Tag Archives: shallots

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

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.

 

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?)

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.

Hot Chit

Another wet day for hens and gardeners
Another wet day

The rain teemed down again today which meant no golf as the course was closed (I reckon The Royal Wheathill will be closed for weeks at this rate) but it did mean that I was able to accompany Claire to the big event of the weekend: Potato Day at the Cary Constitutional Club.  Last night I made my debut as a model, making a guest appearance in the school fashion show to near universal hysteria (interpret that how you like) so I was taking a journey between the ridiculous and the sublime: from catwalk to garden path.

Last year we could not attend Potato Day as Claire was in hospital.  It is incredible to think it is only twelve months on from Claire’s stem cell / chemo month in Musgrove Park.  But a year ago Lynn did select a cross-section of spuds for us: Belle de Fontenay, Kestrel, Setana, Sarpo Mira as well as some stray Red Duke of Yorks – which served us well.

Spud you like?
Spud you like?

So we hit the Consti Early this morning to get the best little chitters – and just as well we did.  By the time we left at 11.00 the local gardeners’ elbows were being sharpened as competition for the potatoes increased.  The variety of potatoes was impressive, brought in by Pennard Plants along with onion sets, small plants and the full range of seeds.  But it was the spuds which were the main attraction – colour coded in their trugs according to first or second earlies, main crops and late mains.  We had gone with the idea of getting more Sarpo Mira – the only spuds that withstood the ravages of blight in what passed for our washout of a summer in 2012.  And also on the shopping list were repeat orders of Belle de Fontenay (a fab early salad crop).  Alongside that we decided to try some King Edwards – the very finest roasting potato. And as a wild card, Claire had read up about Ratte – like a Pink Fir Apple, but not so knobbly and a lot easier to prepare.

Of course, once we got there the sheer range of seed potatoes on offer turned our heads to some more obscure strains of potato – and that surely is the fun of it all.  Why not try something different each year?  I know the OM will have plumped for his favourite Wilja after years of spud growing, but I like the idea of trying something a little different.  Apart from anything, variety is not only the spice of life, it also surely security against such things as disease or poor weather as some might do better than others.  Or am I naive?  (yes is the resounding reply.  But I am happy in my horticultural simplicity)

Cary gardeners get stuck in to get their little chitters
Cary gardeners get stuck in to get their little chitters

That said, we did avoid anything that said that it needed “good conditions” to thrive: after last summer we are not going to rely on great growing conditions to ensure a good crop.  So after some umming and aahing, we ended up with: Belle de Fontenay (10), King Edwards (10), Sarpo Mira (12), Ratte (10), Cherie (8), Salad Blue (6).  In addition we took a scoop of red onion sets and 15 banana shallots for good measure.  Not sure we have as many potatoes as last year – but then we can always get some Wiljas from Dave Marsh to make up the numbers.

Next up, we just need to look out the egg boxes to start the chitting…