Mark's Veg Plot

Successes and failures

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 11:00:00 +0000

When I first started my blog I set out with the intention of showing my gardening exploits GOOD or BAD, and not shying away from admitting any failures. So, with that in mind, I admit a failure: this year my onions have been very poor.

When I planted out 20 multi-sown clumps of onion seedlings on 16th March, I had high hopes, because I used this technique with success in 2019. However, the onions have done very badly. I put this down to three factors:

1. The weather. It has been exceptionally dry here for several months.

2. Poor light (=bad siting). I planted the onions next to a row of beetroot, which produced a lot of foliage that shaded the onions too much. Also, I kept the bed netted to deter "diggers", which will also have reduced the available light.

3. A plague of Blackfly (aphids) which weakened the onion foliage. It has been the worst year for Blackfly that I have ever experienced.

Today I decided to cut my losses and dig up such onions as there were. Their foliage had well and truly flopped and I assessed that they were unlikely to grow any bigger.

This is definitely a disappointment, but looking on the bright side I do now have a couple of pounds of usefully-small onions. The ones you get in shops are usually quite big - often too big, meaning that you end up having to use half of one and keep the rest in clingfilm or something.

If I was a pickling sort of person, I'd probably be overjoyed with onions like this. They are probably just the right size for pickling!

Anyway, to offset the negative vibes from these onions, let me just show you a picture of my tomatoes, which are beginning to ripen in quantity now:

This year I made a conscious decision to grow fewer tomatoes than usual. Last year I let many of my bigger plants produce 5 or 6 trusses of fruit, which not only made the plants top-heavy and hard to keep upright, but also gave us a huge harvest. Much of this was made into sauce / passata, and we still have some of it in the freezer. This year, I have stopped most of my big plants after 3 or 4 trusses. Even so, I think we will have plenty of tomatoes...

More little harvests

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Sat, 25 Jul 2020 13:30:00 +0000

My garden is "trundling along" as is normal for this time of year. There are few major tasks to be done, so my job is just to keep things tidy and continue to pick stuff as it ripens.

This week I pulled a nice batch of Beetroot, consisting of three "Crosby's Egyptian" and one "Boltardy". The "Crosby's Egyptian" ones are quite flat, almost like turnips, while the "Boltardy" is the more normal ball shape. To my mind they both taste pretty much the same - lovely and earthy.

I managed to get a decent batch of "Cobra" climbing French beans too. Some of the beans are a bit distorted due to damage caused by Blackfly, and they need a very good wash to make sure all the insects are removed, but they are still nice beans.

The Green Sprouting Broccoli and Brokali is still going strong. The spears they are producing now are better than ever - really thick and succulent.

I even pulled a little batch of carrots, the first of the year. These ones are almost all from the "Harlequin" mixture. I find that this mix produces orange, yellow and white carrots that are big, strong, regular and tasty, but the purple ones are always pathetic. They are so much less vigorous than the other colours. For my photo I had to pose the purple one prominently on top of the bunch, otherwise you would have missed it!

On Monday I lifted another pot of potatoes. These ones were "Purple Eyed Seedling". Very nice potatoes, similar in many respects to the better-known "Kestrel". The yield was 736g from two tubers in one 35L pot. In terms of qaulity, these are my best potatoes so far this year - very clean, regular even-sized tubers, and only two that were too small to be usable (not illustrated).

I nearly forgot to mention the tomatoes... I'm picking some every day now. So far it has only been the small varieties because the big ones are still not ripe, but even so I have "Maskotka", "Montello", "Sungold" and "Artisan Pink Tiger" to keep us supplied.

To finish my post for today, a bit of non-harvesting news. I have replaced the wide-mesh netting over my Winter brassicas with some much smaller-mesh stuff, intended to keep out Whitefly, aphids etc, as well as butterflies.

Before putting it in place I carefully inspected every leaf of the six plants in that bed, and removed as many as possible of the butterfly eggs. I'm bound to have missed a few though, so I must remember to regularly check for caterpillars. Once they hatch I'll soon see holes appearing in those leaves and prompt action will be required.

Small but special

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Sun, 19 Jul 2020 14:30:00 +0000

Many amateur gardeners will agree with me when I say that growing huge quantities of veg is not necessarily the object of the exercise with Grow Your Own. A lot of people grow tiny amounts, but still find pleasure in doing so. I don't know if you would consider my garden large or small - it's a relative thing. My patch is very roughly 10 metres by 10 metres, so there is no way I'm going to be self-sufficient in veg, but my goal is to supplement shop-bought vegetables with small amounts of fresh high quality special treats, of whose provenance I can be 100% certain - and ones that have no food-miles associated with them, as well as the barest minimum of artificial chemicals. I think I manage to achieve that fairly well. Here are some examples:-

These are not the world's prettiest beans, but they are almost certainly the most welcome! My garden is currently experiencing a massive assault from Blackfly, and I was seriously beginning to doubt whether I would be able to harvest any climbing beans at all this year. This little batch of "Cobra" climbing French beans gives me hope!

We ate them last night, and though I say it myself they were lovely beans - much nicer than anything you can buy in a supermarket (remember, their beans have been in transit for several days before you even get to buy them, whereas mine were still growing a couple of hours before being cooked.)

Yesterday I also picked these tiny cucumbers:

Immature fruits of cucumber "Vorgebirgstrauben"

They are about 4 inches long, so not fully grown. To be honest, they were never intended to be picked at this stage, they were supposed to have been picked at less than a quarter of the size, to be used for making pickled cornichons, but I somehow missed them amongst the foliage of their parent plants. I have other cucumber plants which are for producing full-size fruits, so I thought we should try eating these ones at this in-between stage. They were delicious; very firm and crunchy, but with only very tiny seeds inside. I know that you can sometimes buy tiny cucumbers in shops like Middle Eastern delis, but you don't normally see them in the supermarkets, so to me these are very special.

Another example of the "small but special" harvest is this Tenderstem-style broccoli.

This type of broccoli is not grown for the big flower-heads like the Calabrese type, but rather for the succulent stems of the sideshoots. The texture when cooked is somewhat akin to that of Asparagus, and the taste is very subtle for a brassica - nothing like as strong as say, a Brussels Sprout. Before cooking them, I usually remove most of the leaves, though of course they are edible too, producing when cooked a soft texture a little like spinach.

One of the best features of this type of plant is that it has a habit of putting up "suckers" or underground side-shoots, which appear from the roots near the base of them main plant, so that just when you think your crop has finished it starts all over again!

Then of course there are the tomatoes...

I think it would be fair to say that you very seldom find a commercially-produced tomato that's as tasty as a homegrown one.

I rest my case!

Still battling the Blackfly

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 14:00:00 +0000

Not content with decimating my Broad Bean harvest, the Blackfly have moved on to my climbing beans - Runners, French and Borlotti - which are now infested with the damned things.

I have been doing my best to keep them under control, but I admit I am losing the battle. I initially sprayed them selectively with a proprietary bug-killer product, but it doesn't seem to have had much effect, and I certainly don't want to spray it onto my plants repeatedly. I've also tried the diluted washing-up liquid method, which again has had some effect but nowhere near enough. I've also tried blasting the aphids off with a hose. The net effect of all these methods has been to reduce the problem, but it hasn't reduced it enough. I now fear that my climbing bean harvest will be as poor as that of my Broad Beans - and that would be a very serious issue, because climbing beans are one of my biggest and most reliable crops!

Today I harvested my first two beetroot, with which I would normally be thrilled...

But, on removing the netting covering the beetroot and their neighbouring onions, I find that the onions too are covered in Blackfly! I have quickly applied the washing-up liquid and hosepipe remedies in the hope of arresting this outbreak before it gets too serious, but now I have a mess of tangled onion leaves all battered down by the powerful jets of water!

The netting over this bed has been in place primarily to deter what I call the "Nocturnal Diggers" (foxes, badgers etc), but I think (hope) the plants are now big enough to fend for themselves because I'm going to leave it off so that the little birds and maybe predatory insects might be tempted to eat a few of the offending critters. The onions are mostly swelling quite well, but they won't keep growing if their foliage is sucked dry by aphids.

It's not all doom and gloom though - several of my tomato plants are now producing ripe fruit.

The smaller-fruited varieties rend to ripen first, and those seen in the basket above are mostly "Maskotka", with a couple of "Montello".

Some of the "Sungold" are nearly ready, though I confess that I have been holding back on picking any of these because I really want to have a complete truss of them all ripe at the same time, with no green ones!

The bigger tomatoes are always later to ripen, and all of mine are still firmly green. This is "Larisa".

And this one is "Ailsa Craig", which has now produced three very even and plentiful trusses of fruit, with more on the way. I have stopped the plant after the fifth truss has formed (it's only flowers at this point), so that it doesn't get too top-heavy.

The chillis are ticking along quite nicely too, and some have now produced ripe fruit. This one is "Orange Cayenne".

I'm continuing to harvest new potatoes every few days. The latest to be lifted were the Second Early varieties "Spunta" and "Charlotte". The former was not bad at 632g from a 35L pot, but "Charlotte" was disappointing at only 556g. It's normally one of the best performers.

"Charlotte" in the round container and "Spunta" in the rectangular one.

To finish off for today I just want to show you some mushrooms I foraged yesterday. They are Cantharellus cibarius - Chanterelles. I was pleased with this batch, which weighed-in at 430g, because I don't normally find this many at once.

Quite apart from being delicious to eat, the Chanterelle is a thing of beauty, in my opinion!

Tomato update

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 17:30:00 +0000

It's nearly mid-July and my tomatoes are beginning to ripen. This is a long-awaited joyous moment for me!

"Sungold"

This year, as always, I am growing a wide variety of types of tomato - big, small, round, pear-shaped, red, yellow, stripey, I have something of everything. This is my way of "hedging my bets". Surely, if one variety under-performs, another will excel?

So far, things are looking pretty good, and most of my plants have set lots of fruit. Perhaps the most heavily-populated is this "Ailsa Craig", a good old-fashioned variety that has stood the test of time.

"Ailsa Craig"

"Super Marmande" is heavily laden too...

"Super Marmande"

I'm not surprised to see this "Maskotka" with its branches bending under the weight of fruit. It always does well for me.

"Maskotka"

The first plants to deliver ripe fruit are some other Maskotkas, growing in my tall wooden planter so that they can trail downwards.

"Maskotka"

One of my all-time favourites is "Larisa". When ripe, its huge heart-shaped fruits are pink. Unfortunately it is a tricky one to grow because it has practically no resistance to blight. Luckily there is no sign of blight here yet this year!

"Larisa"

This is "Yellow Zebra", seeds for which I got from a Facebook friend in Holland. I'm assuming the fruits will be mainly yellow, but probably with green stripes.

"Yellow Zebra"

These ones are a similar torpedo-like shape. They are "Artisan Mix" from Thompson and Morgan. The mix contained seeds for two different but fairly similar varieties, Artisan Blush Tiger (pink blush on golden skin) and Artisan Pink Tiger (pink and gold stripes). I have two plants from this mixture. What are the chances of them being one of each type???

"Artisan Mix"

Aiming off for the possibility of blight, I sowed some seeds for "Mountain Magic", a variety with strong blight-resistance. It produces small red fruits, bigger than cherry size, but not much. I have two of this type - one in a pot in my main growing area and another (which was intended as a reserve) which has been squeezed in at the bottom of the garden, in the soil in a less-than-ideal spot.

"Mountain Magic"

Last year, one of the varieties that did best for me was "Red Pear", so I'm growing it again this year. Actually, it has produced rather less fruit than I had hoped for, but they look as if they are going to be big ones.

"Red Pear"

Another of the large-fruited varieties is this "Cherokee Chocolate" one. The Cherokees are usually big vigorous and very prolific plants, but this one seems to be small for its kind (which is actually a bit of a relief because it will be easier to keep it under control!)

"Cherokee Chocolate"

Tucked away in a corner next to my water-butt (it was another Reserve that I couldn't bear to part with) is "Little Lucky", living up to its name by avoiding being given away! This variety produces golden yellow fruits flushed with pink.

"Little Lucky"

Out at the front of our house, in smaller pots, I have four more tomato plants... This is "Divinity", a very compact red-fruited variety.

"Divinity"

Two of the others here are "Montello F1", and they demonstrate very clearly the problems with self-saved seeds from F1 varieties: they seldom come true next time round! One plant has very round fruits:

"Montello"

The other one has very pear-shaped fruits:

"Montello"

To be honest, I don't really care what they look like; I just hope they taste OK! Possibly compounding the error, or maybe seizing a good opportunity, I have found three self-seeded "volunteers" from out there in the front where "Montello F1" grew last year, and I've potted them up to grow on. Two of them are still very tiny, but today the biggest one seemed OK to put into a large pot, one of those recently freed-up by harvesting new potatoes:

Probably the offspring of "Montello F1"

Who knows what these ones will turn out like, but hopefully it means that I will be harvesting a late second crop when all the others have finished, which would definitely be a good result!

Harvesting

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Sun, 05 Jul 2020 14:15:00 +0000

I haven't posted here for a few days, but that's because I haven't been doing much gardening, mostly just watering and tying-in. The weather has been really nasty, with constant strong winds, grey skies and the odd bit of rain, though not really enough rain to make much difference to the levels of moisture in the ground. An hour after the rain stops, the ground is dry again. I've had to do a fair bit of tying-in to keep things like beans and cucumbers upright: they have had a right old battering, with several leaves being ripped off by the wind!

I have now harvested all my remaining Broad Beans. The ones from the main bed were pathetic, but those from the spare plants came good in the end.

These ones were "Imperial Green Longpod", and I have to say that, nice as they were, the pods were not as long as I would have liked. I have grown this variety in the past and I remember them having six or seven beans per pods, but these ones mostly had four or five. Next year I will be thinking very carefully before attempting to sow Broad Beans again!

Today, I picked the very last of the Broad Beans, but also a few more nice things - a couple more of the purple Kohlrabi, a bunch of Tenderstem Broccoli, some potatoes and three different types of Lettuce.

The potatoes this time are "Sherine", the last of my First Early varieties.

The yield was about the same as the other varieties at 750g from two seed-tubers in one 35L pot, but these are the first ones to have any irregular shaped tubers. Not that knobbly tubers are necessarily a problem, they just don't look so nice.

Hopefully in the next two or three days I'll be picking my first ripe tomatoes, which will be one of the highspots of the season for me.

Keeping it going

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 11:00:00 +0000

When you don't have a lot of space you need to use it efficiently. My garden is small, so I make sure that it is as productive as possible, and this means getting more than one crop per year from every piece of ground.

My garden - 9th June 2020

In the last couple of weeks I have started harvesting several of my vegetables, and I am now beginning to fill in the resulting gaps with more plants. This, for instance, is the bed in which most of my Broad Beans were grown (the ones so badly affected by the Blackfly).

The Broad Beans have gone, and in their place I'll be growing brassicas. I have already planted four Brussels Sprout plants, and the empty spaces in two of the corners are reserved for Purple Sprouting Broccoli, which is currently a little too small for planting out.

PSB seedlings - 29 June 2020

Each of the Brussels Sprout plants is protected by a rudimentary collar, made from cardboard, which will hopefully deter the Cabbage Root Fly from laying its eggs in the soil next to the plants.

Elsewhere, the spaces left after harvesting Lettuce and Kohlrabi are being filled with more Kohlrabi seedlings.

We have particularly enjoyed eating the Kohlrabi, so I'm glad I had the foresight to sow a second batch! A couple of days ago Jane made some of it into a Kohlrabi gratin, with a bechamel sauce, which was delicious.

So far I have put in four more plants, spaced at about 30cm in each direction.

I have four others coming along, but there is no room for them yet.

Kohlrabi "Kolibri F1"

At the other end of the same bed, my Radishes were replaced about a month ago with a trio of "Greyhound" Cabbages, and last week I also managed to squeeze in three clumps of Swiss Chard.

Just a word of caution here: There is a balance to be achieved between maximum productivity and over-crowding. My bed here is verging on the latter, and if I had more space to play with I would definitely keep my plants further apart. Also, because I grow so intensively I'm always careful to keep adding nutrients to the soil - preferably in the form of home-made compost, but failing that commercial pelleted chicken manure and Growmore general-purpose fertiliser.

Several of my big 35L pots are becoming vacant now, as I harvest potatoes. I have sown some Radishes in a couple of them, in the hope of getting a quick crop.

The wire grilles are to deter the "Nocturnal Diggers"!

To be honest, I have never yet had a good crop of Radishes from a container (as opposed to ones grown in open soil), but I may be lucky one day!

There's one other thing I want to show you today - my Asparagus. I only have 3 crowns of it, and they too are growing in a big container, because of soil problems. The Asparagus season traditionally finishes at the Summer Solstice (20 / 21 June), so I am not cutting any more spears this year. If you leave the spears to grow, they develop into tall feathery ferns, so I'm supporting mine with a bamboo cane and some string. I'll give the plants a good feed in the next few days too, to help them build up their strength for next year.

I got some Broad Beans after all!

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Fri, 26 Jun 2020 11:00:00 +0000

Despite the devastation wrought upon my Broad Beans by the Blackfly, I still managed to salvage a few beans!

The ones from the Blackfly-damaged bed are the shorter, fatter lighter-coloured ones seen at the left in the photo below. They are mostly "Witkiem Manita", because the "Express" ones yielded almost nothing. The darker-coloured beans on the right are the first of the "Imperial Green Longpod" ones, which have so far got away with only minimal Blackfly infestation.

As you can see, the Broad Beans are on this occasion accompanied by a couple more of the purple "Kolibri" kohlrabi, and several spears of the Brokali and Tenderstem broccoli. The Brokali forms long, quite thin spears, whereas the Tenderstem has shorter thick juicy stems.

The Tenderstem is really taking off now. Since I have cut the central heads, lots of side-shoots are forming - one at each leaf axil, as seen here:

I thought you might like to hear how we have eaten these vegetables. Well, the broccoli was cooked in very straightforward fashion, simply steamed, but we have used the other two veg rather more adventurously. The beans were boiled very briefly (about 2 minutes), so that they were just tender, then decanted into a bowl and doused with olive oil, lemon juice and chopped herbs (Parsley and Savory. The latter has a sharp lemony flavour). They were allowed to cool for a couple of minutes and served warm. They were absolutely delicious eaten this way! The kohlrabi was peeled and grated and steeped in a simple vinaigrette made with oil, vinegar and Dijon mustard. It was left for an hour or so to marinate and then served alongside the Broad Beans. The combination of these two veg side-by-side was very pleasant indeed.

This week I have also harvested more of the young onions - I hesitate to call them "Spring Onions"!

This particular batch went into a Chinese-style chicken and mushroom stir-fry.

Although I have written quite recently about harvesting new potatoes, I want to include a mention here (mainly for my own records!) of the latest batch to be lifted. They were another classic First Early variety, called "Rocket". At 892g from the one 35L pot the yield was the best so far.

Even though new potatoes like this are very light and insubstantial, 892g is enough for two 2-person servings.

Last thing for today...a mention for my first ripe(ning) chilli. It's one of those from that mixed pack of "Cayennes". This one is going to be an orange one.

Disaster with the Broad Beans

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 11:00:00 +0000

I thought I was going to have a bigger than normal crop of Broad Beans this year, since I sowed extra seeds because of early fears of a Coronavirus-induced vegetable shortage. However, my hopes have been dashed. The blasted Blackfly have beaten me!

A week ago, the 30 bean plants in this raised bed were looking reasonably good, and the pods were beginning to swell, but more or less overnight they collapsed into this sorry heap:-

Of course I tried all the usual anti-Blackfly measures, like washing them off with the hosepipe set to spray, and even (unusually for me) squirted them with a proprietary bug spray. To no avail.

I have left in place a few of the least-affected plants, but pulled up the remainder, after picking off the few small pods that they had produced. The "Express" plants were the worst affected, by a long way, and the "Imperial Green Longpod" ones were the least affected.

Fortunately, I have a few more Broad Bean plants in a different place. These are the spares that I couldn't bear to part with. They have developed into the best bean plants of the lot - tall and strong and now bearing plenty of pods.

These are also "Imperial Green Longpod". When it comes to sowing Broad Beans next year (If I sow Broad Beans at all), I shall remember how well this variety did!

The fact that these beans are doing well when the "main crop" ones failed to deliver is another vindication of my normal "belt and braces" approach to my crops. I always try to grow more than one variety of each vegetable type, and I try to keep some spares available to help me replace any casualties. It seems to have paid off on this occasion.

Protecting my little carrots!

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Sun, 21 Jun 2020 11:00:00 +0000

I recently posted about sowing some finger carrots in a couple of tall pots... Once the seeds germinated I realised that I ought to do something about protecting these plants from the dreaded Carrot Root Fly, which is highly likely to have a go at them. My bigger types of carrot are protected by a frame structure covered with Enviromesh, so I have attempted to make something similar to this but in very much smaller scale.

The main carrot bed, covered with Enviromesh

This what I used: some offcuts of Enviromesh, some small sticks, some cane-toppers and some rubber bands.

The method is simple: cut the sticks to the desired height; push them into the soil/compost at appropriate points; place a cane-topper on each stick (without these, my thin sticks made holes in the mesh and poked through); roughly cut out a piece of the mesh and drape it over the sticks; secure it in place with a big rubber band; trim off any excess mesh. That's it.

I think I may have cut my sticks a bit too short, and will probably have to replace them with taller ones in a few weeks' time, as the carrots grow. Also I think it might have been better to use 2 or 3 rubber bands to secure the sticks to the outside of the pots. This way there would be less risk of damaging the little carrot plants. The Mark II version will be better!

Harvesting Kohlrabi

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 14:30:00 +0000

Well, this week the first of my Kohlrabi reached a good enough size for picking, so it was duly picked.

Kohlrabi "Kolibri F1"

I only have six of these plants, so for me it is important to pick them at exactly the right stage.

The seed-merchants always say that Kohlrabi is best when it's the size of a tennis-ball, so I made sure that mine conformed to this standard!

I've found that quite a lot of people here in the UK are unfamiliar with Kohlrabi, even though it is very popular in many other parts of the world. Maybe they are intimidated by the weird octopus-like appearance of the vegetable? Incidentally, it's not always this purple colour; the green version is more common.

Left whole, a Kohlrabi takes up a lot of space in the fridge, so the first thing I do when I harvest one is cut off the big leaves.

In the kitchen, Kohlrabi is a very versatile vegetable. It can be eaten cooked (maybe steamed or boiled, or sliced thinly and deep-fried in tempura batter) or raw (perhaps finely grated and coated in a sharp dressing, as a salad ingredient). The skin of young specimens is edible too, though older ones have fairly tough skins and are best peeled.

When it comes to growing it, Kohlrabi is very little trouble. Just treat it like a Turnip or any other quick-growing brassica - which indeed it is! (The name derives from the German words "Kohl" meaning "Cabbage" and "Raab" or "Rabi" meaning "Turnip".) Mine were sown on 25th March, so they have taken roughly 3 months to mature. In theory, since this is a brassica, Kohlrabi should be protected from the usual brassica pests, such as Cabbage Root Fly, and butterflies. Mine have been under a net to keep the butterflies off, but I took a risk and didn't use brassica collars for the Root Fly, and I've got away with it this time.

Because this is a quick-growing vegetable I have planned to have two crops of it this Summer. I have another batch of little seedlings which will be ready for planting out just as soon as the first batch is cleared away. Hopefully this means it will mature some time in September.

Small but satisfying harvests

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Wed, 17 Jun 2020 11:00:00 +0000

As promised a couple of days ago, I can today show off some small but nonetheless pleasing harvests.

Top of the bill are the first of my Broad Beans.

This little batch weighed 350g - enough for a two-person serving, I think. They are mostly ones of the "Express" variety, with one or two pods of "Witkiem Manita", which look pretty much identical to me!

I also cut the main heads off my three Brokali "Apollo" plants.

Three heads is not a big crop, I know, but once more it is enough for a two-person serving, especially since (unlike what often happens with Calabrese broccoli) the substantial but succulent stems are not discarded. My view is that small but special harvests like this are a completely different thing to bulk purchases of "ordinary" veg from supermarkets.

In view of my previous remark, I'd like to say that during the lockdown we have taken to buying a weekly fruit & veg box delivered by a local small business. The quality of their produce is far superior to anything we have had from the supermarkets, and the customer service, flexibility and responsiveness are first class. I suspect we will end up being permanent customers of them.

I've taken the crop from another of my pots of potatoes. These are "Pentland Javelin", another First Early variety.

As with the "Colleen" potatoes last week, the yield from these was small - only 485g. The quality seems fine though; they are very white, and have few blemishes.

I have to say that so far I'm disappointed by the yields of the two potato varieties I've harvested. 600g for the first ones and now 485g from these. Normally I'd be hoping for 750g or more from each pot. [Two seed tubers per 35-litre pot.] I think maybe the long dry spell during late April and then most of May is probably the cause.

I haven't harvested any of the Kohlrabi yet. With only six plants it would be foolish to pick them prematurely! They need just a couple more days, in my opinion. We have had a bit of rain this week, so hopefully that will have done them some good.

The end of the Hungry Gap

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Sun, 14 Jun 2020 07:00:00 +0000

Well, finally my garden is moving into the Harvesting phase, and most of the sowing and planting is over. This is the point at which all the hard work begins to pay off. I've you've made it this far with your veg plot, you can begin to a relax a little now - though don't forget the watering!

My Brokali plants are just about ready for their first cut. This vegetable is a hybrid of the Calabrese-style broccoli and Chinese Kale. It produces heads that look like small heads of Calabrese, but the main attraction is the fat juicy stems.

Brokali "Apollo"

Just like the other types of broccoli, when you cut the main heads the plant puts out lots of side-shoots, so I'm eager to get this done as soon as possible.

Growing next to the Brokali plants are my Kohlrabis.

Kohlrabi "Kolibri F1"

I'd say they are now not far off the size of a tennis ball, and I'll be cutting the first couple of them in the next day or two. I'm reckoning that each one will make a serving for one person, so even my paltry 6 plants will be a worthwhile contribution to our veg intake.

I keep hesitating about picking the first of my Broad Beans. I'm always saying to myself "Don't pick them too soon, because you'll get a tiny yield." But then I don't want to leave them too long and find that they go floury. As with so many vegetables, deciding when to harvest is a matter of judgement, based on a number of factors, and I believe that quality is usually more important than quantity.

I expect to be reporting the first harvest of BBs any day now...

Back in the Spring I sowed and then planted lots of clumps of Onions, but was left with a few spares. I put these into a couple of black plastic crates, and they have now grown to a stage where they are useful as Spring Onions, and I have begun harvesting them as required.

Ironically, I have seldom been able to grow any Spring Onions from seeds sown for that specific purpose, but these are lovely!

In times gone by, onions were typically sown in Autumn / Winter and then thinned out in the Spring. Rather than waste the thinnings they were used as a salad ingredient. These days they are bred and grown specifically for this purpose. My mother-in-law calls them "Young Onions" not "Spring Onions", which is probably a better name, since these days you can buy them all year round .

Most of my tomato plants are setting fruit now, though none of them are anywhere near ripe.

Tomato "Sungold"

I have decided that this year I am not going to let my tomato plants get as big as I usually do. Normally I stop them only when they have produced 5 trusses, but because of this they get very tall and I often have to spend a lot of time and energy keeping them upright, on account of the weight of fruit. This year I am only going to let them produce 4 trusses at most, and pinch them out when they reach the tops of their canes. Obviously this won't apply to the short bush-type plants. To be honest, last year we had too many tomatoes, and the freezer still contains a fair few tubs of tomato sauce!

Most of my cucumber plants seem to have settled in OK now, and are growing up their support poles.

Some of them have begun to produce flowers and little tiny fruits like this:

Once they get started these things grow very rapidly, so I don't think it will be long before I'm picking my first ones - especially as the most advanced ones are the types which are going to be used for pickling as cornichons.

I did have a couple of casualties with the cucumbers. I planted two of a type that produces white-coloured fruits, down at the bottom of the garden next to the "spare" Broad Beans. They never got established at all. They just withered and died. I'm not really sure why. When I dug them up to do a "post-mortem" I noticed the roots were very small, so I think maybe a pest of some sort had had a nibble of them. Fortunately I have two more plants of the same variety, and I'm currently contemplating where to plant them. I don't want to put them in the same place, just in case the suspected pest is still lurking there.

My potato plants are all looking very pale now. Their foliage is beginning to die down, so I'll be harvesting another pot of them every few days over the next month or so. In fact this will be the most significant early summer harvest for me, and I'm hoping for bigger yields each time as the the tubers swell.

That's it for now, but expect to see photos of harvests in my next post!

The first of the new potatoes

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 11:00:00 +0000

There's something magical, something deeply satisfying, about digging up homegrown potatoes!

Because of this special appeal, despite having limited space, I always grow a few potato plants. These days I have settled on growing 12 containers of them, using big (35-litre) black plastic pots, each planted-up with two seed tubers. With this limited number I'm never going to be self-sufficient or have a year-round supply of potatoes, but it's enough to give us a few very special meals in the early Summer. I say "early Summer" because I grow mostly First Early and Second Early varieties which mature in June and July, as opposed to the bigger Maincrop ones which are not lifted until Autumn. This means that I can get my crop harvested before the almost-inevitable Late Blight comes along.

In this overhead view of my plot you can see the 12 potato pots towards the Left of the photo.

This week I lifted the first of my 2020 potato crop. Knowing when to do this is a matter of judgement rather than a science. Normally, when a potato plant produces flowers it's a sign that tubers are forming, but not all varieties produce flowers and these are sometimes very insignificant. This year hardly any of mine have produced flowers. The other main sign to look for is the foliage going brown and beginning to flop. Some of mine are at this stage now.

If I were to leave all my plants until they were completely ready for harvesting we would have a lot of potatoes all at once, so I think it makes better sense to harvest a couple of the pots before they are 100% ready. This means that the initial yields will almost certainly be modest, but the individual potatoes should be small and very succulent. The first of mine to be harvested this year was "Colleen", a First Early variety, planted on March 21st - in other words eleven and a half weeks ago.

As expected, the yield was small - 16 tubers of useable size (from 2 seed tubers), weighing a total of just over 600g. As I suspected, there were several very tiny ones, which would have grown bigger if they had been left.

Based on this little "test harvest", I'll leave it another week or ten days before taking the next pot, and during this time I'll make sure to water them well in order to help the tubers swell.

I should add that in terms of quality, these "Colleen" potatoes were lovely. They were very clean tubers and when cooked they had that light, almost insubstantial texture that is what I want from a new potato. I will say though that they are probably better steamed than boiled, because their skins lifted off when I boiled them, which spoiled their looks somewhat!

Finger carrots

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Tue, 09 Jun 2020 11:00:00 +0000

In addition to devoting most of one of my raised beds to growing "big" carrots, I'm also having a go with a few of the little carrots which people call "Finger carrots" or "Cocktail carrots". This type is typically small and proportionally long and thin - like these ones I grew in 2017:

The best variety of Finger carrot seems to be "Amsterdam", which comes in various versions such as "Amsterdam 2", "Amsterdam 3" etc. I bought a pack of "Amsterdam 2 Solo" from Wilko, for the princely sum of 50p. A pack contains at least 200 seeds, which is more than enough for my needs.

On May 24th I sowed a generous number (maybe 25 - 30?) of the seeds in each of two tall pots filled with finely sieved soil with a bit of added compost. You definitely want to remove any stones. In the hot weather, they germinated in just a few days. [NB: keep the soil moist to improve germination rates.]

Now those pots are actually quite small in diameter so I will definitely be thinning out the carrot seedlings in order to leave maybe 12 or 15 in each pot.

The seeds hadn't all germinated when I took these photos. It's a good idea to wait until you judge that all those that are going to come up have come up, then you can remove the ones you don't want, leaving the others reasonably well-spaced.

During summertime carrots like these will take 2 - 3 months to develop fully. In the meantime I'll be making sure to water them frequently, but I'll stand the pots in saucers and water them from the bottom, so that the carrots put out long roots to search for the moisture.

With a bit of luck I'll end up with a small number of very special carrots, ideal for eating raw as a snack - maybe a pre-dinner Nibble like this!

Lettuce

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Sun, 07 Jun 2020 11:00:00 +0000

Lettuce is traditionally the mainstay of many salads, and we use a lot of it in our household. I do my best to make sure that we have lettuce available throughout the Summer months.

Over the years my lettuce-growing efforts have met with mixed success. The soil in my garden is very sandy and dries out very rapidly. Lettuce don't like that, and they often bolt (run to seed prematurely) because of it. I like to increase my chances of success by growing lots of different varieties - though obviously only a few of each. This year I have devoted a half of one of my raised beds to growing lettuce, which gives me space for about 16 - 18 of them at any given moment, depending on size.

Here's a rundown of what types I have this year...

First is "Saxo", a looseleaf red/bronze variety which lends itself to the "cut and come again" method of harvesting, whereby you take just a few leaves at a time rather than cutting the whole lettuce off at the stem.

"Saxo"

Then we have "Lobjoits Green Cos", a Cos / Romaine type. These are typically harvested whole.

"Lobjoit's Green Cos"

Next, "Cocarde", a green and bronze oak-leaf variety, which grows very big if you allow it to.

"Cocarde"

When I planted these four I thought they were all the same (they came from a mixed pack), but they aren't. There are three of one type and one of another.

The three are like this. I reckon they are "Lollo bionda" or something similar. Certainly soft and frilly!

I believe the odd one out is "Yugoslavian Red". The remains of a pack of that variety went into the mixed sowing. The leaves are bigger than the previous one, and more "blistered".

Right at the end of the row I have a pair of "Great Lakes", an Iceberg type. These were planted later than the others so they are currently much smaller though they will hopefully get very big in due course.

Most of the lettuces pictured above are nearly ready but not quite. In the interim we have been making the most of this tray of "Baby Leaf Salad" - in reality the leftover seedlings of "Saxo" and "Lobjoits Green Cos".

I have cut leaves from that tray of lettuce so many times! It's actually a very economical way to grow lettuce, both in terms of cost and in terms of space. I've kept mine productive by giving it an occasional dose of seaweed-based liquid fertiliser.

One of the keys to success with lettuce is successional sowing, sowing little and often so that you don't end up with a glut. Waiting in the wings is my next lot of seedlings, ready for planting as soon as space becomes available.

I also have another tray of tiny seedlings, only recently germinated, so we're not going to be short of lettuce any time soon!

Early brassicas

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 11:00:00 +0000

I suspect that most people (like me) associate brassicas with the Winter season. Cabbages, Kale, Brussels Sprouts, they all seem like things to be eaten when the weather is cold. However, there are brassicas that are suitable for every season of the year. I'm growing some Summer-cropping brassicas this year: Kohlrabi, Broccoli and Brokali (the latter being a hybrid of Broccoli and Kale).

Kohlrabi "Kolibri F1"

I don't normally grow Summer brassicas, but this year is different, due to the pandemic and the lockdown arrangements that have been necessitated by it. When the virus began to be really serious and the lockdown was imposed, it appeared that food supply (especially of fresh vegetables) might become difficult, and I wanted to have some vegetables in the garden that would deliver an early harvest for us, just in case we couldn't buy any.

To give you an idea of how quickly these vegetables grow, I should mention that I sowed the seeds on 25th March, so from sowing to harvest will be something like two and a half months.

Kohlrabi seedlings - 10th April

Well, the harvest is nearly ready. The Kohlrabi needs maybe another week or ten days. I don't want it to get too big because it would probably become tough, but equally harvesting too soon would be to waste its potential. I think I'll let them reach about the size of a tennis ball. They are currently about the size of a ping-pong ball.

If you're not familiar with Kohlrabi, which is not widely used in the UK, let me say that as the name suggests (Kohl = cabbage, Rabi = turnip), this vegetable tastes like a cabbage but feels like a turnip. The flesh, which is white even inside the purple-skinned varieties) is crisp and juicy. It can be eaten raw - maybe grated as a salad ingredient - or cooked just like a "proper" turnip. The young leaves are also edible, though older ones are tough.

The Broccoli and Brokali are a little further away from being mature, I think, though it's quite hard to tell at present. I have three plants of each type, but unfortunately I've forgotten which is which and they do look very similar! One of the two is already forming little central flower-heads, but the other is not.

Actually, it would be very convenient if the two types would mature at different times, because that would spread out the harvesting period. I don't really want six plants all cropping simultaneously, since there are only two of us to eat the veg.

I want to squeeze into this post and update on something that is definitely NOT brassicas - apples...

I have two apple trees growing in large (60-litre) pots. This year they are side-by-side, about 3 feet apart, in the hope that they would assist each other with pollination. Strangely, one of the trees ("Laxton's Superb") has produced masses of fruit, but the other ("Winter Banana") has not. In the hope of getting some bigger, better-quality fruit this year I have been ruthless with thinning out the little apples, especially on the Laxton's. I have made sure that there are no more than two fruit on each spur:

I've noticed something very odd. In many cases one of the remaining pair of apples has developed a lot faster than the other, leading to a big disparity in size. I suspect that the tree may decide to abort the smaller fruits and put its energy into the larger ones.

At this time of year fruit trees often shed a lot of fruitlets anyway, in what gardeners term the June Drop. It's Nature's way of ensuring that the trees don't produce more fruit than they can sustain.

Weedkiller problems

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Wed, 03 Jun 2020 11:00:00 +0000

Prompted by an enquiry from a reader (Hello Debbie!) I thought it was about time I wrote another post about weedkiller, in order to keep this issue "in the public eye" rather than let it be forgotten.

Most of my regular readers are aware of this already, but there are still people (for example new gardeners) who don't know that much of the commercial compost sold these days is contaminated with weedkiller. Mostly these chemicals are used in agriculture to suppress broad-leaved weeds in grazing pasture, and in domestic lawncare products. They find their way into allotments and domestic gardens via two primary routes: the agricultural products (usually Aminopyralids) come in with animal manure - often provided free of charge to allotmenteers - and the lawncare products (usually Clopyralids) enter via municipal green waste, which is frequently used as a significant ingredient in bagged compost.

There is legislation and regulation covering the use of such products, but in my experience it is often bypassed or ignored. I have in the past raised complaints with manufacturers (e.g. Dow Agrochemicals / Corteva) and with regulators and health authorities (e.g. DEFRA, HSE), but to be honest, I made little progress with either. They still continue to brush aside such complaints, denying that there is an issue, and refusing to accept responsibility. Until someone in high authority (or perhaps a prominent gardening personality) takes this up, the issue will remain one which you and I have to cope with on our own. My approach has been to stop buying products made by anyone who has supplied me with contaminated material. Top of my hate-list is Westland, whose products have consistently been bad.

The trouble is that these substances are incredibly powerful and persistent. Despite manufacturers claims that they break down rapidly, I have found that their effects last for literally years. Once they are in your garden it is almost impossible to eliminate them, because they get into the soil and into any home-made compost that you make.

This year, because of the difficulties presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, I have bought very little compost (only 3 bags of "100% organic" composted stable manure from Harrington and Jessup, and 3 bags of Melcourt Sylvagrow). With one exception (described later) I have had no problems with seedlings raised in these materials, but as soon as I planted into garden soil (e.g. in my raised beds) the problems reappeared. The plants most affected are beans. This is a Runner Bean leaf (as are also the ones in my photo at the start of this post).

These distorted leaves are on a climbing French Bean "Cobra".

Fortunately this year the problems I am encountering are not severe and the beans will probably be OK, though it is likely that their vigour will be less than if they had been uncontaminated. I'm fairly sure that they have been affected by weedkiller residues in the soil of the raised bed and in the home-made compost which I applied to it.

The "exception" I mentioned above relates to a batch of Broad Beans which I sowed in small plastic pots. I sowed four such batches, and they were all OK except one. The beans in that one batch came up distorted and blackened at the edges.

Those beans were from the same pack as another batch that came up looking fine, and were sown in compost from the same bag. The only thing I can think of that may have caused the damage is that I used pots that had not been washed, only brushed out. It is possible that some residue of last year's contaminated compost remained in them - it only takes a minute quantity to cause damage. Broad Beans seem to be the vegetable most susceptible to harm caused by these weedkillers and are often used as a test for its presence. You plant some beans and see how they fare, before committing to growing anything else in the compost you are using.

Some years ago (I think it was in 2014) when I first became aware of this issue, my tomato crop was very badly hit and almost all my plants were affected. Since then I have become very aware of the signs of contamination. The first sign is abnormally thin, spindly (sometimes described as "fern-like") foliage, with distorted or curled-in leaves. A couple of my plants this year have some leaves like this:

Abnormal bending - often in a spiral fashion - of the leaf-stems is also another common sign, and can be mistaken for the normal curling-in effect that can occur on tomato leaves when cold nights follow hot days. So far, none of my plants are exhibiting this symptom this year, but let me show you a photo from 2108:

Damaged and distorted leaves obviously affect a plant's ability to absorb energy from the sun, so its vigour will be reduced and the whole plant may be stunted. The amount and quality of fruit is also likely to be adversely affected. This photo of a tomato fruit was taken in 2014:

As I have mentioned, the levels of weedkiller contamination in my garden this year are not severe, and my plants will probably deliver a decent yield despite it, but I still feel aggrieved that it's there at all!

At least as a result of this post perhaps some newbie gardeners will now be able to understand the reasons behind previously un-diagnosed plant damage in their own gardens. I urge you all, if you get the chance, to lobby for a review of the use and regulation of these dangerous chemicals! I maintain that sellers of commercial compost have a duty to ensure that it is fit for purpose and will nurture not damage our plants.

I have written about this subject several times before, so if you want to know more, please use the SEARCH facility in the side-bar of my blog and look for the word "weedkiller".

The Broad Beans keep me waiting

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Sat, 30 May 2020 11:00:00 +0000

My Broad Beans have finally deigned to set some pods.

Now that I can see these tiny pods, I really really want them to hurry up and mature! Looking back at my records I see that last year my first Broad Beans weren't harvested until 18th June, but the previous year I picked some on 6th June. Of course different years have different weather conditions, and I don't grow the same varieties of bean every year, so all I can say is that my 2020 beans will be ready "soon".

One of the varieties I'm growing this year, and the first that I planted, is "Express", which is supposed to produce an extra-early harvest, but it doesn't seem to be playing along with this. It is growing in the same bed as some "Imperial Green Longpod" and some "Witkiem Manita", but it's looking as if they may all be ready at the same time, which is annoying, because I had been hoping for a more spread-out harvesting period this year!

In view of the coronavirus situation and the initial uncertainty of food supply, I didn't throw away any of my spare Broad Bean plants this year; I just squeezed them into some little corners of the garden. Ironically, the biggest and healthiest-looking of all my beans are these "Imperial Green Longpod" ones, late-planted spares that ended up at the bottom of the garden next to my log-pile, Comfrey patch and second compost-bin.

These plants are definitely the ones with the most flowers, but I know from past experience that many of them won't set pods.

Well they say that "What's worth having is worth waiting for", so the beans had better be good!

Planting cucumbers

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Wed, 27 May 2020 17:00:00 +0000

In the absence of a greenhouse or polytunnel, all my cucumbers are grown outdoors - and quite successfully too, I must add. Of course this means I have to judge when the weather is right, and not plant them out too soon. Well, keeping a close eye on the 10-day weather forecast, I reckoned that yesterday (Tuesday) was the right time to do it - lots of sunshine during the days, and mild nights for the foreseeable future.

I had everything ready to go for the task - tubs filled with compost and enhanced with fertiliser; poles (Hazel rods 6.5 feet tall, tied at the top) erected; plants hardened-off - so planting was actually a very quick job.

The only advice I can offer here is to avoid planting too deeply. Cucumbers dislike having their stems in contact with damp / wet soil, so if you can, plant them on a little mound.

This is the first of my two cucumber tubs. I've put in it 2 x "Delikatess" and one each of "Diva" and "Passandra". These ones will be used to produce what I'll call "normal" (though small) cucumbers.

The second tub also has four plants, 2 each of "Vorgebirgstrauben" and "Venlo Pickling". These ones will be used to produce tiny fruits for pickling as gherkins of cornichons.

You might be wondering what the lines of string are for. Well, they serve two purposes: to provide some support for the plants until they manage to grab the Hazel poles; and to deter the nocturnal animals. I have found that sometimes a fox will actually climb into a big pot if it believes there's a chance of finding something edible in it (a juicy worm, perhaps?).

With the weather these last few days having been sunny and hot, I thought carefully about when to plant the cucumbers (I mean what time of day). I didn't want them to get scorched and dehydrated, so I waited until the site of their new home was going to be in the shade for at least 12 hours. I've also moved a potted Bay tree a few times, arranging it so as to provide a bit of shade for the young cucumbers. Once the plants are established they will enjoy the direct sunlight, but they do need a chance to settle in first.

In my usual fashion, I have some spare plants just in case there are any casualties, and I have to admit that I have used one of them already.... the rootball of one of the young plants disintegrated as I was removing it from its pot, and the roots were damaged, so I have discarded that one and used a spare.

Windy weather

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Sun, 24 May 2020 14:30:00 +0000

Over the past few days we have had some incredibly windy weather - the sort of winds you expect to get in December or January, but not in late May. Fortunately the Met Office had been predicting this wind for quite a while, so I was able to make suitable preparations...

Having waited so long to plant my Runner beans, on account of the very cold weather the previous week, I really did NOT want to lose them! Being young and fragile, I considered them highly likely to be damaged by the wind, so I rigged up a windbreak for them. It consisted of a double thickness of horticultural fleece wrapped around four garden chairs, and held in place by multiple clothes pegs. This is it:-

My Broad Beans were in danger too. They are just at the setting pods stage, so it would be a real shame to lose them. Ironically, this is the first time for many years that I have not staked the plants individually. They are in a (mostly) self-supporting block, protected from the diggers (foxes etc) by a net draped over some bamboo canes. Using my last available piece of fleece I made this shelter for them:-

The fleece wan't long enough to reach all the way round, so obviously I left exposed the side I considered least vulnerable.

My very precious chilli plants were tucked away mostly in the lower level of my big coldframe, but with some having to go in the garage, which fortunately gets a bit of light through a side window.

The upper level of the coldframe was crammed with as many trays of seedlings as I could fit in.

The difficulty with this was the fact that although the weather was windy, it was also very sunny and quite warm (about 20C in the early afternoon), and the little plants didn't really want to be in a glass container, and I had to water them frequently.

Anyway, the good news is that despite 48 hours of buffeting, my plants have survived. Some of the Broad Beans are severely bent over, but I expect they will right themselves in a day or two. Other than that, there seems to be no damage. The chillis are out in the fresh air again, much to their relief I'm sure.

Actually, it's surprising what effect a couple of days in very low light levels can have on a chilli plant. The leaves seem very dull and "peaky". Today I have given them a dose of "Tomorite" plant-food which will hopefully perk them up. Lots of them have plenty of fruits on now, though none of them are ripe yet.

These cucumbers, currently being hardened-off, will be planted out in the next day or two (some of them, at least). I bet they were glad to have been indoors during the recent gales, because they are very fragile.

As you can see, I have far too many cucumber plants (there are 16 in this photo, and more elsewhere!). I probably only need 8, but my normal technique is to raise a lot more plants than I think I will use, so that I always have some spares. Plants as delicate as these would never had withstood the recent winds.

Radishes

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Fri, 22 May 2020 11:00:00 +0000

My veg-plot is fully populated with plants now - there is hardly a square inch of bare soil! However, I haven't yet got much to harvest. This is the time often referred to as the Hungry Gap, when all the previous Winter's crops have been used up and before any of the new season's ones are ready.

We have been eating a fair bit of Baby Leaf Salad and Rocket, but the high spot of this week has been the harvest of my first big batch of Radishes. We had had a few prior to this, but just half a dozen at a time. Here we have 2 x "Cherry Belle", 3 x "Malaga Purple", 2 x "White Icicle" (aka "Eiszapfen" from Lidl!)and 3 x "French Breakfast".

This is different though...

There are four different varieties of Radish in these photos. The round red ones are "Scarlet Globe" and "Cherry Belle", the long red-and-white ones are "French Breakfast", and on the top of the pile are just two "Malaga Purple".

To produce good Radishes I think there are probably three golden rules:
1. Choose a site that will get lots of sunlight
2. Sow the seed thinly - about an inch between seeds.
3. Water frequently, regularly and copiously

Radishes grown in dry soil almost always bolt before plumping-up, but even if they do, all is not lost. You can let them flower and produce seeds for sowing next year - and the seed-pods are edible too!

When it comes to eating Radishes, yes we do sometimes have them sliced as a salad ingredient, but our favourite way to eat them is dipped in salt, as an accompaniment to a pre-dinner drink.

If I had heaps of Radishes I might be tempted to cook some, because I've heard that they are nice stir-fried, or even roasted. Likewise, you can eat the leaves (lightly steamed, to accompany Chinese food is a good way, apparently). All this is hypothetical though, because I never have large quantities of Radishes and I don't want to risk being without our favourite snack!

New potatoes coming along nicely

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Tue, 19 May 2020 11:00:00 +0000

My efforts with protecting my potatoes, first with the mini-greenhouses and latterly with the fleece, seem to have paid off. The plants are looking big, strong and healthy.

For me, growing potatoes is not about quantity and big harvests; it's about a small but satisfying crop of good-quality potatoes, much better (and certainly much fresher) than anything you can buy in a shop.

I have only 12 containers of potatoes (they are 35-litre ones), so it is relatively easy to look after them. Apart from protecting them frost, and in their early days earthing them up, the most important thing to do is water them well. The soil in containers can dry out very rapidly in hot weather, and potatoes don't like that. Dry soil in particular promotes the disfiguring disease Scab. Since there has been very little rainfall recently I have been watering my pots about every other day. In warmer weather I would probably increase this to once a day.

The foliage of my potatoes is very fresh-looking still, and perkily upright, so this tells me that it's unlikely there are any sizeable tubers down below just yet. As the tubers begin to swell the foliage tends to flop and it starts to lose its bright green colour.

Another sign of approaching maturity is the appearance of flowers. However, though some potato varieties produce quite large and sometimes colourful flowers, others only have very small and insignificant ones. This "Colleen" plant is obviously one of the latter!

At the rate things are proceeding - and a spell of warm sunny weather is forecast for our area - I think we are on track for harvesting the first potatoes in about 3 to 4 weeks' time. Of course the first ones to be lifted will be First Early varieties and their yield will not be huge, but I fully expect them to be lovely and tasty!

Planting-out Runner Beans

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Sun, 17 May 2020 11:00:00 +0000

In retrospect, I think I sowed my Runner and Borlotto beans a week too early. They were ready for planting-out just as we went into the spell of very cold weather that has just ended. Beans like this are not frost-hardy, so I had to keep them under cover in a coldframe each night. They grow very rapidly and now they are bigger than I would normally let them get before planting; however they look strong and healthy, so delaying a week doesn't seem to have done them any harm.

Here's a better view of the Runners. They are "Scarlet Emperors".

And these are Borlotti - "Lingua di Fuoco".

The Runners are going to be grown in one of my raised beds, supported by 9-foot Hazel poles, and the Borlotti will live in a large (60-litre) container, with 6-foot-six poles.

I have planted 10 Runner beans, each with its own pole to climb. I've also put in four "Cobra" climbing French beans, one at the base of each end pole. The "Cobras" are very poor by my normal standards, but luckily I sowed another batch, which will go in when they are big enough. I very seldom rely on one sowing of anything (especially beans), and I like to have some reserves waiting in the wings for occasions like this.

Climbing French bean "Cobra"

Just recently I have been having terrible problems with Blackbirds. They dig up everything in their search for food (currently more urgent than usual, because a pair of them is nesting in my hedge and probably have babies to feed). Little plant seedlings are shown no mercy, and anything unprotected is in grave danger of destruction. Accordingly, I have protected my newly-planted Runner beans with this array of obstacles:-

Down the middle of the bed is an old Army groundsheet, and between the poles I have placed some terracotta tiles.

I'm not expecting this arrangement to provide complete protection, but I hope that it will at least minimise the damage. I've already seen some Blackbirds inspecting it and looking very puzzled (and no doubt indignant!). One additional benefit of the covering with the groundsheet is that it will act as a sort of mulch, reducing water loss from the soil. I must remember to look underneath it frequently though, and dispose of any slugs that decide to hide there.

Here are the Borlotti I planted. They are big healthy plants, so I only put in one per pole. I'll keep the others as spares.

This is a view of where the tub for the Borlotti is sited - in the corner of the garden where the Comfrey and Horseradish are.

Right, so the beans are in! Let's hope we don't get any more frost now until the Autumn.

Foraging again

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Willis) — Fri, 15 May 2020 11:00:00 +0000

Because of the coronavirus pandemic I have not been out foraging for several weeks, but on Wednesday, following the relaxation of some of the Lockdown rules, I ventured out into the woods for a short foray. The urge to find mushrooms is strong in me!

I was not disappointed either. My first find was a patch of Mitrula paludosa, the Bog Beacon.

These little things are not edible, but they are interesting nonetheless. Their favoured habitat is stagnant water or loose mud. I usually find them in flooded ditches.

To give you an idea of their size, here's a photo of one next to a carefully-balanced 20p coin.

I also found this solitary specimen of Leccinum scabrum, the Brown Birch Bolete. May is very early in the year to find any type of Bolete mushroom. They normally start appearing in mid-Summer, so I was surprised to find this one.

The second part of this mushroom's binomial derives from the rough black "scabers" (aka scabs) which cover its stipe (or stem).

This is an edible species, but the one I found was not in particularly good condition, and in any case I find the Brown Birch Bolete a rather unexciting mushroom to eat, so I didn't bring it home. The taste is quite bland and the cap flesh can be quite "sluggy"!

Later in my walk I came across something a lot more exciting - Laetiporus sulphureus - Chicken Of The Woods - for brevity's sake I'll refer to it as COTW.

COTW is highly sought-after in the foraging world, but from my observations not particularly common on NE Hampshire. I have only ever found a good one once before, and that was in August 2018. This week I went back to the exact tree where I had found it on that occasion. There was no sign of it there, but just 50 yards away I found this small specimen growing on the rotten wood of a long-fallen Oak tree.

Of course I would like to have found a bigger one, but as they say "Beggars can't be Choosers", so I cut it and brought it home anyway. I shall remember this place for next year too!

Despite being a small specimen the one I found was definitely big enough to form the basis of a tasty meal. This is what I did with it:-

Initially, I washed it, sliced it into thin strips, and simmered it in water for about 15 minutes. This ensures that the mushroom is fully cooked. As with many wild mushrooms, some people experience an adverse reaction to COTW, and I think it is best to ensure something like this is fully cooked in order to lessen the likelihood of problems. In case you're wondering, parboiling doesn't seem to diminish the flavour.

COTW prior to boiling.

After draining the boiled COTW, the next step was to fry it in oil and butter for about 10 minutes. Some people would add Garlic at this point, but I think that would overpower the taste of the mushroom. Notice how the colour of the mushroom darkens as it cooks.

When the mushroom began to turn crispy at the edges I threw in a handful of chopped herbs from the garden - Thyme, Parsley and Chives.

While the mushrooms had been frying I also been cooking some bacon, asparagus and toast, which I brought together like this:-

Actually the dish included one further element, which I added after that final photo had been taken - a generous dollop of Hollandaise sauce on top of the asparagus!

My opinion of the COTW is strongly positive. While the flavour is not particularly strong, it is very pleasant - almost fruity - and the texture is firm but meaty, very much like cooked real chicken. I'm hoping to find more of this lovely mushroom in the weeks to come.