The No-Dig Allotment

It is accepted wisdom that to grow vegetables successfully you need to dig it over every winter.  THIS IS NOT TRUE! 

Many traditional gardeners will tell you that digging is the foundation of growing successful vegetables, and 9 out of 10 allotmenteers still seem to follow this approach. And it is of course fine if you enjoy digging. But if, like me, you have a bad back, or simply prefer not to dig, there is an alternative.

How I discovered the no-dig method.  I spent several months in hospital a few years ago and one legacy of that is a chronically weak back. When I retired, and a few months later got my first allotment, it was overgrown and neglected, as they usually are.  I started off trying to convert it the traditional way, by digging it over systematically.  It was agony! I only managed a few feet each visit  and  thought I would never get the allotment into production. That first year, my wife and I had cleared 2 beds by many hours of digging, with me turning the soil over (with a straight back), and her on hands and knees removing weeds. and had just about decided that it was unsustainable.

But then I started reading around the subject and found some publications by Bob Flowerdew and Charles Dowding, that suggested an easier way. So without any great confidence that it would work, I covered an area with weed-suppressing mulch, cut holes and used a bulb planter to plant spuds, this without otherwise preparing the soil at all. I was surprised to find that when I came to harvest, there was a healthy crop of spuds under the mulch and most of the weeds had vanished.

So I converted the rest of that allotment without digging, and when I was offered a different one nearer to home a couple of years later, I converted that without any digging as well (much to the bemusement of my neighbours.)

I will talk later about how to convert a neglected allotment.

Arguments against no-dig

Let us look at some of the arguments against the no-dig approach.

A:         “You need to loosen the soil to aid the passage of roots”

This presupposes that you have soil sufficiently hard that roots cannot penetrate

without help.  Soil can become compacted if it is trodden on, especially when

wet, (or on a farm scale driven over by a heavy vehicle.)

The solution on the allotment is not to tread on the soil and risk

compaction.  Traditional vegetable growing in rows results in the paths between the rows being walked upon many times through the growing season, and these temporary paths become compacted.

However the fixed bed system eliminates that. Fixed beds mean fixed paths. If you only walk on the paths and do all cultivation from there, then the soil is never trodden on and remains loose.

And in undisturbed soil which has not had applications of artificial fertilizers, there soon develops a healthy worm population and it is these worms that ensure the soil remains loose as they pull compost and manure into the soil

B:         “You need to dig to incorporate manure or compost._

Well actually you don’t.   The conventional practice has us digging a trench, putting manure at the bottom, and inverting the soil from the next trench on top, and repeating.  “It’s down where the roots need it`’ we are told. `but how long does it take for the roots to get down far enough to reach the manure`? With shallow rooting crops maybe never.

C:         “Turning over the soil helps to bury weeds”.

The answer here is to avoid having weeds in the first place.  Perennial weeds, which are the ones turned over by winted digging, should be removed by hand during the dormant season, and certainly before they have seeded.  Then there is nothing to turn over. Yes  this is harder work. But an initial investnebt which will save time later on

So now let us look at a couple of counter-arguments in favour of the no-dig approach:

There are better things to do in winter!  It may sound flippant, but it is true.  I rarely go to the allotment in winter – I just don’t like cold weather – except for the harvesting of winter vegetables.  While my neighbours dig over their plots, I take a long holiday in a warm country.

It preserves the natural established soil structure. 

In healthy soil there will exist a network of tunnels created by worms which aids the passage of roots. . Digging destroys this natural structure. There is also a network of micro-fungal filaments which help nutrients  get to where they are needed. Digging destroys these too.

It imitates nature

The no-dig approach imitates nature – leaves, manure, and other organic debris settle onto the surface. From there the worms and other soil organisms pull the organic matter into the soil and assist it in decomposing.  It is in this medium that plants naturally take root and thrive.

It is interesting that a few months after covering soil with a layer of compost it has vanished, maybe a bit longer with the nuggets of horse manure, but eventually.  The soil surface is visible again, though the texture has changed slightly with the addition of worm casts.

Charles Dowding’s trials have shown that 2 beds  side by side, one in which the compost is dug in, and one where it is laid on top,  the overall harvest is approximately equal, but the no dig bed is ahead for several months, the dug bed only catching up in the autumn.  There are fewer weeds and slightly less pest damage on the undug bed.

So why to people still dig? 

a)    Tradition       Gardeners tend to be conservative and allotmenteers a more conservative subset of those. (On a few occasions I have asked why gardeners do something in a particular way and have been told, “That’s how my grandfather showed me when I was a nipper” or “Some old chap showed me how to do it years back”) 

One suggestion is that techniques were learned in the village from those who worked at “The Big House”, with a kitchen garden, rarely questioned.  And in the winter digging was simply something to keep the otherwise relatively idle workforce occupied. These practices have since been passed down through the generations.

b)   Regularity     An allotment is a hobby which has the regularity of a job for some people – digging gives them something to do in the winter which is an otherwise quiet time of year.

c)    To loosen soil            We have looked at this, but it bears repetition If you don’t tread on the soil where you grow your crops, the soil will not be compacted and will not need loosening.

So how does no-dig work?

a)    Mark out fixed beds 4’6” to 5’ wide, Your reach will determine how wide the bed can be; you need to be able to reach to the middle of the bed comfortably from the path. The length should not be much more than about 12’, or you will be tempted to cut across. Much longer and you should think about dividing it into 2.

b)   Separate the beds with 12” – 18” paths

As for the width of paths, I made mine slightly too small for my kneeler and regret it –I suggest you buy your kneeler first, then build the paths so that it fits. (The argument that you need to have the paths wide enough for a wheelbarrow does not apply for the paths between beds on an allotment, but it useful if you have a path down the centre of the allotment.) 

Do all gardening from the paths and use a board if  you need to tread on the soil. (I find it handy to kneel on a board when sowing seeds for example.) CD suggests that once a bed has been converted to no dig for a year or 2 the soil structure is robust enough to generally withstand some treading without harm. I don’t risk it.

c)    Remove as many perennial weeds as possible  before starting!

d)   Mulch with compost or manure annually  Feed the soil not the plants! Ideally spread a 1-2” layer of compost or manure on beds every time they are empty.  Once the allotment is established, don’t apply fertilizer.

e)    Covering Paths – grass looks nice but needs mowing. Bare soil is possible, but can be muddy and weeds may root.  I use inverted carpet. I did use to sprinkle sawdust (from preparing my firewood for the woodburner) but found that in a year or 2 it decomposed to compost and provided a growing medium for weeds, so now I don’t. Spreading woodchip over the carpets is good – branches too thick to compost and too thin for the woodburner can be chipped when brown, they will take much longer to decompose than sawdust.

f)     Edging paths I am still uncertain what is best.  If you don’t edge your beds and continually add compost every year, the level of soil will rise slightly and some will inevitable spill onto paths.  On the other hand planks do provide hiding places for pests such as slugs snails, woodlice. Probably not edging has the edge.

g)   Sourcing compost and manure

·      Have some compost bins at the allotment, I think 3 is best – one using, one stewing and one making.  I don’t turn. Turning speeds the process up, but the overall amount of compost is the same, and turning, like digging, is work. 

·      Have compost bins at home. I don’t have a lawn but find that kitchen waste, with a little domestic garden waste and some newspaper works fine.  Urine helps.  Some neighbours might be happy to give you their lawn mowings instead of paying for a brown bin.

·      Import manure   Get cow manure from farms – often you can collect for free or have it delivered for a fee. If you live in town then horse manure from stables – a waste product they are only too keen to get rid of.  Unfortunately my wife is still too car proud to allow me to fetch bags of fresh manure in it so I have to pay. A neighbour at the allotment is happy to collect a pick-up full from stables for £20, about 50 bags, so I use him.

·      Soil conditioner from green waste. In Norfolk a few years ago you could collect this for free if you could show an allotment contract. Then it went up to £10 a ton – my Renault Clio’s boot wasn’t big enough for more that 200kg – when I finally got a vehicle with more muscle I found they had stopped providing it loose altogether and one had to buy bags. Worth looking into where you live though.

·      Keep hens!! Not only do you get the eggs, but you can throw absolutely everything green that comes out of the allotment at their feet, and they will scratch and pack and pee and poo and turn it into wonderful compost for you.  In the winters when there wasn’t much green coming, I found some streets where there were large deciduous trees and raked up the leaves. Then I noticed that the residents were collecting the leaves themselves in bags for the council to collect, so I took them instead and gave the hens a bag or 2 a week.  Leaves by them selves make leaf mold, which is a good soil conditioner but doesn’t have much in the way of nutrients. But when mixed with the manure from the hens, it turns it ito a much richer compost.

Here are some observations I have after using the no-dig approach for several years.

(a)          No dig and Yield. I believe that the overall yield is about the same with fixed bed as with traditional gardening, if anything slightly higher – yes you lose about 20% because of the paths, but you gain because you can plant much closer in beds than you can in rows.

(b)          No-dig and Potatoes! Hitherto this has been my biggest problem with no-dig!  Unfortunately potatoes grow better in soil that has been loosened. So this is where my no-dig practice has fallen down.  Until this year I have put manure on the top in the autumn, but unfortunately my worms are not well-trained enough and it has only been partially absorbed by planting time in spring.  So I lightly forked it in and planted using a bulb planter 18” apart in the beds. I grow on the flat with only slight earthing-up. I have found that the deeper I plant the larger is my crop, but the harder it is to harvest.

However, and this is the point,  I have found that if I don’t thoroughly dig the bed over afterwards I have loads of rogue potatoes growing through the following season’s onion crop. We usually collect an additional basketful during this digging over.  So my allotment has hitherto only been only no dig for the 4 years between potato harvests. 

Incidentally although I do get a few more green spuds using this method, I also break another rule and keep back some of my own potato seeds  for planting the following year. Green potatoes may not be safe to eat (at least the green part isn’t) but they are perfectly good for seeds. I find I can get away with 3 years before needing to buy in fresh seed potatoes.

It is possible to sacrifice yield by having 2 traditional rows in a no dig bed with a board down the middle, earthing up as with traditional growing

This year I have approached my potato beds differently. I am growing more shallowly, placing them under a 6” layer of compost without any forking in, and without using the bulb-planter. I suspect yields will be lower but it is worth a try. I will rummage around in the soil/compost by hand after harvest and see if I can find the missed spuds that way, thereby avoiding the dig-over. We shall see.

(c)           No-dig and Brassicas.  We are told to tread down the soil in which we grow brassicas. What I do is tread down the, say, 6” all  around the plant only. Then when I use a fork to gently lever out the stalk afterwards, this soil is loosened again.

(d)          No-dig and Alliums

We are told that the onion tribe grow best in soil which has been manured for the previous crop. I haven’t tried growing onions in freshly manured soil. What I have done is allocated the potatoes a double ration of manure, and follow then with the onion family  without any more manure.  However this does mean that there is more weeding of annuals in this bed than I would like.

(e)          No-dig and Crop Rotation

One simple fact for someone who is bad at record-keeping like me – using fixed beds makes it it is easier to keep track of what was where last year and where it should go next year

(f)           No-dig and Weeding

As many perennial weeds as possible should be removed at the outset. Any that you miss should be easier to pull up later from the loosened soil in the beds.  Annual weeds should be removed as soon as they are visible. One interesting point is that no-dig means not bringing up long-buried weed seeds from below to germinate. Once the first year’s crop of weeds has been removed, the remaining seeds stay under the soil.

(g)          No-dig and Mulching   I strongly recommend that you mulch your soil whenever it is empty. Ideally the mulch will be compost or manure, but anything – cardboard, black plastic, will prevent weeds from germinating.   I mulch my beds with horse manure, and the number of weeds that germinate is miniscule compared with any unmulched beds. However, if you make your own compost, be sure to remove any seedheads before adding.

(h)          No-dig and Pests

·      Slugs don’t like the rough surface of undug compost.

·      I use a barrier method wherever possible:  nets over brassicas, mesh over carrots, etc

·      I soak, sprout and pot on peas and only plant them out when the seeds are old enough not to interest mice, and the pea sprouts are tall enough not to interest birds. (Swilling in paraffin doesn’t work at my allotment, the mice have been there a long time and are wise to all those tricks – learn them and grandmother mouse’s knee!)

·      Tolerate some loss to pests without panicking – the birds tokk some of my strawberries this year, but there were enough to go around. And if you are careful when you shell peas, you can discard any that are inhabited by the pea moth.

·      I do find more tunnels under the compost than before – presumably mice.

(i)           No dig and disease

·      No walking on soil means less chance of transferring disease on shoes, eg club root. My neighbours in all directions have club-root on their plots. However I’m not very hospitable and don’t invite neighbours into my allotment. This way they don’t bring their club root in.  And as I don't tread on the soil anyway, if I do pick it up on my boots from somewhere, I am not transferring it to the beds.

·      Avoid disease by growing plants in their correct season, so don’t believe the exaggerated claims on some seed packets. I don’t grow, for example, peas in autumn or potatoes for Xmas. It is possible, but the peas inevitably get mildew and the spuds inevitably blight.

·      Tolerate some disease without panicking – eg scab on spuds or mildew on squashes. But serious disease, eg potato blight, needs to be dealt with promptly.

·      Be aware of the possibility of some disease being imported with manure eg white rot on onions

·      Use disease resistant varieties – I grow Sarpo Mira or Sarpo Axona maincrop potatoes – it is an unexceptional floury spud, difficult to get going in the spring, and sometimes weirdly shaped, but it simply shrugs off blight. (Incidentally the slow to sprout tendency means it lasts well into the spring in storage)

·      Practice good garden hygiene. Eg I never have tomato blight in my greenhouse whereas my neighbours frequently do. I subscribe to “blightwatch” they email or text if there are blight conditions in my area. At those times  I wash my hands on the way into the allotment and do the greenhouse business first before touching any other plants.  In this way I avoid bringing spores in on my hands. In those periods I keep my g/h door closed even if it is hot. And I water into pots rather than into the air and onto leaves, which has the risk of spores splashing up onto lower leaves.

   (j)          No dig and watering

·      Close spacing sometimes creates a canopy which means less evaporation

·      High organic matter content means more water is retained in the soil

·      Not watering routinely encourages plants to deep root rather than surface root . I rarely water once plants are established.

(k)             No dig and green manure

·      I don’t do it – it involves digging it in afterwards

·      Anyway I rarely have beds empty for long enough

·      Green manure is used as a way of retaining nutrients . However we can stop any loss of nutrients by mulching instead

  (l)         Exceptions to No-Dig

We must acknowledge that sometimes even no-diggers do need to reach for the fork or spade – when lifting an 18” parsnip for example, or removing old brassica stalks. And there is the problem of potatoes I mentioned above.

So what we are discussing is no routine digging.

Broad Beans

Some thoughts on growing Broad Beans

Broad beans are not my favourite bean - that distinction belongs to the suave and sophisticated French Bean.  But they are always very welcome in late spring, one of the first of the new season's vegetables to arrive.

They follow the late summer tender French or runner beans in my rotation, and precede brassicas.

I always make 2 sowings of broad beans. The first is of a winter-hardy variety between late September and November - the earlier the better, but it depends on when the soil has been vacated by the outgoing crop. The variety Aquadulce Claudia  ticks all the boxes for me - prolific, early and able to withstand the harshest of winters. (Indeed in early December 2011, when we had several days of Arctic conditions going down to -11 degrees, my beans were still under the soil, but my neighbour's beans had already broken through and were an inch or 2 tall. Both crops survived, although his did look a bit yellow and shell-shocked for a while.) Then in mid-March I make a second sowing - this year I used Imperial Green Longpod.

Even though the 2 batches were sown 5 months apart, the spring-sown beans were not that far behind and followed on from the autumn-sown ones, even overlapping by a couple of days.

Even though the books suggest that you can grow broad beans through the summer, I have never had much success with later crops and stick to the early ones nowadays.

I sow the beans 6 inches apart in rows a foot apart, which gives me room to hoe between the rows when the plants are still small. I push them in the soil the length of my thumb, with the black stripe down.

Broad beans are incredibly versatile.  In May, when some of the growing points are first attacked by blackfly, (as they inevitably will be), I pick off all the others and cook them like spinach. in garlic butter. This is always very welcome at a time when greens are scarce and we are still in the throes of the hunger-gap. Then a week or so later, the smallest pods can be picked, cooked and served whole, like a kind of coarse mangetout.  After this I pick and pod as many as possible of the tender beans when they are young, We can never eat them quickly enough - they don't stay tender for long - so I like to freeze the surplus at this stage. Then a bit later still, when the pods are fuller, the beans develop a skin and need to be squeezed out before eating. (This is how you get them in the shops and the only experience most people have of broad beans!) Then finally we are left with the few survivors on the blackening stalks. Some of these I keep for next year's seed, and the rest can be dried - I am working on some recipes for dried broad beans (fuls mesdames) such as ful, felafels, refried beans and beanburgers which seem promising. Versatile indeed.

When the stalks have finally been stripped, I cut them off close to ground level, so the root nodules remain in the soil to yield their nitrogen to the brassicas which follow.

Apart from blackfly there are no problems to speak of - yes the leaves always go brown and blotchy, which must be some disease or other, but as it never seems to affect the harvest I just ignore it. It was pleasing to notice that on each of the shoots attacked by blackfly, there was a ladybird happily munching - a good indication of balance in the garden.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I sowed an extra bed of field beans this year, especially for drying. These were sold as a green manure, rather than food,  crop, but were indistinguishable from broad beans when growing, apart from smaller (though far more numerous) pods. They didn't taste much fresh - maybe I left them too late - but gave me several jars full of dried pulses for the winter. I sowed them in November.

Preserving     Any surplus can be stored by drying or freezing. When I freeze broad beans I blanche them for a minute first, plunge in cold water, then spread out on a tray in the freezer. When I dry them I spread them out on an oven tray and leave them for 12 hours in the oven on the very lowest setting, then store in jars.

Saving Seed    Broad bean seed is easy to save. Traditionally you just leave the beans on the vine until they go black and leathery. However if you are following on quickly with another crop, that is not possible. As I always have brassica seedlings chomping at the bit the occupy the vacated land as soon as possible, I spread the bean pods out on a tray in a sunny windowsill for a couple of weeks, until the pod has dried, then shell them and leave them on the tray for a few weeks more until they are completely dry.

It is worth trying to avoid cross pollination when you are growing more than one variety, otherwise the desired features on one variety might be lost in the next generation.  For me, the most important feature is winter-hardiness in the Aquadulce. Taste, yield  and size of the beans from Aquadulce Claudia and Imperial Green Longpod are not vastly different. The late flowers of Aquadulce were just about showing at the same time as the first  flowers of the Imperial Green Longpod and the field beans, so I decided to take my saved seed from the lowest (i.e. the earliest) pods on the overwintering beans.

 Writing this now I have just realized that the field beans may well have crossed with Imperial Green Longpod. That's annoying!  As I have already gone to the trouble of saving Imperial Green Longpod seed, I will use it next year and keep my eye open for any deterioration in size or taste.

And then came the Blight!

About a week ago,  when the weather was hot and humid and rainy, I noticed some yellow leaves on the spuds. And some green leaves with the tell-tale black circles on. Blight!!

Of my 6 varieties I am growing this year, the earlies (Accord) were just about finished. The second earlies (Vivaldi) and salad potatoes (Charlotte) were going yellow very quickly.  However, one maincrop (Sarpo Mira) was completely untouched, and two (Kifli & Cara) were only slightly affected.

My neighbours immediately cut down all their potato haulms and encouraged me to do the same.

It's a tough one.  The maincrops are only just now flowering, so the potatoes under the ground will still be quite small.  If I cut them down, they won't grow any more anyway.

So this is what I did. I cut down the Accord, Vivaldi and Charlotte. I didn't buy these for their blight resistance, although traditionally Charlotte is meant to have good resistance to tuber blight, if not on the leaves.

I will leave these under the ground for a full 3 weeks. By which time any fungal spores in the ground are meant to be inactive and the tubers safe to lift without infecting them.

The bed of Cara have a few yellowing leaves, which I have carefully picked off.  Traditionally Cara has had strong blight resistance, hence their nickname "The Allotmenteer's Friend". However in recent years new strains of blight have taken up residence in the UK. The latest, called I think Blue 13, is really nasty and I suspect a lot of our potato-resistance databases are out of date nowadays.  So whether my Cara survive or not without me chopping them down waits to be seen.

Kifli and Sarpo Mira are 2 varieties from the Sarvasi family. The story goes that in the Soviet era, this family were told to develop blight-resistant potatoes. When the Soviet Union broke up,  they came to the west with some of their most resistant spuds hidden in suitcases.

They have continued their breeding programme here, and I buy their varieties (through Thpmpson & Morgan).  Sarpo Mira is not the tastiest of spuds, and can be rather strangely shaped, but if everything else dies, at least these should survive. Kifli is a more recent variety - I have read conflicting accounts of its resistance - so now we will find out. Incidentally. for a maincrop, Kifli tastes superb, just like new potatoes.

So I have been picking off the leaves from the Cara and Kifli  and hoping for the best.

Now that the humidity has gone and the temperature is high, (Summer has finally arrived!!) I am hoping that the disease will become inactive.

Incidentally, there is conflicting advice as to what to do with the haulms. Most old sources say they should be burned. But some more recent authorities suggest they can be put on the compost heap. I have decided to compost them, though if I have any infected tubers, I will dispose of them elsewhere. I don't use that compost on the spud beds anyway.

The tomatoes in the greenhouse have been largely unaffected. (The blight-resistant varieties of tomato are far less resilient!) I did find the early stages of blight on a couple of leaves, which I carefully picked off.  After that I  kept the greenhouse door closed until the temperature soared a couple of days ago. When going into the greenhouse I made sure that I did that business before doing anything else on the allotment, to reduce the risk of bringing blight in.

I think I might have have got away with it!

Photo Journal June 29th 2012

What a difference 6 weeks makes in the allotment!  (I did take some pictures 3 weeks ago, but then went away on holiday and forgot to post them. )

 The dwarf french bean bed, with some onions guesting at the back

The ones in the middle of the bed were raised inddors and planted under cloches in mid-May. At the same time I sowed the ones at the front direct.

 This variety is called purple teepee. Lots of flowers now. Hopefully lots of beans later.

 The peas are doing well...

 The onions that Iwere sown in the spring are looking healthy.

 The shallots have done well this year - some of this year's shallots are bigger than many of last year's onions! They are starting to yellow and will soon be lifted.

 This year my onions have been superb - ok a few of them have bolted, but the rest are huge. Whether it is because of all the rain we have had this year, or whether because this year I decided to grow the alliums in well-manured land vacated by the spuds I can't say. Next year I will certainly put them in after the spuds again, and water thoroughly in dry weather.

 The 2 broad bean beds. The 2 white poles show where there ought to be a path - it's a bit of a struggle to get down there though. The autumn-sown broad beans on the left are starting to come to the end of their ife and are yellowing slightly. It's difficult to think, though, that the 2 beds were sown nearly 6 months apart.

 Here is my 5 potato field, looking healthy as anything. I have grown them on the flat, with only minimal earthing up,, each potato about 18 inches from the next in all directions, in 5 beds. I did see one where the leaves were starting to roll, so pulled that one up straight away. It might (or might not) be potato leaf roll virus, but I'm not taking any chances.

 The sweetcorn has gone in where the sprouting broccoli was 6 weeks ago. I started them off in pots and put them out at the beginning of June, and they are growing quickly now.

 The squashes and marrows look widely spaced just now, but in a few weeks I expect there to be a forest. The pots next to the plants are for watering, at least for the first few weeks. By the time the leaves cover the pots I expect them to be able to look after themselves.

 My first courgette of the year.....

 Beetroot and friends

The bed wearing hairnet is full of umbelifers, ie members of the carrot family. This is part of my  battle against the dreaded carrot fly. Unfortunately the net is a bit too tight for the parsnips.....

 Here you can see my summer cauliflower interplanted with lettuce. Unfortunately they were eaten by pigeons 3 weeks ago and are just recovering. The lettuce meanwhile seem to think that the bed belongs to them.......

My first system of trying to keep the birds off didn't work, so I am now using plastic milk cartons over bamboo sticks to support nets which are pegged down.

 

The tomatoes in the greenhouse have started to set fruit, though it will be a few weeks before they are ripe.

Chillies and sweet peppers in the greenhouse border.

 A prize bloom in the middle of all the vegetables.

The summer cabbages.

Recipe: Gado Gado

Uses: virtually any veg either fresh or from store, plus  chillies, garlic, tomatoes

I first came across this dish as street food in Indonesia 25 years ago. It is fully vegetarian, even vegan if you omit the eggs.

Basically it consists of vegetables and rice with a spicy peanut sauce. The important thing is the sauce.

Here is the version I served to couple of friends a few days ago.

The vegetables

You can use anything in season or from store.

 I used:

sprouting broccoli

onions

runner beans

butternut squash

parsnip

bean sprouts

(I used the very last of the spring’s broccoli, some of the first bulb onions from those which had bolted, the last of the salted runner beans, and parsnip and squash from the freezer – typical hungry gap fare! )

The sauce

            1 large onion

            1 tbs chopped garlic

            ½ tbs grated ginger

3 chillies (depending on size and heat of course)

3 or 4 chopped tomatoes

Some oil (preferably peanut)

I tbs tomato puree

2 or 3 tbs soy sauce

I can coconut milk

Same volume vegetable stock

Same volume peanut butter

1 tbs sugar (if the peanut butter is unsweetened)

(I used the green shoulder of bolted onions, 3 dried chillies, and a can of tomatoes, as I had run out of toms from the freezer. I tend to work by volume, so the measures of coconut milk, tomatoes, stock and peanut butter were all about the same. 

Incidentally tomatoes are so easy to freeze. You just throw them into the freezer tray as they come - they are fruit so don't need blanching. When you want to use them, just drop them into a jug of boiling water for about 30 seconds, and the skin defrosts and slides off while the body of the tomato stays frozen!)

The rice

In Indonesia the rice is steamed and cooled into cakes and then broken onto the dish.

I just use steamed rice.

Garnish

Fried tofu and/or sliced hard-boiled egg.

Method

1.     Steam all the veg except the beansprouts

2.     Sweat the onion, garlic, ginger, and chillies in the oil for about 5 minutes.

3.     Add the rest of the ingredients and bring to the boil.

4.     Simmer and stir gently until the peanut butter has melted into the sauce – this can take some time. Leave the sauce to thicken for at least an hour.

To Serve

Mix and pile the veg onto a large serving dish. Sprinkle the bean sprouts on top. Pour over the peanut sauce and garnish with egg or tofu. (If using both, add the tofu to the veg). Serve with the steamed rice.

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My gardening books: The Vegetable & Herb Expert by Dr. D.G.Hessayon

I love and hate this book in equal measure. Yet I still find it is the first book I reach for if I want to check details about a particular vegetable.

The good points            The layout is simply unsurpassable. Each veg has its own page or two, with concise information on everything you need to know. And it is so visual.

There is a pictorial calendar with dates for sowing, planting, and harvesting. There are diagrams  showing planting distances and depths for each veg. There are diagrams of all the pests and diseases which one might encounter.  There is a table containing seed facts, such as germination time and expected life of stored seed. There is a section on soil facts, which will tell you that cauliflower, for example, need well-consolidated soil, while celeriac needs fertile moisture-retentive soil. There is even a tiny paragraph describing how each veg can be used in the kitchen. All this information is concisely presented and  gathered together, in one place, in an easy-to-access way. At the risk of repeating myself, the layout just cannot be beaten.

The bad points                        It is old-fashioned and out-of-date.  Ok, you may argue that most of what you need to know about growing vegetable is ageless.  Nevertheless, it does show its age. One of my main objections is that it is unashamedly non-organic. The first version I owned, (in those days simply “The Vegetable Expert”) was published in the late 80s and told me to sprinkle an insecticidal powder (Bromophos) in seed drills before sowing (which I did, not yet knowing any better). And still, when I looked for guidance about dealing with leek moth last autumn, I was told to spray with a contact insecticide rather than given any less poisonous advice. 

Another objection is that is designed for someone who grows in rows rather than beds.

The revised version, published in 2001, includes a section on herbs and contains other minor adjustments. The reference to Bromophos has been removed, and there is one double page on growing veg in beds. But that information is not integrated into the individual sections, and it is little more than a token.

The vegetables featured are those that were grown 25 years ago. So there is a section on salsify, which no one I know grows, while garlic, which every allotmenteer I know grows in their vegetable garden, is given the same amount of space in the herb section as such obscure entries as feverfew and melilot. (And, incidentally, it doesn’t recognize that to get decent sized bulbs you need frost, and tells you to plant in March.)

Marrows, courgettes, squash  and pumpkins are grouped together and given just a double page, where I think they really deserve 2 or 3 individual sections.

Also the varieties are out-of date. For example, the modern blight-resistant varieties of potato, such as Sarpo Mira, are not mentioned, neither are any supposedly carrot-fly resistant varieties of carrot. Many of the tomato varieties listed are hard to find nowadays, yet a modern favourite as sungold, is not mentioned.

Every time I see it in a bookshop, I check if there is a more recently revised version available, hitherto without success.

Yet for all its faults, it still deserves a place on any gardening bookshelf, simply for its superb concise pictorial layout.

You can’t rush nature!

It was exceptionally hot in the month of April in both 2010 and 2011. And that was when I started putting together an allotment  calendar, to tell me what jobs need doing when.  Unfortunately, the April of 2012 was very cold, followed by several weeks of cold wet weather in early/mid May (nature’s response to our hosepipe ban). 

I was seduced by the warm springs in the last 2 years and put my plants out too early this year, as my calendar dictated.  It was a disaster. My carrots and parsnips refused to come up. My beetroot transplants just sat there doing nothing, miserable and blue.  Brassica seedlings that I took from the conservatory to the greenhouse, were too tender to survive April frosts.  The early cabbage and cauliflower plants that I bought in to replace the casualties turned blue and just sat there in the cold wet soil, sulking.  My neighbour planted out his runner beans mid-May, as he has for the last 2 years, and is now having to re-sow.

There is a huge tree in the middle of the allotment site, and I’m very happy that I don’t have to garden where it’s effect can be felt. Kevin, a long-term allotmenteer on our site, told me something another old boy, long gone, told him about the tree many years ago. It was: “Nothing will start growing until you can see leaves on that old tree.” And he’s absolutely right.

Last year the tree started showing leaves at the end of April. This year, however, I couldn’t see any green on it until late May, a good 3 weeks later.

And suddenly everything started growing! The plants which were miserable and blue one day, started showing fresh green growth the next.  The carrots and parsnips which had been sulking under the soil until now, pushed through energetically.  And spring finally arrived!

So the lesson learned this year is: Be guided by the weather, not by the date! You can’t rush nature!