Never give up hope...

This blog hasn't had much attention for the last year but I think it may be worth recording what we have been up to down on the plot.

It has been a good spring on the whole I think. We have begun harvesting some of the potatoes that I planted on 30 March. This was a bit early and I only narrowly avoided frost but I seem to have got away with it. These are Lady Christl and are sold by some vendors as first early and some as second. I grew them as the former and we have the best potatoes I have ever grown. They are firm when boiled and a decent size despite being in the ground for only 11-12 weeks. I am far from sure what conditions made this the case.

We have picked a lot of broad beans too. These are the overwintered Aquadulce Claudia that went in the ground last October. I bought the seeds in the first year we took on the plot. That year I took some from the packet and sowed them but that was the last that I ever saw of the seeds. There were certainly no plants. The seeds sat on my my desk at work for two years. They were in the pocket of a jacket I think and I took them out because it seemed not quite right to be carrying them around at the office. Eventually, I split them with colleague and fellow allotmenteer, Mark. They didn't look good, dark and far too wrinkled and I had no hopes for them but I was, as so often, quite wrong; they grew strongly through winter and spring and we took around two kilos of beans from the plants.

Some of our Lady Christl potatoes and a few broad beans, 16 June

 Right now it is mostly about raspberries and strawberries. I planted 12 Glen Ample bare rooted canes in March 2013 in a mild snow storm. I had some hopes that they would perform but I had no idea just how how much they could produce. They were covered in bees throughout April and May and now every evening I can pick 500g without difficulty. It is just possible that I planted too many....

The strawberries were damaged by a hail storm of biblical scale (Old Testament) about a month ago. Many were malformed as a result but, even so, we have picked something like two kilos to date. I have made jam, smoothies and a rather splendid mascapone cream tart (the last something of a team effort). Some of the result is pictured below and, despite some adverse conditions, things haven't turned out too badly.

Those who know me will attest to the fact that I am seldom optimistic; it is not the way that I was built to be. But I should probably learn from the experience of gardening. Sometimes, things turn out well despite fear of the worst.

Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb...

It has been a long time since I posted anything here and I have been shamed by the literary industry (and quality) of my fellow allotmenteer and work colleague Mark's gardening blog. It's high time I recorded progress here.

The spring has been busy even though late. Al and I have found plenty to do and at this point we have only some leeks to plant out into what is the only significant space left on the plot. I don't think we have approached the variety of planting that we have managed this spring in the previous two years and like Mark I'll post a diagram of how the plot looks when I have one.

Some of our work has been aimed at getting a crop in future years. The raspberries and strawberries, mentioned in an earlier blog post, are in that category and some things are experimental; Romanescu cauliflower (or broccoli, the books aren't sure), celery, pointed variety cabbage and cucumber fall into that category. I will see how we get on but if I have some losses I won't be too disappointed. In fact some of the brassicas have been attacked by pigeons and slugs already. Netting and the less nasty kind of slug pellet will deal with that problem I hope.

The usual suspects have been planted as well. We have sweetcorn (Lark), squash (Honey Bear, Sweet Dumpling), courgettes (Romanescu and Tuscany) and I sowed beetroot, chard, ,lettuce,  spring onion, parsnip and carrot too. These suffered from cat trouble and I am not sure what will result in the end. We'll find out. 

The plot as it looks at the beginning of June.

We have one crop so far this spring. I planted rhubarb in the first year and it now looks quite vigourous. I took around ten stems and set about making some jam. I had never made it before but the process seemed straightforward and a decent result was obtained (Al acted as a fairly independent judge). My only concern was in dealing with a super heated sugar and fruit mixture - it looked like something that could have been poured from the walls of a castle as a kind of weapon. It tasted better and we now how just less than four pounds of it.

Winter into spring

The winter showed signs of being over this weekend and so Al and I set about getting our first and second early potatoes into the ground. I had turned over the ground that they were to go into last autumn and the snow, ice and rain had done a decent job of breaking down the large clods of earth into a reasonably fine soil. This made the job of making five shallow trenches for 10 tubers each relatively easy.

We put in Kestrel as our second early and Casablanca as the first early. I wanted Lady Christl in place of the latter but there were none left when I placed the order at the beginning of March. I am not expecting too much from them. The ground is stony, and worse, the seed company sent me twice the order in compensation for running out of my first choice. My guess is that if they were prepared to do that, they may not be a first rate potato.

Our morning down on the plot was rather lovely. The weather was mild, the sun was out and we finished work in good time to go out for lunch somewhere nice. Of course, the winter had been dreadful, as it had been for everyone else, and this made a nice day seem even nicer.

We did have the occasional reasonable day in March and we had been able to put in 12 canes of raspberry Glen Ample (albeit in a gentle snow shower), in early March and 10 runners of strawberry Cambridge Favourite at the end of the month. In addition to that we managed to put in onions and shallots a couple of weeks ago. We bought sets of Red Cross, Autumn Gold and Jermor to join the garlic (Bella Italia, Provence Wight) and over-wintered onions (Troy, Red Cross) and shallots (Biztro and Grise). The latter look OK but the onions look a little sorry for themselves - they have had a hard time of course.

Overwintering onions

Al I finally got down to the plot today to sort out a few issues that other commitments and the weather had prevented us from tackling. 

I set about digging over the ground left vacant after I brought in the pumpkin and winter squash. The ground was very heavy after all the rain that has fallen in the last few weeks and it was difficult to work. I was keen to get with it because the plot was starting to look rather shabby. Docks and chickweed were the main culprits but I needed to clear away the sweet peas and rudbeckia that were now looking at death's door. I worked for about three hours but there is still a lot to do. I'll get it all done by Christmas.

Meanwhile, Al worked on the onions. We had 100 each of Troy and Red Cross, too many for us, and so Al put in about 40 Troy and around 65 Red Cross. She covered them with fleece to dissuade the birds from pulling them up and throwing them about, an idea straight from Monty Don. Thanks Monty!

There is still a lot to take from the plot for cooking. I lifted some carrots, celeriac and a red cabbage. The celeriac and cabbage will go into a slightly unconventional bubble and squeak with some potato and the carrots will make a side dish with capers and parsley.The pic below is Al making sure that none was wasted the last time we ate it.

The squash we harvested a couple of weeks ago have been great cookers. 

This is a kind of butter bean and squash curry that I made with the Celebration and the Autumn Gold onions. We ate some, froze the rest. We finished it off for lunch today and it was fabulous.

Finally, one of our celeriac after it has been trimmed. These are wonderful things. The scent from them is excellent. We will be growing as many as we can next year. 

A little chillier...let's get the pumpkins

This week the weather has been colder and frost has been forecast. We had quite a few squash and one pumpkin still on the plot and I wondered if now was the right time to harvest them. I read around the question and the consensus was that frost is bad for them. Al and I went to the plot one lunchtime with a couple of tub-trugs to collect them up. 

It took us about 20 minutes to gather them. When we had finished I guessed we had about 30 - 40Kg of squash and pumpkin. I couldn't lift them all on my own. We'll roast and freeze some of it and the rest will make casseroles, curries and soup (with garlic, chillies and cumin of course).

Later the same day we watched Gardener's World. Monty Don started the programme by suggesting that now was a good time to gather in pumpkins and squash. My, did we feel smug but, in reality, we were just lucky.

One thing we need to remember is that our squash did very well this year but the courgettes failed. Last year, things were the other way about. The weather was different but my guess is that we did things differently too. The one thing that we can say for certain is that growing vegetables for food is frustrating and fun all at the same time.

Garlic, shallots, beetroot and squash

I had ordered garlic, shallots and over-wintering onions but by the time they arrived the weather had turned wet. Even so, Al and I decided that we needed to get down to the plot to prepare the ground and get some of them in.

We set to work yesterday and, at first at least, we thought that the ground wasn't too bad. But our plot has some parts that are heavier than others and by close of play we felt that we had expended quite a bit of energy as we finished the work with one of them. That said, the soil looked good and the work was nothing like as hard as it was the first autumn we started to work the ground. We probably dug over more twice as ground much as we could have then.

Overnight it rained again but we have little free time and needed to get more done while we could. The ground was very sticky but we pressed on, planting garlic (three bulbs each of Provence Wight and Bella Italiano), shallot Biztro and Eschallotte Grise in reasonably neat rows. We covered it all with fleece to deter birds from throwing the sets and cloves all round the plot as they have in the past.

We still have onions to get in the ground but I am a bit less concerned about those. I have a lot of sets but will give about half away if I can. The over-wintered (Japanese) varieties keep less well than main crop onions. This year we found that we couldn't use them all before they became soft.

We were muddy when we had finished but we were able to take home something from the plot for dinner although my plans to combine broccoli (Early Purple) and globe artichoke came to nothing (although we ate the
h broccoli with salmon and hollandaise sause the next day). Instead, I baked carrot, beetroot (Pablo and a stripy orange Italian variety) and squash (Celebration) with goat's cheese. We must get a goat... 

Mid October

We went off on holiday in early September. When we got back we found that much of lettuce had bolted and and the sweetcorn had gone over. It was dry for much of the time that we were away.

That was a minor disappointment and it was offset by good beetroot, rather lovely looking chard, more carrots (Chantenay Red Cored) than we can eat, red cabbage and large number of squash. The carrots are a particularly unexpected success given that I didn't thin or pay much attention to them at all. The first picture shows them not at all in neat rows and the second the rather uneven results obtained (I might thin a bit next time I grow them). I roasted some beetroot (Pablo) and carrot in oil and balsamic vinegar and topped them with some goat's cheese and the result was quite good.

The red cabbage (Red Rookie) looked ready to me also and I took one to make red cabbage with apple. This was a little disappointing because the cabbage wasn't either very dense nor particularly red. Even so, we proved that we can grow brassicas on our ground. We harvested some squash (Celebration) too.  We lifted the first of the celeriac (Monarch) today as well. The scent from it was really lovely, much nicer than ordinary celery, pungent and earthy, and it had grown to a decent size. We are delighted, not least because getting them to germinate and make plants big enough to put outside wasn't straightforward. I'll make celeriac remoulade (fancy coleslaw) and celeriac mash with it.

We did a little work on the ground but it was wet, sticky and too heavy to do much with it. Even so around half of the ground is clear of weeds and a large part of the rest will be when the glyphosate weed-killer has done its work. We have a lot of trouble with docks on the lot. They seem almost impossible to dig out without leaving any part of them in the ground and they can  grow back from the smallest pieces. I would like to grow without chemicals but we don't have enough free time to manage without a little weedkiller here and there.

There are some vegetables on the plot we haven't eaten yet. We haven't touched the butternut squash (Hunter) or Rhubarb Chard. There are globe and Jerusalem artichokes to try too, so I think we have done quite well in a rotten summer. Our rows aren't straight and I tolerate weeds too much but ours has been a productive plot and I think that we have eaten something from the plot every day since June and perhaps a little earlier. I am very happy with the results we have had.

The year will be turning soon in that we will be receiving our onion and shallot sets and garlic bulbs for over-wintering. That's what we started with two years ago and, as the days shorten quickly, that's where we are again.

Carrot Chantenay Red Cored

Carrots with beetroot Pablo

Rhubarb Chard

Roasted carrot and beetroot with balsamic vinegar and goat's cheese

Red cabbage, Red Rookie

Squash Celebration etc.

Celeriac Monarch