A Lot Is Happening In The Garden

Lots going on in the garden this week and our kitchen is a veritable hive of activity, preparing, freezing, bottling and pickling our produce.

We have now harvested the potato pods containing the varieties Lady Chrisi and Red Magic, both of which were delicious.  The Lady Chrisi is not unlike the Charlotte, a beautiful firm texture that makes wonderful potato salad whilst the Red Magic is quite floury  and is gorgeous roasted.

The potato pods that we emptied have been re-planted with Christmas varieties of Maris Peer and Charlotte and hopefully we will be eating home grown potatoes until the end of the year.

The Onions, Sturon, have now been lifted and are basking in the sunshine until they have completely dried off. By the way, I would thoroughly recommend the onion bags available from www.nutleyskitchengardens.co.uk. I feel lucky to have discovered these as they really are very inexpensive but the quality is superb.

We have lifted the red onions and shallots which are also drying off and will be stored in the onion bags in the garage.  I feel confident that we will have sufficient to keep us going until next season, in spite of the very slow start we had.

Our freezer is now getting well stocked with runner beans, french beans, swiss chard, spinach and rhubarb and we will enjoy eating these during the winter months.

Beautiful little baby beetroots have been preserved in vinegar and the only difficulty there is resisting the temptation to keep dipping into them.

We still have an absolute mountain of cucumbers from a solitary plant in the greenhouse.  I have been assured that they will last for over two weeks if wrapped tightly in clingfilm before storing in the fridge.  I haven't put this theory to the test yet but fully intend to try it out.  Tomatoes from the greenhouse are picked on a daily basis and are superb.

I have also been assured that courgettes pickle very successfully.  I must say it sounds a little odd to me and I would love to hear from anybody that has tried this.

A Wet Week In The Garden

We have really had more than our fair share of rain this week but in between times we have had a few sunny spells which encouraged some things, particularly weeds, to grow quite strongly.

This week we planted some garlic, which we haven't grown before, and there were two reasons for this.  One, we like garlic and two, we have been told on good authority that it does act as a garden pest repellent.  Time will tell if this statement is accurate.

We also planted some peas (Suttons Kelvedon Wonder) although why we did that I have no idea.  The frozen ones in the shops are excellent and very reasonably priced so is it really worth giving them precious space in the vegetable garden?

Having said that, a really nice thing to do is to sit round the table with the family shelling peas and even the appearance of an  occasional  maggot doesn't detract from our pleasure. We grow our peas between two low trellis's rather than pushing twigs in and this does seem to work quite well.

I also started off yet more potato pods.  I am sure we will end up with far too many but it is such fun growing them by this method that I can't resist the temptation to keep planting more.

We have also sown some more radish and spring onion seed to continue from those planted a few weeks ago. I try very hard to extend the season of some things but it doesn't always work.  The things that I plant early seem to take forever to germinate whereas those I plant later seem to romp away and everything is ready to harvest at the same time.  I guess that is just bad planning.

The flower garden is beginning to look quite pretty and although the miniature daffodils are late putting in an appearance this year, they are well worth the wait.

The Humble Potato

The idea of growing potatoes had never really appealed to me, the digging trenches to plant them in and the harvesting always seemed to be too much like hard work.

However, this year all the garden centres were advertising potato pods, just strong plastic bags to grow them in, and that sounded right up my street.

A little compost in the bottom of the pod, five seed potatoes placed on top and covered by a little more compost. The bag is then topped up at intervals keeping the shoots covered until the pod is full, easy peasy. The stems then reach to about 18" above the top of the pod, die off, and, hey presto, they are ready to harvest.

One word of caution, not being the most patient of gardeners, as soon as the stems had turned yellow, I assumed they were dead and emptied the pod out. Big mistake. There certainly were lots of potatoes which ranged in size to that of a pea up to the size of a grape and the whole pod full was barely enough for one meal. Needless to say every last potato was carefully washed and cooked, yes even the pea size ones, and delicious they were too.

I have subsequently discovered the pods enjoy a weekly feed of "Miraclegrow" or similar plant food to get better results and the temptation to empty the pods too soon must be strongly resisted. I did getter better results from pod number two and that crop did at least get to the size of a plum.

Next year, with patience and a little more loving care, I feel sure I will easily achieve potatoes large enough to be classified as jackets.

As this was my first attempt at potatoes I tried four pods, one of which is still growing. Next season I will have at least eight and will include the variety "Charlotte", surely the best salad potato ever and "Rooster", the most versatile. Apart from those two there is such a selection on the market I shall probably close my eyes and use a pin to select some others. I guess that is as good a way as any to discover which are the best.