When does it all begin?

I had a surprise this morning as I strolled around my plot after an absence of a week or so - my garlic has started to come up. Huge sigh of relief as my effort last year produced not a single shoot let alone a bulb; I think I planted them too deep in a part of the plot with a heavy clay soil. Learning from that disaster I choose a bed with a lighter soil and planted the cloves about an inch down from their tips.

If you grow throughout the year then gardening becomes circular and while circles do not have beginnings or ends I feel that the winter solstice for me marks the start of another year. I like the psychological boost and/or spiritual lift that being the other side of the longest night/shortest day brings.

Over the next few weeks I will start gearing up for a new season, my shallot order should arrive soon and the last weekend in January is Potato Day* at Garden Organic where I will buy my seed potatoes.

Although there could be plenty of wintry weather yet to come there is the possibility of a few warm sunny days out in the garden in January and February. These are the months when I like to do most of my digging. I find this is the time when the garden can look the most ordered and I can briefly feel in charge and full of optimism for the approaching Spring. 


*On Saturday 26th Potato Day  is for Garden Organic Members only while Sunday 27th is open to the public  - more details  here

Moving On

The break in my blogging was due to experiencing the worst growing season I have known. I will admit my experience is limited but even so the weather statistics for this year's summer in the UK tell a sorry story. I pretty well gave up on my plot and so did most of my vegetables. It pretty well was a write off leaving me with little to write about.

The only semblance of success came from my runner beans and mangetout although this was the first time I had grown both. Even though I had nothing to judge them against I was pleased and surprised by the crop. It certainly gave me enough of a lift to start clearing the beds in September.

Looking for some inspiration and advice I watched this video by Alys Fowler on Winter Gardening and discovered "Hard-necked garlic" that although it has a shorter storage life than "soft-necked" is regarded as being superior for cooking. Alys explains more starting a 6 mins 20 secs in should you want to skip the rest.


So I ordered some "Lautrec Wight" garlic described as the king of garlic for the kitchen that I will be planting out in the next week. This will mark the start of a new gardening year for me with my fingers crossed that next year's weather will be better.
  

Imperial Horseradish

Although Horseradish was cultivated in antiquity by the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans there is no certainty when it was introduced into Britain. Recently I was told it was brought here by the Romans and was lead on a foraging trip along an old Roman road. The Fosse Way ran from Exeter to Lincoln, a distance of 182 miles and in my county of Warwickshire its route is now followed by the B4455. According to my guide the Romans planted it alongside their roads and it still grows there in abundance today. I can certainly imagine some poor cold Roman legionnaire using its heat to cheer himself up.

After quite a bit of research on Google I am none the wiser whether this is fact or fiction. I prefer to believe it and now view my transplanted roots as a direct descendant of those Roman plantings and thus, Imperial Horseradish.

Time for Plan B?

The dismal weather that made April a wash out has continued well into May forcing a revision of my plans for my vegetable plot. 

The location of the plot seems almost ideal placed besides an old barn and bordered by two walls with the opening facing south. However appearances can be deceptive and judging from the amount of broken tiles and masonry in the soil it was mainly used as a rubbish tip. Part of the reason for this is the soil is naturally stony and in parts thick clay.

I started this year with two beds fully cleared and planned to clear two more this Spring. With four beds I could then start a crop rotation system and start on improving the soil. Although I have dug the two beds over and raked out some of the debris and larger stones the soil has been too wet to sieve. The temptation is to simply plant them with non-root vegetables and wait until next year. The other option is to take a longer view and concentrate less on growing and more on working on improving my plot.

It will be the weather over the next few weeks that will make the decision for me. If it does not improve and I am faced with a short growing season my efforts will turn towards to improving the soil and to finalise a layout for the plot.

It all started so well

There are two main factors that govern the time I spend gardening, the first is the balance between my work and spare time, it is a bit of a juggling act in busy periods but usually I will make time get out to enjoy a bit of gardening. The second is the weather although again with a bit of schedule shifting I usually manage to keep reasonably on top of keeping up with my gardening.


This year's Spring seemed slow coming or was that just me being impatient? Once into March there was a wonderful period of sunny warm days, perfect weather to tidy the beds with winter crops and prepare the others for planting out and sowing.

With rows of shallots planted out and shooting (photo above) and the broccoli in the winter bed coming into flower (photo below) the plot was beginning to take shape.

Little did I know as I bathed in the warmth of Spring sunshine and the satisfaction of being up to date with my gardening schedule that it was all going to change.


As the whole country seems to have endured a cold wet April I will not harp on about it. I am surely not the only one who is now having to amend their garden schedules. Besides which as I walked around my plot this morning I saw that some of rows of seeds I did manage to sow are now starting to come up. With May starting next week my fingers are firmly crossed we will have a change in the weather and hopefully after a few intensive days of catching up I will back on schedule.


During the wonderful weather in March I made a short video at Ryton Gardens, home of Garden Organic. It is only a partial glimpse of the gardens set to music, hopefully it will be part of a series filmed during the Spring and Summer.

Desert Island Vegetables 8

In the UK there is a long-running radio show where a guest chooses eight records/compact discs to take with them to an imaginary desert island. I have adapted this idea and in seven previous posts have chosen vegetables to take with me on a desert island. This is my eighth and final choice as I decide from all the possible vegetables left which one to take.

To aid me in this difficult decision I have consulted my copy of “Amaranth to Zucchini” by Elizabeth Schneider. This is an American book that is packed full of interesting information on 350 different vegetables together with various recipes and tips to cook them. In the end though my choice is not in the book because of the difficulty in deciding what is a vegetable or a fruit. So while various fungi are listed in the book, sweet peppers are not.

As with my previous choice of tomatoes I am going to use the culinary definitions of fruits and vegetables that place peppers in the vegetable category; botanically both are fruits.

Although my decision was based purely on culinary reasoning a bit of further research shows there are many health benefits to include peppers in my list. For example they are rich in Vitamin C and contain more (by weight) than citrus fruits.

With my list of eight vegetables for my desert island completed and the arrival of Spring marked by the equinox today my next post will be from my vegetable plot.

Photo Selection - the arrival of Spring

The weather has suddenly warmed and the garden is coming alive. At the moment I divide my time in the garden between gardening and taking photographs. Wonderful to see the cherries and plums start to blossom.

Desert Island Vegetables 7

Growing my own vegetables was stimulated by my love of cooking and the idea of using just picked ingredients. At the time I thought of myself as a pretty good cook but growing my own vegetables has revealed how little I actually knew about my ingredients. I have already mentioned being surprised by how long some vegetables take to grow. Also with many vegetables being on the Supermarket shelves all year round it is difficult to develop a sense of the seasons.

Another big education has been discovering different varieties in vegetables that I previously thought of generically. My next choice of vegetable to take to a fantasy island is a good example of this. Previously I thought of Garlic as being just Garlic although some bulbs seemed purpler. This assumption was reinforced by cookbooks that list garlic as a general ingredient.

Looking into growing my own I discovered that there is much more to garlic than I imagined. Not only can you choose between varieties for autumn or spring planting but also there are two main types, softneck and hardneck. Because softneck garlic stores better it is the one you will almost certainly buy from a Supermarket. Also with China growing 75% of the world’s garlic it could have travelled quite some distance.

Each type taste differently with each having advocates that consider theirs to taste better. To add more choice there is ranges of varieties within each type that together offer over six hundred cultivated garlic varieties worldwide.

If having all these varieties isn’t enough another often under considered fact is that where you grow your vegetables will also influence it’s growth and taste. This influence of geography, geology, climate and horticultural practice is often known by the French word Terrior or sense of place. Although widely used in discussing attributes of vineyards and their wines every plant to some degree responds to it’s environment.

Discovering varieties that thrive in your garden is either a case of trial and error or research – asking nearby growers for their experience is a good way to gain knowledge.

There are many benefits to growing your own vegetables but this widening of my knowledge and appreciation for ingredients I use in my cooking has been a welcome surprise.

Desert Island Vegetables 6

I am choosing eight vegetables to take with me to a fantasy desert island in a similar way to how I select for my home vegetable patch. Firstly by simply going for vegetables that I enjoy eating and secondly keeping an eye of good husbandry especially crop rotation. The basic idea is not to grow the same vegetables in the same ground year on year. The main reason is to prevent a build up of pests and diseases it also has some benefits with soil fertility as well. That said, some vegetables such as rhubarb and asparagus are grown in permanent beds.

A four-year rotation is the traditional ideal but this requires dividing your vegetable garden in four plots to rotate plus a permanent bed. An alternative is to rotate using three beds especially if your garden is too small to realistically divide into four plots.

To keep the four-year rotation simple you use one plot for brassicas (cabbage family), one for legumes (beans & peas), Alliums (onion family) in the third and for the fourth I have a plot for potatoes. It does take a while to work out what bed some vegetables should go in. For example Beetroot goes in the potato bed, lettuce with the onions – I initially regarded both as salad vegetables and grew them in the same bed.

So with crop rotation in mind by next choice of vegetable comes from the legume family but which to go for? On the one hand my favourite bean to eat fresh is the Runner closely followed by French; on the other I do like my baked beans so perhaps Haricot beans would be the better choice. Chickpeas would be a good choice especially for North African and Middle East dishes that might better suit the climate of my island. The fact that they can be dried also gives them versatility – I am assuming I will not have a freezer. Add to this that I have never grown Chickpeas and I like to grow something new every year then they are my sixth choice.

(photo above) Scarlet Emperor Runner beans - "a traditional old favourite" as it says on the packet and my choice for my home veg patch.

Rumours of Spring

Saw my first butterfly of the year this afternoon and the bees were out enjoying the nectar and sunshine.

Desert Island Vegetables 5

My motivation to start growing some of my own vegetables, fruits and herbs was born from my enjoyment of cooking. You will never cook with fresher produce than that brought straight from the garden to the kitchen. This also encourages you to adopt recipes that make the most of each season. It also opened my eyes to how unthinking my cooking was based on having most vegetables available through the year.

It never occurred to me that at certain times of the year I was buying vegetables that had been in storage many months. I just sort of assumed that the vegetables on the supermarket shelves were coming from a field somewhere. In fact I now realise that knowing how to store or cook produce to preserve it is an integral part of ensuring a steady food supply throughout the year. 

Nor did I have any comprehension of how long any vegetable took to grow. Looking at a Brussel Sprout I never imagined that it was planted in June to harvest during the winter months.

So with speed in mind my next choice of vegetable for the fantasy desert island is the Lettuce. It grows relatively quickly; it can be grazed - taking a few leaves at a time and leaving the plant to grow on. I am also assuming that a desert island would have a climate that with succession planting would give a year round crop. Taking some different varieties (at least one red and green type) would help keep things interesting.

Desert Island Vegetables 4

In choosing eight vegetables for a fantasy desert island for some reason I feel the need to choose wisely. Perhaps it is the French proverb, “Be careful what you wish for” that is encourage me to create a list I could live with if I were to become a castaway.

 In examining my likely situation I am fairly certain that apart from collecting shellfish and trying to catch fish I am not going to become neither a hunter nor butcher. Perhaps after a few years without rescue the desire for bacon and sausages might induce me to try hunting a wild boar but it seems a risky venture. I am pretty sure a major worry being a castaway would be injury or illness.

For my fourth choice I will go for the carrot, another vegetable that can be eaten raw, just in case my fire making abilities are not as good as I imagine.

Another practical issue for this fantasy island would be the need to save seeds from my vegetables. This would preclude taking any F1 varieties, as the seeds probably would not come true. Thankfully there are plenty of Heritage varieties that as the name implies have been tried and test over many years. As for the techniques of saving carrot seeds here is a very useful video.

Desert Island Vegetables 3

My third choice of vegetable for my fantasy desert island, the Tomato is botanically classed as a fruit. However as I have yet to see either a Tomato cheesecake or one feature in a fruit salad for practical purposes I am going to regard it as a vegetable.

If I were limited to one variety I would go for a plum type but as I love tomatoes (their original name was Love Apples) I really would like to grow several sorts. Their culinary versatility is impressive; from the delight of eating straight off the vine to making ketchup for my fish and chips – assuming I master the art of fishing on my island.

Desert Island Vegetables 2

There definitely would be potatoes growing in my island garden although choosing what varieties to grow is not an easy question. For when it comes to the potato there are more varieties than Horatio could dream of, or you would imagine from the range offered by supermarkets.


My awakening to the range available to the grower happened a few years back on a visit to Potato Day at Garden Organic. Not only were there over a hundred varieties of seed potatoes on sale but I also encountered my first blue potato. Here is a short video made at this year’s event.

In choosing my varieties I would go for two varieties that I have already had success with, Vivaldi and Salad Blue. I would also take Sarpo and Blue Danube partly because of their resistance to blight but also being deep rooted they can deal with drought well.

Potatoes are a fairly easy vegetable to grow; you can even buy sacks to grow them in if you are short of space. They make quite an attractive plant and have pretty flowers. Digging down to uncover your crop has the excitement of unwrapping a present hoping that you will be pleased with what you discover.

Desert Island Vegetables 1

Here in the UK we have a radio show called "Desert Island Discs" where a celebrity chooses eight pieces of music they would take with them to a dessert Island. So with this in mind I purpose to list my top 8 edible plants that I would grow in any garden whether or not on a desert Island.

My first choice would be Shallots, a vegetable that can be eaten raw and added to a salad or when cooked form the basis of many a fine dish. Added to this they are easy to grow and when you look at the price the supermarkets ask for a small bag it would be plain silly not to grow them.