Allotment 29/3/10

One of the things I like about this time of year is the appearance of wild garlic or Ramsons. When the flowers come out you will know about it because of the overwhelming smell of garlic when you wonder through the woods.

 If you don’t like garlic I would ignore this next bit. The leaves of this plant taste fantastic (good mixed with salad leaves or chopped into a risotto) and you can eat the flowers as well (they are also great sprinkled on a salad). For many other recipes you can click here.

 As usual I am quite lucky with living where I live as I have wild garlic growing just up the road from me so I can pick it fresh when I want to. It does have a season so I recommend that if you see some pick it and give it a go.

You may remember that in the last post I made a bit of a fuss about the over complicating of germinating seeds.  It is only fair that I put my money where my mouth is and show you how my seeds are getting on.

Here we have cucumber, melon, courgette, and chillies but you will note that the squash seeds are yet to show,

And here are cabbages, cauliflowers, chard but no celery yet.

Is it going to be cold again because I want to get my potatoes in?

Allotment 15/3/10

One of things that really annoys me is when the perfectly normal things of life are fetishised by the media in order to turn them into “Lifestyle” issues. Food is the most obvious of these things. There are endless shows and articles, many of which descend into nothing more than food porn, about cooking and how hard/easy it is. If you want to see this in action have a look at a menu. Even the Wetherspoons pub next to my house has “Lincolnshire” this and “Organic” that, “Grass feed” this and “Seared” that. Oh for goodness sake, I’ve seen it arrive frozen in the back of a lorry and it is the sort of hot you can only get for either a nuclear reactor or a microwave. You are fooling no one.

The other thing that gets me is people making easy things sound difficult. Again I am looking in the direction of cooking shows; even the ones that claim to be “cooking made easy” still make it sound hard. I make my own bread because it is easy not because it is hard (I’m not Kennedy trying to convince people that we can go to the moon) but you tell people that you make your own bread, damn they are impressed. Why? Because lifestyle programs and Sunday supplement sections tell them it is hard. It’s only got 4 ingredients. Mix it about and leave it for a bit. Make a shape, leave it a bit longer. Put it in a very hot oven and bingo, bread.
Watching the first of the new series of Gardeners World 2 weeks ago and I had this same feeling. They were doing a item on seed planting (which followed a how-to-tell-if-this-plant-is-dead bit which was, “if you cut it and it’s green, it’s fine, if you cut it and it’s brow,n it’s dead. We cut this one and it’s brown.” Dead then? “Well, it might come back later in the year.” What was the point of that then?) Any way back to the seed planting and I’m sure I’ve read that the LHC is less labour intensive than the methods that the presenter went though. It’s no wonder people think that gardening (and by extension, allotment keeping/tending, what’s the term? I like Allotmenteering myself) is hard. He went on about the size of soil particles in seed compost and the surface area of seeds!
A friend of mine was trained by the RHS (makes it sound the SAS, she can be in, prune a Rose, and leave and no one will be any the wiser) and confirms that they take seed planting very seriously, there is a section in the exam on it and they even check the firmness of the compost in the pot, but bet’s be honest, most of us grow the same sorts of things and we treat them in roughly the same way. Shallow trench, sprinkle seeds, cover, water, thin them when they germinate and that’s it. If they don’t germinate, try again or try something else. Well that’s what I do and we feed ourselves through the summer so I must be doing something right.

Allotment 8/3/10

The sun has remained visible so I have continued to get things into the ground. I’ve been removing stones from the soil and adding my own compost. It all looks lovely. The problem is you have nothing to show for all of your work except for some lovely bare soil.
Here for instance are my carrots,



And here are my parsnips,



And today I put my onions.



Yes that is just 3 pictures of soil but it is lovely soil.

The bare-for-a-long-time soil problem is the reason I advise people who are starting out to grow salad crops (Yes, I know that it’s odd that people ask me for advise as I know nothing but they do) because they grow really quickly. I planted my parsnip seeds last week and I will start digging them up some time in October but radishes only take about a month. You don’t get that nothing is happening feeling if you are picking some leaves after about 6 weeks.

There is some life on my patch, here, for instance, is my garlic bed,



I am pretty sure that onions are the easiest things in the world to grow; well they are if you use onions sets (little onions). If you grow your onions from seed then you are just showing off. And if you grow them from seed you saved yourself from last year then you about to be hit in the face with a shovel, smug git (I am aware that I am growing so stuff from seed that I saved last year but this is different. Why? Because I say so, alright.)

I do hope that this lovely weather continues.

Allotment 1/3/10

Quick! The sun is out! Get outside and do stuff!

 As you may have guessed I got to the allotment and, finally, got those seeds in that I wanted to last week. Just to remind you, this is my attempt to grow early salad leaves and radishes under plastic cloches. I think it will work just fine as a few plants that were covered have survived the winter here. Yes I know that my winter wasn’t as bad as yours, I had much less snow, but it was cold so I am happy about the survival. Let’s see if it works.

 That is not all I’ve done today either (I love not working on Mondays) oh no. Off to the allotment shop to get onions sets (because they sell out really fast) and seed potatoes. I also got a little over excited and bought some early peas and some sweet corn seeds (yes I know I am supposed to be using ones that I save last year but I didn’t store them in correctly. I put them in a plastic thingy, so they were mushy when I looked last week, which was less then nice). I popped them in a mini-greenhouse thing as well.

 So now it is not just seed trays in the garden, oh no. On the windowsill of our dining room are 2 egg boxes that contain 3 types of potato that are “chitting”.

Chitting is one of those odd things that we allotment types do but we are not sure why. Basically you pop the seed potatoes somewhere sunny and warm until they start to sprout a bit. The theory is that this gives them a better start in life but there is some debate as to whether this makes the slightest difference. I am agnostic on this point.

  The 3 types of spud that I am going to try and grow are Pink Fir (a salad type), Duke of York (first Early) and Valor (main crop). Last year (and the year before) I tried growing them in bags but that wasn’t super successful so this year they are going in the ground. Let’s see if this works better.

Allotment 22/2/10

Just because it is cold and wet (really wet) doesn’t mean that nothing is happening at the allotment.
Well, when I say the allotment I really mean my kitchen and back garden. I was supposed to go and plant some seeds today but the rain was so hard that I decided against it. The plan involved early carrots and salad things (spring onions, radishes, salad leaves) under my ugly but useful plastic cloches but the weather put pay to that. It’s not that bad really because the ground is pretty much prepared; it just needs some seeds in it.
So a change of plan was called for and that’s how I ended up in my kitchen. I have decided to start that bit of the year that the non-allotmenter in your life dreads. It’s time to break out the seed trays. Soon the whole house and garden will be full of them (if you’re allowed to, I have an understanding Significant Other)
I have a nice collection of those seed trays with plastic tops on a bit like a mini greenhouse so that’s what I’m using.

Seeds out of my lovely seed box, compost from the worm filled bag and we are off. I have planted celery (never grows well), Swiss chard, autumn Cabbage (2 types) and autumn cauliflower.



As far as I can tell most seeds seem to do alright if you put them on the surface of the compost and then sprinkle a little more compost over the top. There are more scientific ways of going about this but I’m not one of those people. If it grows, it grows.



Don’t forget to label, nothing worse than not knowing what has germinated (I’m sure the people of Haiti may disagree but have they ever grown 2 types of beetroot and not known which is which?)



And then lid on and off to the shelf in my garden. Yes it is cold but they should be ok.
If I never mention them again you know they haven’t worked.

Allotment 25/1/10

I have finally made it back to the allotment. There has finally been a break in the not-letting-me-get-to-the-allotment weather. After weeks of frozen soil and snow followed by a lot of rain, today is just grey. It is cold but not cold enough for the soil to be impenetrable to my fork.
It has been about a month since I had last been there so I expected the worst. I expected all my crops to be dead, yet I also thought that the weeds would have managed to have survived the winter and grown spectacularly. I assumed that my plot would be completely over grown with grass and bindweed. Yet again my logic and knowledge of plants let me down.
Because of the fact that it is winter nothing had really grown. Neither the vegetables nor the weeds. Bare earth was still bare earth. Big, very pretty ice crystals all over it, but it was still bare. Oh the joy. I had thought that I was going to have so much work to do.

This was not the only surprise. I had left the cloches over the salad leaves but thought nothing of it. They are summer plants after all so they’ll be dead now. Oh how wrong I was. A quick peak under the plastic presented me with a very pleasing sight. Some had survived. Oh yes, I picked fresh salad leaves in January. The rocket doesn’t look to good but had survived but the other one that I don’t know the name of is doing very well. Hurray for nature I say.

So there wasn’t that much for me to do today except a little light digging and I put some broad beans in, they do pretty well at sorting themselves out. Some parsnips were found as well.
To be honest I wasn’t looking forward to today but in the end it was really rather lovely being the only one there on a Monday morning.

Allotment 4/1/10

Happy New Year to one and all.

Sorry I haven't written anything for a while but what with Christmas and all I haven't really had the time. That and yet another weather moan. During November I complained about the rain quite a lot because it stopped me getting out there.

I did manage to get to the allotment 2 days before Christmas so that I could get some veg for the seasonal meals, however the soil was frozen solid. I could barely get the fork into the ground. Past episodes of Casualty ran though my head as I stood, both feet, on the fork trying to penetrate the earth. Whilst I understand that a parsnip is supposed to taste sweeter after a bit a frost this was ridiculous. I did manage to break the surface of the soil, in the end, and cut fork sized squares out of it. Solid cubes of soil that had no intention of releasing the sweet root inside.

Then followed the bashing of the cuboid lumps with the fork to try and get at the tasty treats. This did not go well. As the parsnips were frozen as well they fractured easily. Oh it all went badly.

A few days ago Significant Other strolled past and the soil was still frozen. For 3 whole weeks it has been solid. This is good in some ways. It kills slugs and snails and general bugs and stuff but it makes it completely impossible to do any work there. It is also good for the annual things such as fruit trees and bushes that need a bit of a rest.

But what have I been doing to pass the time as I can't allotment you may ask? Well apart from eating Christmas cake and mince pies (made my own mincemeat this year which was very tasty) I've really got into bread making.

I have been making my own bread for about 18 months now, just simple loaves, but I have started to get a little more experimental. Please don't see this as showing off, it isn't, bread making is easy. Here is a basic recipe. Don't take it too seriously and have fun, who cares if you mess it up. Oh and don't bother with a bread maker, what a waste of money.

A few weeks ago I made croissants simply because I hadn't done it before and I wanted to see how hard it was. It was a bit hard and quite time consuming.

If you do get really into may I recommend that you try Sourdough breads. Now this is a little more time consuming and a little bit more of a fuss but it is worth it because, as long as your start is ok, it always rises really, really well and is really tasty. Here is recipe that I started with. This is a basic sourdough but you can make all sorts of things with the start. This week I have made a rather tasty sourdough rye bread. It takes a while but the results are worth it and you get a really impressive looking loaf, check this out,



Happy baking.