trays full of Broad Beans,  Cabbages, Curly Kale, Cavalo Nero, Kohl Rabi, Leeks, Mangetout, Sugar Snap Peas, Peas, Purple Sprouting, Butternut Squash, Uchiki Kuri Squash, Sweet Peppers, Chilli Peppers, Tomatoes, Coriander, Basil and Aubergines.

Old Faithful
Old Faithful

In addition to a mass of full seed trays, another sure sign of spring is the sound of the rotovator. The old Howard never fails you.  It can sit in the Cow Stall all winter, unloved and seemingly forgotten, but comes out in the spring like a Grizzly Bear from hibernation ready to take all before it.  It never fails to start and apparently needs no maintenance.  It is a marvel.  Or so I was saying as the clutch went half way through digging the salad bed….

I had a feeling it would be easy to mend, but neither myself nor Jim could see it so I was forced to ask the OM to tell me how to re-attach the wire.  I am increasingly worried by his lack of mobility and unwillingness to walk further than the garage and back, but such was the importance of the issue, he made it down the garden to stand on one side of the chicken wire and instruct me on how to mend the machine.  Fortunately it was done in a trice and hopefully the exercise did him good

In the main veg patch I have gone all “No Dig” this year, with the cardboard  keeping the weeds down, so I was able to plant the spuds with relative ease.  I have a combination of Belle de Fontenay, International Kidney, Cherie, Pink Fir Apple, Sarpo Mira and Sarpo Una.  It looks pretty good – apart from the cardboard bits.  While digging them I got an ear worm of “No Surprises” by Radiohead…”A heart that’s full up like a landfill…”

But this job is not going to kill me – it’s what makes me feel alive.