Tag Archives: potatoes

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

Blighted

“Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn’t it Tess?”

I decided to start this post as I ended the last – with a literary quote (welcome to Pseuds Corner). But this week I have been thinking about the term “blighted” and sought out its use in literature. It is used to describe something that has a severe detrimental effect; that inflicts great suffering. It has an old-fashioned ring to it and finding its use in Tess of the D’Urbervilles feels apposite for the Midlife Garden, as rural disaster and destruction have struck. We are, indeed, blighted.

I first noticed the potatoes were showing the tell-tale signs of blight at the start of the week. Brown spots on the leaves, and stems that were turning to mush meant only one thing so I quickly took the tops off and disposed of them. It is not the first time we have had potato blight and I am hopeful that the spuds in the ground can be saved.

In retrospect should not have been surprised by the appearance of blight. The weather has been warm and damp recently – ideal conditions for the spores to spread and do their work. So the earlies are saved, and the main crop should be fine as they are Sarpo Mira, which are blight resistant. We hope.

The same cannot be said of the tomatoes. Blight has struck them too – but there is no saving the vast majority of them. For a moment, I felt as my father did when the cows destroyed his whole crop of Brussels Sprouts. The beefsteak tomatoes – such as the pineapple tomato – were looking stunning but needed a few more weeks to ripen while the Gardeners Delight and Sungolds had only recently started to produce ripe fruit. Instead they were all gone. I picked as many ripe but unrotted tomatoes and disposed of the reast, with the plants.

I was upset for a moment, but avoided a plunge into Hardy-esque gloom.  In the MLG we refuse to be resigned to our fate and will make the most of whatever life throws at us.  We might be on a blighted star, but we will do our best to enjoy our stay on it, as best we can.

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

Mid-Term Reports

img_20180808_084533092Deadline for reports was about three days ago but as I no longer have someone to swear at me if I am perceived to be late or include too many ‘gramatical errors’ (sic),  I have stuck to my usual report writing schedule, by submitting mine in my own time.

No More Bull Shit – herewith the mid-term garden reports.

Beans, Broad

A good start to the term, and working hard in the early weeks, they seemed to get lazy and did not capitalise on the good work early on.  The results were, frankly, disappointing with grade E across the board (or is it 1 now?)

Beans, Runner and Green

Runners and Greens have had a good term.  It is clear that MFL and PE are their strong subjects, and they have easily adapted to the European-style heat and the need to compete in hot weather.  They need to keep on, though as there have been signs of letting up in recent weeks and some of their work has started to look a little shoddy.

Courgettes

A truly memorable term for the Courgies, with early efforts, leading to excellent results to the point of being embarrassingly good.  I have rarely seen such excellent results with undoubtedly so much more to come.  Well done – a super effort.

Peas

Another one who looked to have settled into the new year, but seemed to become distracted and unruly, never really progressing.  It appears that there was some disruption with bullying by sparrows which might have been an issue.  The second intake of peas seemed to have settled this problems with Special Needs fleece being used to provide protection, but unfortunately the late start for these and lack of nursery education has meant lower than expected grades.

Potatoes:  Swift, Duke of York, King Edward, Sarpo Mira

Spuds have had a variable term.  Swift did do well to begin with, but could have done better with a more conducive setting as a lack of resources seemed to hamper development.  The Duke of Yorks have struggled too, with their results showing a wide fluctuation from 9 to 1 in grading.  It is too early to report on King Edward or Sarpo Mira.

Salad

In general salad has a had good term, although the dry weather has affected their ability to concentrate for too long.  Too often they have complained that slugs and other bugs are distracting them and hampering their progress, but when they have established a good working routine the work produced has been of a fair quality.  There is no doubt that they could do better if they tried, particularly the chard and rocket which have had a particularly disappointing term.

Tomatoes

What an excellent set of results.  Tomatoes have been a revelation this term.  They have been excellent individually and have also shown the ability to excel in small group work as sweet millions have produced some very impressive early results with the Jersey Devils promising to submit course work of very high standard.  Mrs B, the head of tomato assessment and monitoring has been particularly impressed with this years tomato cohort and they will undoubtedly be contenders for the the “most improved” prize on speech day.

Basil

Well done to basil on yet another excellent year.  Italian has been a strength of this year’s intake – “molto bene!”

Squash: Crown Prince and Blue Kuri Kabocha

Squash have been very active this term, bordering on the unruly, although they have seemed to settle into the new premises.  The work produced has been extensive, though it remains to be seen how focussed and concentrated this has been and how this is actually going to translate into favourable results: i.e. good sized ripe squashes.

Kohl Rabi

Kohl Rabi were late starters this term with a lack of nursery time leaving them behind other veg in the early years group.  Only time will tell if they are able to make this up but they are trying their best, with an A1 for effort, despite the distractions of cabbage white butterflies.

Kavolo Nero

Early work was hampered by the bullying sparrows while their later efforts have seen no homework handed in for weeks due to the destructive influence of cabbage white butterflies.  Between times there have been some excellent pieces of work and when the butterflies have gone there might perhaps be more good work to come.

Mixed Ability Class: Carrots, beetroot and chard

This has been the best ever intake of carrots.  They have been well-mannered and orderly and have delivered excellent results showing the way to beetroot and chard which have sadly failed all their exams so far.  Beetroot tried re-sits later in the summer but once again succumbed to exterior distractions.  Chard appears to be doing better in working towards some re-takes in the autumn for which we hold out high hopes. While this, along with the success of carrots shows that the standard of gardening is at times excellent, overall  there is a feeling that it “Requires Improvement”.

Next report deadline: some time in late summer / autumn-ish.

 

“Lack of early years education stunts intellectual growth”
Second attempt for peas
Heads of School material
Potatoes – needing to try harder
Kohl Rabi – late developers
Top of class
Kav Nero – showing signs of getting back on track
Mixed ability salads
Excellence in French and Running
First peas – failed to graduate

The First Lift

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Potatoes – Swift and early. But where have all the flowers gone?

These are the days of miracle and wonder, as Paul Simon once sang. The garden is starting to produce, and all the fastidious work sowing seeds, potting on, planting out, weeding, hoeing and slaughtering snails, begins to pay off.

One of the key moment is the lifting of the first root of New Potatoes. It is something that was treated with due pomp and ceremony by The Old Man and required the type of careful prodding and inspection one would normally expect only of a midwife.  The Old Man would have counted the days since planting, checked the growing conditions and attempted to calculate the exact best day to start digging.  But he traditionally only planted one type of potato (probably Wilja or Desiree), meaning that those dug in June were new potatoes, anything after that were main crop.

For my part, I am always seduced by the choice on offer at Pennard Plants Potato days so I buy various types for different end products.  But every year I am unsure about when they are likely to be ready.  The sages of the internet gardening fraternity say you need to start harvesting when the potatoes have stopped flowering, but this May / June has been so dry they seem to have barely blossomed.  And this has been a very different this year for other reasons:

  1. The potato patch (and veg patch) is only a few strides from my back door in the new property
  2. Due to a lack of supply we had to go for Swift first earlies instead of the usually reliable Belle de Fontenay
  3. In an even more radical break with normal procedures, earthing up has been done not with earth, but with grass clippings, thanks to reading an article by Alyce Fowler.

So the timing of when the first spuds would be ready was even more of a guessing game than normal.  However, the three variables noted above were more likely to help rather than hinder.  Point one makes it less time-consuming to check them, point two suggested that the they would be ready earlier (or else why give them a name synonymous with fast) and point three, after some initial misgivings, was the most beneficial of all.  With the dry weather, I was able to simply lift a portion of grass clippings to expose the golden orbs that indicated the potatoes were ready.

And so we enjoyed our first potatoes of the season along with the first kale of the year too.  The kale should have been ready much earlier, but it was a victim of unknown assailants – like the peas and salad.  But, on the whole, there is enough greenery to suggest a good growing season beckons.

Snug under their blanket of grass clippings
The First Root – ready for prepping

 

“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

Green Shoots

Back to a new term and the new garden as we prepare to put my father to rest on Monday.

Potting Shed being put to use

It has, of course, been a strange time – the combination of funeral arrangements, sorting The Old Man’s estate and domestic affairs, combined with family matters has kept me occupied through the latter part of the holidays. Having a six-day break in Arran was a much-needed breather and by driving eight hours north we also found far better weather than the West of England enjoyed.

We are now at school in at what is amusingly labelled the summer term. It would have been nice to have had a few days in the garden in the latter half of the hols, but the rain has been incessant and in one of the few dry intervals when I tried to cut the grass, the mower broke.  Getting the garden under control does is not coming easily.

Still, I am glad I made the investment in the greenhouse allowing me to plant plenty of seed trays.  The potting shed is coming into its own with the last surviving hen keen to help out on occasion.  Everything is late, but we finally have some tomato seedlings poking through as well as Cavolo Nero, cabbages and PSB.  I thought we had some chillis up, but they turned out to be mushrooms. Not what I was expecting at all.  They grew one day, died the next.  Hey ho.  Might need to look at a different brand of potting compost.

On the upside, the potatoes are looking well chitted and are more than ready to get into the ground. The down side being that I have not been able to prepare any beds in the waterlogged clay soil.  I have the frames for the raised beds, but no compost or topsoil to go in them.  That’s a plan for another week.

Help wanted?
One small tomato for man..

 

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.

 

A Potatolypse Now

“I love the smell of digging in the morning…….The smell, you know that wet earth smell, the garden. Smells like………Arran Victory”.

 

Arran Victory: A potato to die for

 

“Someday this garden’s gonna end…”

 

(apologies to Francis Ford Coppolla et al.)

Warming Up

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New Camellia and mole hills

Finally the cold weather has relented and it suddenly feels like summer might be about to happen. It’s the time of year when I personally get constantly challenged over where I have just come back from holiday. Answer: nowhere. I have naturally tanning skin and spend a lot of my time outdoors in the garden or shouting at school children in PE lessons. Others have suggested I might have some sort of Mediterranean genealogical predecessors.  Who knows.

It is also the time of year when stuff really starts to happen, with the perennials in the border suddenly getting going (I think they might have been growing for a while – I just did not notice the Echinacea as the rabbits kept grazing them back to the bare earth. I little chicken wire around them has worked wonders).

I’ve planted a camellia that the OM randomly produced from some mail order or other and I’ve had to earth up the potatoes as well.  In the background of the camellia picture you can see the moles are enjoying the sun as well…

But many plants are taking some time to get over the cold weather. The sweet peas might have been terminally affected by the frosts and the extreme temperature range in the greenhouse meant the tomatoes looked as if they had blight. They have survived but are struggling to regain their good looks and start growing properly.  And the melons, to coin some schoolboy humour, have gone from up and coming 34B’s to something akin to sagging, flaccid aged A cups.  No amount of surgery is going to help them, I suspect.