Chitting Potatoes

The potatoes arrived through the post this week.  I mmediately put them out to chit. I use egg boxes for this. It is said you should place them “rose end uppermost” but I often have trouble working out which is the rose end. So I have put them with what I hope is the rose end up, and will check regularly to see if any are upside down. They need to be in a frost-free place, light, but preferably not in direct sunlight. So I put them on the sill on the windowless side of the conservatory.

I chose varieties with these criteria in mind. Firstly, with the earlier spuds, flavour, rather than yield is all important. Also I like a waxy texture.  With later varieties, I want blight-resistance and high yield.  The varieties I have chosen are as follows:

 (i)  Accord  This is the first time I have tried Accord, which is a first early. It is said to be  very waxy (which I like – who needs to mash new potatoes) and high-yielding.

 (ii) Vivaldi Another new one on me. Vivaldi is a 2nd early and nicknamed “the weight-watcher’s potato” as it has fewer calories than many and has a creamy flesh which doesn’t need butter added to improve the flavour.

(iii) Charlotte  I love the flavour of Charlotte and have grown it in the past as a 2^nd early. This year I want to use it as a salad potato.

(iv) Kifli   Kifli is an early maincrop. I tried it for the first time last year. Even though it is a maincrop, it has a distinctive “new potato” flavour, which we loved. In addition it has some blight resistance. I am using my own once-saved seed.

(v) Sarpo Mira  This is a storage maincrop potato which I have grown for several years now. The flavour is just average, and the shape can be strange, but it has fantastic blight resistance. The first year I grew them, the blight hit the allotments in August and swept through like a bushfire. Everyone around me cut their spuds down as tradition recommends, digging the tubers up a couple of weeks later. They did get a crop, but suffered smaller yields. I cut down half of my Sarpos, and had similar small yields. The rest, however, I left to grow on. It was noticeable that very few of the leaves showed signs of blight. Those that did I simply plucked off and put in the incinerator.  When I dug the spuds up in October, there was a superb crop of large, undamaged potatoes.  I have been saving my own seed of Sarpo Mira but one or two of the spuds from last year’s twice-saved seed showed signs of spraing, a discoloration caused by virus, so I bought fresh this year.

(v) Sarpo Axona  Another storage maincrop. This is the first year I have tried Axona. They reputedly have the same blight resistance as Mira, but a more regular shape.

(vi) Cara  One of the traditional storage varieties, nicknamed “the allotmenteer’s friend, because of its high yields, great taste,  and some blight-resistance.

In theory it is not necessary to chit maincrop potatoes. However, all my varieties are very late, so I think it is a good idea to get them going before putting them into the ground, to give them enough time to produce a decent crop.

What’s happening now?

Potatoes

The beds for next year’s potatoes are still resting under their duvet of manure, covered by a bedspread of black plastic. Peeking underneath I see that the worms have not pulled it all into the soil yet. I may well have to fork the rest in myself.

I would like to be already chitting some potato tubers by now, but they haven’t arrived from my supplier yet, so I will just have to be patient.

I have planted 6 bags of first early potatoes in compost in the greenhouse. (These are from saved seed.) Hopefully these should give the first new spuds of the year sometime in May.

Leeks

The last of the old leeks are hanging on in one bed. I got a far better crop than ever before last year  by planting them after the first early spuds, so I will do that again.  There was a gap at one end of the bed where I sowed some overwintering salad onions in the autumn, and they too are doing well.

The new leeks I sowed last week have come through and I have moved them to the window sill. At the moment however the germination seems to have been patchy. I may well sow another tray in a week or so unless more start showing.

Onions

The autumn-sown onion sets are growing strongly. I hand-weeded between them this week. I am still undecided whether to top dress them with an organic fertilizer. They may well  have enough nutrients from the compost that went in for last year’s potatoes, but I don’t know. Maybe the answer is the top-dress part of the bed and then compare.

The final bed in the allium break is also under black plastic, waiting for the spring-sown onion sets to go in towards the end of March.

Garlic & Shallots

I have one bed shared between garlic and shallots. The garlic, which I planted in the autumn, is growing strongly. However the shallots have been slow to get off the mark. If you remember, I decided to plant shallots at three different times, and compare results. Some fresh bulbs which I bought in the garden centre, went in in the autumn. Some bulbs I had saved from last year’s crop went in the week before Xmas. And the rest of the saved bulbs I planted in modules in the greenhouse last week,a la Monty Don. Well the autumn planted bulbs are just poking through the soil now, but  the Xmas bulbs are not showing yet.

Salad Veg

The last of the forcing chicory was used up a week or so back.  The lettuce that have been growing in the greenhouse and indeed outside has survived well and is starting to come back to life. I will need to transplant  some of them into the brassica bed, interplanting between the cauliflowers (or rather planting them out, leaving gaps for where the caulis are going to go).. 

According to my plan. one bed ought to be down to overwintering salad veg, such a chard, leaf beet, corn salad, land cress, etc. I did sow them in rows between some lettuces, with the intention of planting out the lettuces elsewhere leaving room for the other plants to grow on. Unfortunately, my overenthusiastic wife weeded out everything between the lettuces when I wasn’t looking. Oops! No chard, leaf beet etc this year!

The "All Year Round" lettuce I sowed last month have been transplanted into pots and transferred to the greenhouse staging. Today I sowed some "Webbs wonder" in the propagator to follow on.

Peas

I prepared the pea bed this week. Firstly I  removed the black plastic, then put some boards along the centre of the bed (to walk on), and finally unrolled a fence along the middle of each half.  My intention is to have four sowings of peas, one each in early March, April, May and June. These will each fit along one side of the fences.

The first peas I sowed were Meteor about a week ago. They are a hardy, round-seeded variety, not as sweet as the later wrinkled-seeded peas, but they do come a few weeks earlier.  I soaked the seeds overnight first, as if I were preparing beans for sprouting, then as soon as they started showing, I planted them in modules and put them on the window-sill in my conservatory.

Broad Beans 

The Aquadulce Claudia broad beans I sowed in September are now about a foot tall and looking good.

The field beans sowed in November are also showing 2 or 3 inches above the ground. They look identical to broad beans at this stage - it will be interesting to see how the mature beans differ. If used as a green manure, they should be dug in now to give nutrients back to the soil. But I am intending to use them as dried fuls mesdames instead. There are a few gaps though, where mice or weather have taken their toll. I think I will transplant from one end of the bed into the gaps and then sow some spring onions in the space. Or even use it as a holding bed for the new season’s leeks, once they need transplanting out of their trays.

I will need to sow one final bed with broad beans, a longpod variety, this next week, to provide beans to follow on from the Aquadulce.

Brassicas

The 2 beds destined for early brassicas  are still sleeping under plastic and will receive calabrese, early caulis and early cabbages once the seedlings are ready. This week the seedlings which have been growing on the conservatory window sill, started showing their first true leaves, so I transplanted them into modules and took them to the greenhouse.

Of the overwintering brassicas, the kale is looking good. I have been taking pickings once or twice a week for stir fries, braising and also the smallest leaves are great in salads. 

The brussel sprout bed has been cleared and the last of the sprouts are safely in the freezer. 

Some red cabbage I planted out in the late summer are looking good – I really had no idea what to expect as I bought them as remaindered seedlings from the garden centre when one of my intended crops failed, and just put them out hoping.

There is half a bed of sprouting broccoli that is still biding its time.

Greenhouse staging

When I bought my greenhouse I bought one staging 6 ft long. But nowadays I need more space, so I decided to make my own staging.  I  modelled it on the existing one. I bought some aluminium lengths of right-angled cross-section from B&Q (on Wednesday, so I get my over 60s discount!) and spent a days sawing and drilling and bolting until I had a staging framework ready. Next I need to buy some wood for the cross slats.

Greenhouse crops

The tomatoes, aubergines , chillis and capiscums that I sowed a few weeks ago are generally doing well.  Some of them did cook one day, when i went out and forgot to leave the conservatory door into the house open, and I lost a few, but most survived.  I planted the tomatoes out into pots this week and took them to the greenhouse. The others are growing more slowly and will need a while longer in their seedtrays.

Parsnips & Celeriac

A couple of days ago I sowed parsnips indoors. I used the variety "White Gem"  Parsnips are notoriously slow to germinate, and last year I lost my entire crop underneath weeds. Unfortunately they don't like root disturbance, which makes them fang, and so the story is that they cannot be transplanted. However I am challenging that notion. Instead of pots, I used the cardboard inners of toilet rolls, filled with multipurpose compost, and sowed 3 seed in each. They are now sitting on the window sill.

 I sowed a tray of celeriac this morning and put it into the propagator. This is my first attempt at celeriac, and I understand they are very slow to get going, so I will have to be patient.

Carrots & Beetroot

3 weeks ago I placed some cloches on the ground to warm it up. Tomorrow morning I will sow some early carrots underneath. The varieties I have in mind are Parmex and Zian. Parmex is an early  stump-rooted carrot. Parmex is a bunching carrot.

I sowed some Boltardy beetroot in modules this week, 2 or 3 per module, and put them on the window-sill to germonate. This another idea of Monty Don's, to plant the modules without thinning to get a clump of small beetroot rather than fewer large ones. 

It's only when I read over what I have written that I realize quite what a busy time it has been!

Shallots & Seakale

Shallots

Following Monty Don’s advice in last year’s Gardener’s World, I have sown the last of my shallots in modules and taken them to the greenhouse.  I sowed some in the autumn, some in mid-winter, and the final batch now. All that remains is to watch what happens and judge which approach works best.

Sea Kale

Last week my wife & I prepared a new bed at the Orchard (although with the rumours in mind, with slightly less enthusiasm than normal). Although the ground appeared weedy and overgrown, there was a carpet mulch and inch or so down that I had covered the soil with 3 years ago. (It’s amazing how quickly weeds colonize the carpet when left unattended!) We pulled the carpet back to reveal excellent ssoil, virtually weed-free, decorated only by the odd rodent tunnel.  While turning it over we found a lot of tough nettle roots though. probably still viable, which took some effort to fork up. But apart from that it was in excellent shape and took just an hour or so to prepare.

I forked in som,e compost and planted out 5 seakale angers (interesting word “anger”– sometimes they are called “thongs” which conjours up far more pleasant images.). Although most of the gardening books mention seakale, it is hard to find in the garden centres or catalogues nowadays. I finally tracked down some at Marshalls Seeds.

Apparently it should be blanched and then braised like asparagus. Like asparagus too I have to wait 2 years before tasting. But it should provide something interesting during the spring hunger-gap. We’ll see.

The Future of the Orchard

I heard a scary rumour last week that the allotment site where I have he Orchard has been earmarked for development. There is a plan to build houses on the land!  I looked into it, and discovered that things are at very early stages, but the idea is definitely there. The government has asked local councils and landowners to suggest land for house-building. Our allotment site was suggested. The site is privately owned, and the owner was reportedly “surprised” that the parish council did not support his plans.

So nothing is happening at the moment. Other allotment holders I have spoken to insist that nothing will come of it, but that is just wishful thinking. Put your head in the sand, ostrich–like, and hope the problem will go away.. I am not so sure. The government want land to build houses on, and the owner of the land has put the site forward. Eventually it will happen. Maybe not next year, but I expect within the next five years.

So…..for the time being no more financial investment. (A few days after I ordered a tayberry to put in the fruit cage!)  And I think it would be prudent to make plans for the future either way.

So what can I do? Well, make better use of the existing space at the Allotment, to start with.

• There is a strip along the front of the greenhouse that would do for some strawberries.
• There is room for a 3ft wide bed in front of the chicken run where I could start off a new asparagus bed.
• There is a fairly large area by the shed where I could transplant some bushes. Maybe 6 would fit in there.
•  Maybe I could even steal 18 inches or so from the fence end of some beds for more strawberries and perennials.
•  The strip behind the greenhouse where I grow runner beans would do for some raspberry canes. I can incorporate the runners into my main rotation easily enough, losing some of the beans for drying, which are admittedly not essential. 
•  And there is a triangular shaped area in front of the compost bins where I could grow maybe 5 rhubarbs plants.

How about the 8 fruit trees I planted 15 months ago? There is no room at home – the garden there is tiny (though I have managed to squeeze in a herb bed). However we do own another house, which is rented out to students (the fruits of 7 oppressive years working in Saudi Arabia). The students are always very excited about the large garden when they move in, and then do absolutely nothing throughout the year! So why not fence off the back end of it and use it productively?

Last time I looked the garden was severely overgrown, with several fairly mature trees growing where 25 years ago there were flower beds. If I have all the trees chopped down (My woodburner will be grateful!) and cover the area with carpet, I should, within 2 years, have space to transplant my fruit trees.

It sounds like a plan!

The Magic of Seeds, the Brassica Cage, Planting Shallots & the Greenhouse

Seed Sowings

It’s magical!!  Less than 48 hours after sowing them, the seeds of my cabbage and cauliflower had pushed their way through the surface of the compost into the light. I always get excited when this happens. Childish I know, but it really is Hogwarts stuff.

As soon as they had emerged I opened the vent in the propagator and a couple of days later moved them, uncovered, to my conservatory window-sill. The calabrese and lettuce followed a couple of days later, and then the tomatoes.  The aubergines and sweet pepper are still keeping me waiting though.

Today (26^th Feb) I have sowed a couple of varieties of chilli pepper, “Hercules”, an F1 variety, and “Jalapeno”, well-known from my visits to a local Mexican restaurant.  I also sowed 2 trays of leeks, “Autumn Giant 3 Albana” and “Mammoth Blanch”. (I want to see how large I can grow them!)

Rethinking the Brassica Cage

I have made a start in salvaging what I can from the tangled ruin of my brassica cage.  After two seasons I have reluctantly decided that my full-sized, walk-in cage made from cheap plastic piping is just not working. It is simply not robust enough. Not only did it blow down in the gale, but also, in lighter winds, the joints were blowing apart. The cage has needed constant attention.  Also it is a real pain to move every year from one part of the allotment to another.

So what are the alternatives? It may be possible to root the posts in scaffold poles, hammered into the ground, if I knew where to find them. But still there would be the problem of the joints, and moving it every year. Maybe I need to give up the idea of a movable, walk-in cage and make some individual cages for each bed which can be lifted easily from one bed to another, and propped up along one side for weeding.  I may still be able to salvage some of the existing pipe framework and reuse it. Hopefully a cage 3 ft tall will not blow down in the same way as my 6ft cage did.

Whilst clearing the cage I decided to harvest the remains of my brussel sprouts, several kg worth. The larger ones are destined for the freezer, the smaller ones for immediate use.

The Greenhouse

I have also cleared the remains of the lettuce from one side of the greenhouse and weeded it – the couch grass has already started showing inside, and it’s easy to untangle and pull up when there is nothing else growing.

Wind Damage, Raspberry Bed, Seed Orders and the First Sowings

Wind Damage

Returning from my winter holiday last week I was shocked when I went to the Allotment to take stock. At some point there had been a severe wind, with the result that the brassica cage had been blown down, several of the the plastic mulch sheets had been blown to the back of the site, and a couple of plastic cold frames smashed beyond repair. I think the brassica cage too might be a gonner.

At least the greenhouse and shed were unaffected. And the chicken house and run were unharmed.

Yesterday I paid my first visit of the season to the Orchard. Fortuntely he fruit cage too was undamaged.

The raspberry bed

Now that the severe winter weather has passed, it is warm enough to start work outside. I decided to start with the raspberry bed. I cut down all of last season’s canes, and spent an hour or two weeding by hand. Raspberries are quite shallow-rooting, and I was worried that a hoe might damage the roots.

Ordering seeds

Last week I checked over my seed store and ordered more to fill in the gaps.. I am fortunate enough to have a spare refrigerator in a utility room. Officially we use it for drinks, but it's there  I store onion sets, saved potatoes and seeds. I find they stay in good condition longer in the refrigerator, which means that using a packet of seeds over two or three years is more reliable, Thereby saving money. (Of course, running the refrigerator costs money, so whether I actually gain at the end of it all, I don’t know!)

The company I like to buy my seeds from isTucker’s seeds. They are not the biggest, and their online descriptions of seeds is very basic, but they have one great advantage which endears them to me. Their seeds come in resealable plastic envelopes which again helps them stay in good condition longer.

The First Indoor Sowings

The seeds arrived yesterday, so this morning I have made my first sowings under glass. I use heated propagators and John Innes seed compost. (I’m not sure about that – the compost is much finer than multipurpose, which is good, but is so fine it can get waterlogged, which is bad. I’ll let you know.)

I sowed a small tray each of:

Aubergine – moneymaker

Capiscum – California wonder

Tomato – Sungold, Gardener’s Delight, Alicante, Roma and Country Taste.

And a slightly bigger tray each of:

Calabrese – Agassi

Cauliflower – All Year Round

Cabbage – Greyhound

Lettuce – All the Year Round

Some of these I would have sowed earlier had I been around and been organized enough to order my seeds before Xmas.

What we’re eating now (end November)

[I wrote this blog 10 days ago but then lost it in the bowels of my AppleMac until today. So apologies for the late posting.]

         

Fresh            We have had several wonderful salads from the sugarloaf chicory plants supplemented by some of the outdoor Hilde lettuce plants. We have also had some nice stir-fries from the ruby chard and leaf beet. We have just about finished off the tomatoes that were ripening in a tray in the greenhouse. (The last few have been quite sour and used in cooking.) We have started on the leeks in earnest now. 

We have enjoyed cabbages  this month, both cooked and grated in salads.  We have started on the brussel sprouts, although a couple of the plants are full of blown sprouts, disappointingly. However they taste quite nice when braised or used in stir-fries.

Frozen            Our freezers are bursting with vegetables and fruit. We have three sorts of French beans, runner beans, broad beans, calabrese, cauliflower, parsnips (still surviving from last year), sweet pepper, chilli pepper, tomatoes (for cooking), courgettes and celery. There is still a bag or two of rhubarb, as well as gooseberries, raspberries, redcurrants and blackcurrants, plus some foraged blackberries.

Stored       There are sacks of potatoes in the shed, as well as some carrots and beetroot stored in sand.  There are still a few pumpkins and squashes on the conservatory windowsill, one of which, when growing, decided to set up house in it's pot and now looks like a kind of muppet Tommy Cooper.  In the store cupboard, I have a large jar of salted runner beans (an experiment, as I have never salted beans before), and some pickled eggs, pickled onions and pickled beetroot. Now that I have more time, I have started making jams, and there is a jar of far-too-concentrated redcurrant jelly which I use in gravies.

What’s growing now.           

Alliums            Here the leeks are standing tall, of course. But also the autumn-planted onion sets are showing well. The shoots are 6” tall and looking healthy. Some of the garlic has started showing. There are some overwintering salad onions which I sowed a couple of months ago growing happily at one end of the leek bed. I have been weeding these beds diligently through the autumn. The other two beds I have mulched with plastic.

Brassicas            In the brassica cage the overwintering cauliflower and red cabbage plants are growing strongly.  There are 4 or 5 Savoy cabbages still standing, which have been waiting a long while to be eaten, but fortunately don’t grow that much in these shorter days and have resisted splitting. Also there is a bed each of kale and brussel sprouts  which can be eaten at any time now. Half a bed of sprouting broccoli is growing strongly. In the other half I planted out some lettuce plants, Hildi and Winter Gem. I am not expecting to eat these through the winter, of course, but I am hoping Winter Gem, which is a hardy variety of Little Gem, will survive the winter and come back in the spring to provide early lettuces next year. Hildi is a softer leafed variety which is less hardy and therefore has mostly already been eaten. I have a few of each growing under a cloche, just to see what happens.

Potatoes   This year’s miscellaneous beds will grow next year’s potatoes, and so the beds are all slumbering peacefully under their winter blankets. I have put ten bags of partially rotted manure on each bed, covered with heavy duty plastic (damp-proof course quality) weighed down with bricks. All apart from one where some sugarloaf chicory as well as chard and beet plants are struggling on. In totally the wrong place, of course. We have had a mild autumn hitherto, but as soon as the first severe frost is threatened I will have to pull up whatever is left and store them indoors. Then this last bed too can be manured and covered.

Legumes            Here three beds are resting under plastic. One bed, containing broad beans, has started showing; the plants are already a couple of inches tall. It will be interesting to see how well they survive the winter. The fifth bed contains field beans, which I sowed rather late and have not started showing yet.

Greenhouse            In the greenhouse, there are several rows of lettuces, both Winter Gem and Hilde. I am hoping that the Hilde will provide saladings through till Xmas. I have cloched a few plants inside the greenhouse, to see how much the double-flazing effect helps.The Winter Gem I will not touch until I absolutely need to. If they get cut down by the cold, I expect them to come back in the early spring. On the staging, the ripening tomatoes have just finished, and all that is there are a couple of trays of bean seeds drying. Underneath the staging is a box with forcing chicory plants, being stored in compost. I have noticed that some of them are already starting to shoot, so will need to increase the depth of compost on top.

Hens            This time of year, rather than being one of the jobs I do when I get to the allotment, feeding and watering the hens is the main reason for going down there. The egg production has gradually started climbing since last month, and we’re getting 3 or 4 eggs a day now. Mildred is still annoyingly broody.

I have collected autumn leaves recently for the hens to scratch in – a fresh bin bag full every week or so and they happily scratch away all day. Gradually turning it into compost for me.

After Bonfire night the council turned off the water to the allotments – probably to avoid burst pipes – but it makes it inconvenient for chicken-keepers. I have to remember to take water down there with me so that my ladies have something to drink.