Looking to the future with an eye on the past

Which sounds like a physical impossibility but I've been in training for my half marathon so am in peak condition...

Looking around the half (well, quarter) dug plot I see signs of emerging shoots everywhere despite the recent cold snap.  Pink noses of rhubarb are poking through the earth and there are signs that the Purple Sprouting Broccoli did not fail completely - the plants that managed to survive the winter and being eaten by birds and other beasts are bravely hinting at the purple joy to come.  The Autumn sown broad beans also seem to be boldly announcing the fact that spring is on its way.

Looking back over last year's entries I see that this time last year we were suffering from overly warm weather whereas now we are at the mercy of the Beast from the East (cold weather that is coming from Siberia) and snow is predicted for tonight and temperatures of around 0 degrees are predicted to last until Wednesday.

As I hunker down under the duvet and avoid the prospect of a long run, it seems the perfect time to review my best intentions and learnings from last year so I can try to avoid the pitfalls this year.

Starting with the old faithfuls, potatoes.  Last year my potatoes were planted on St Patrick's day (20th March). This year St Patrick's day is 10 days early so I might wait to plant them until Easter which is also early this year (30th March).  I still need to dig trenches (which were dug on 27/2 last year) and LABEL the varieties.

Overall jobs I need to do when I venture into the cold:
Mulch and manure
Plant garlic and onions (February is the last month to do this)
Clear up accumulated rubbish
Tie in raspberries
Weeding of perennials weeds

I have also reworked my planting plan to rotate the potatoes, onions and brassicas into new areas. This is tough when space is limited and some crops (eg onions and potatoes take up a pretty big amount of space)

As part of Lent I have toyed with giving up booze (fail fairly spectacularly at least once a week).  An alternative resolution is to use up all the frozen vegetables in the chest freezer by the time Easter comes. This means various bowls of green mush squatting in the fridge inducing guilt in me.  The trusty layers terrrine of vegetables bound together by egg in a loaf tin has been very useful in using up the old vegetables. 

The cauliflower was used up in the form of a cauliflower cheese (weightwatchers recipe but pimped up a bit with extra cheese - oops).

March is around the corner and then things will start really speeding up - with seed sowing and preparations.

Tasks to to in early March:
Sow broad beans - a little deeper than last year
Remember I had some good Jerusalem Artichoke recipes in March last year
Also try out a salsa verde with J Artichokes which tasted amazing at a restaurant we went to in north London - the sharp zing contrasted well with the earthy sweetness of the artichokes.

Deep breaths....

Review of the year

Well this year is pretty much acknowledged to have been a dreadful year. Bad weather affected most growers and combined with a heavy work schedule and a slightly slap dash confidence in my abilities, 2012 was my annus vebetablus horribilis.

It wasn't all doom and gloom:

• The fruit did well and raspberries and rhubarb were great
• My (bought) butternut squash plant worked well and yielded 5.5 squash (even if I did then let them go a touch mouldy)
• This was the first year I had success with Alliums and the yield was good as they were given an autumn head start
• Mixed success with broad beans - I wonder if I should leave them in longer as I have a harvest around May but then I read about their season being later in summer in cooking magazines so wonder if they are a result of successional sowing rather than a second flush from autumn sown plants.  My experiment for next year I suspect.

On the whole though, my plot under-performed with usual favourites failing me:

• Potato yields were tiny in comparison to previous years
• Tomatoes hardly even had enough fruit and even they didn't turn red before being feasted on by slugs
• Salad leaves never really got started (slugs again) - the only exception was rocket which is pretty much a weed
• Strawberries are probably in need of a move to refresh themselves
• Jerusalem artichokes, like potatoes, had a small harvest. Considering that they are near perennials I don't think moving them will help (and the place they are in is good as they don't over-shadow other plants) but I do think I need to water them more (both more often and just more water)

I did measure harvests (sort of) but the depressingly small amounts may have meant that I gave up in disgust this year.

Harvest festival

This is cheating slightly as the apples that are the main ingredient in this recipe were not grown in my garden but they were given to me by a colleague and it's a great way of using cooking apples. It's even a little healthy I like to think as it has yoghurt in.
Natalia's Apple tray bake cake
1 cup yoghurt
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup flour
2 cooking apples, chopped
1 tsp cinnamon

Mix yoghurt with the bicarb of soda and then all the rest - the dough will look really sticky. Add the apples and add the cinnamon. should have more apples than dough. Pour into a brownie tin and cook for 160 degrees for 30-40 minutes.

The second set of potatoes did OK but I only harvested 3.3kg from the 8 or so seed potatoes. In comparison with last year's haul 2012 has not been a stellar year. I suppose I could have left them in longer but the slugs had already got started on themand the top growth was less than perky looking.

I also harvested 950g of rhubarb which I was going to make apple and rhubarb jam but unfortunately I burnt the jam by leaving it on the heat too long while I was focussing on sterilising the jars. Now I have sterile jars but no jam. Damn.

I have 4 more beetroot which I roasted and will make beetroot houmous with using a Nigella recipe (below but with sesame seeds substituted for cumin which is verboten in our house because it's horrid) though I am also partial to a Beetroot horseradish dip where you combine 250g of beetroot with 2 tbsp of horseradish and 100 ml of creme fraiche or yoghurt and blitz in the processor.
Ingredients

• 400g Chickpeas in tin, drained.
• 2-4 fresh Beetroot, peeled & boiled until soft.
• 2-4 cloves Garlic, crushed or chopped
• Juice of 1 Lemon
• 90ml Olive Oil
• 1 teaspoon fine sesame seeds
• 1/4 Cup Tahini (optional)

Method

1. Place all ingredients into a blender and process till smooth.
2. If it is too thick, gently drizzle a little water into the mixture until just right 

As a final fling the yellow courgettes have done me proud (ish).  I gathered 2.5kg of yellow courgettes including one that got out of control -1.7kg alone.  I'm not sure yet what to do with these monsters (along with a gifted marrow). Thoughts on a postcard please.  Maybe Nigella's courgette and raisin pasta...

The butternut squash look promising and I planted some Charlotte seed potatoes by the Jerusalem artichokes as an experiment. Even if there is no sign of growth I will leave tehm in for an early start next spring. Broad beans were sown in the potato area and deep rooted weeds dug up (mainly). A productive session.

Time to get serious

Written 18 June in a brief dry period.

Up until now I've had the excuse of unrelenting rain to keep me from my allotment duties. Now the deluges have stopped (for now) I need to whip the plot back into shape.

Having been away over the weekend, the best I could do was to dedicate an hour to weeding on my way home from the airport in Monday. The rain has been a blessing before the water ban was lifted but it watered the weeds as much as the vegetable plants. Once the sun cane out there was no stopping the weeds. I still have a way to go until the plot is as tidy as I would like but the worst culprits are out now.

As the garlic seems to have developed rust (at least it looks like it to me) I harvested them and I will use that space for some bought squash and courgette plants (as I am so far behind). A few fancy beetroots won't go amiss either. Maybe a few beans and the 4 tomato plants still languishing in the kitchen. The garlic have been put on the back step to dry and we are well and truly protected from vampire attack - at least from the back garden. I do hope foxes and/ or cats don't feel the need to mark the bulbs. The garlic are a striking purple - really appealing. Not bad for a crop that more or less looked after themselves over the winter.

The broad beans are romping away and I harvested 600g of beans worth which, according to Sarah Raven you should be able to get from 2kg of pods. Delicious boiled and mixed with fried bacon bits, avocado and a citrussy dressing.

Even though they say you shouldn't harvest from rhubarb in June I got an extra harvest from the strongest most established plants. The strawberries are under attack by snails which are the bane of my life (clearly it's a relatively untroubled life at the moment!).

A jubilee cake what I made...

And the rains keep coming

Well where did June go? What a wash out! We have just experienced the wettest June since records began and July hasn't started off much better with warnings of a month's rain falling in a day (which was scheduled for when I went to the open air Hampton Court Flower show but think it's this Sunday judging by what I can see out of the window).

While the water means I save on watering duties (the hosepipe ban was lifted as it seems to be the successful British equivalent of a rain dance) it also is bad news for the allotment. My main two crops seem to be weeds and snails. Not being French or having the inclination to do odd things to clean the snails enough for eating the snails are an unwelcome addition to the plot - eating my strawberries, baby squash and bean plants. Which weren't growing well anyway to be honest even before they were beheaded.

The tomato seedlings are still tiny and the ones I bought in are developing yellow leaves (I assume the nutrients are being washed away). To tackle the snail invasion my colleague has been experimenting with a number of methods - beer (diluted by rain), nematodes (expensive for large area), salt baths (unpleasant in the morning and involves a regular gathering process) and pellets. The jury is still out if there is anything you can really do against this plague of pests.

The weeds, on the other hand, I could have tackled. And I will. As soon as the weather dries out a little (please, please, please). It's important to clear weeds as they are competition for the few plants that are growing.

I could claim that in the spirit of enquiry I have been letting things follow their course but actually I'm just lazy and haven't visited the allotment enough to sort things out as I don't fancy gardening in a flood. All this inattention has taken its toll on the usual star performers. The potatoes were indeed useless - yellowing leaves usually means they are ready with their pot of gold waiting underground but this year the yield was pathetic. I must feed the ground more and try a different planting method. One variety (British Queen) was making much larger (but fewer) potatoes than the salad tubers (Swift) that were on border of getting scab. Avoid next year?

By this time last year I had harvested 12.5kg of potatoes - quite a contrast to the 6.7kg I have sitting in the kitchen. I can only hope a second sowing will have better yields. The potatoes include red and blue (a misguided jubilee idea)  and, until I looked at last year I was worried I had harvested too early especially as Bernie's are still in ground and looking healthy.   Next year...

The broad beans weren't bad (the uncovered ones seemed to have yielded a few more pods to the untrained eye but it's not really experiment conditions and I suspect location (slightly less overshadowed by the grape vines) had more to do with it. A stir fry with bacon and a garlicky houmous type crush was very tasty.

Apart from the star performers, rhubarb, another real success were the raspberries. One cursory visit on a rare dry evening yielded 1kg of the berries - they were so eager to be picked that they were falling off the plants. I haven't even ventured into the centre. The fruit seem to be on old wood. Does that mean summer or autumn fruiting? I guess this is some sort of summer. I'll cut the stems down after fruiting and see if newer stems crop in autumn. With the slightly bruised fruit (a carrier bag is not ideal transport) I made microwave jam. The recipe is on allotment.org.uk and is really easy and reliable (so far).

And they're off!

St Patrick's day saw me down at the plot harvesting the last of the Jerusalem artichokes - 4.88kg of them to be precise. This is where all my recipe books will come in handy I hope.

To start within made a Jerusalem gratin from Sarah Raven's book 'Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook'. I used what looked like a sweet potato but it was white in the middle so have assumed it was a yam. We have a kilo of prosciutto we brought back from Sicily so I was a little more generous with that. It tasted nicer than it looks here, I promise (we started eating before preserving it for posterity!)

I have also been busy on the seed sowing side.
3 types of tomato - black, moneymaker, mixed cherry
Purple sprouting broccoli
Chili

There are also now four large potato tubs on the patio with Charlotte x 2, British Queen x 1 and Ratte in. Plus a mixed lot in the old bean planter.

Last year, the planters were an unexpected success so fingers crossed for this year. The dry weather won't have helped the potatoes and garlic that need lots of water in the early growing stages. Annoyingly, having ignored potatoes most of the year they are the one thing I really want to eat but have no more in store.

The broad beans sowed on 20 February have come through. The experiment is inconclusive. I can see no difference between those exposed to the mild weather and those protected by a cloche.

Mistakes I have probably already made

The growing season hasn't even started properly yet and I have already been making mistakes here there and everywhere.

When trying to spread the manure mulch I knocked the growing tip off the rhubarb - hopefully it will recover but at least I still have many other rhubarb plants scattered around the plot thanks to dividing it up last year (and rescued abandoned bits from the compost heap).

I am also worried that the manure I used was probably too fresh so may burn young plants and roots. Technically I should have let it rot down for 6 months but I wanted to mulch before the weeds started coming and wanted to feed the ground ahead of planting (which will have to take place the weekend of Mother's Day as travel and work will stop any earlier activity on the allotment.

The only planting I did was to sow broad bean seeds (aqua dulce) but I wonder if I didn't plant the seeds deep enough. The RHS magazine 'The Garden' suggests 5cm. I don't think my hoe-created trenches were that deep and I certainly didn't dig in any manure. Oops. Along with the other planned sowing indoors maybe I will sow some extra bean seeds in case this lot fail to take root (they are popular with mice apparently).

Finally I harvested tiny sprigs of broccoli in the raised bed in the garden but I'm now wondering if they weren't the beginning of a Purple Sprouting Broccoli harvest I have cut off in its prime. Left a few on just in case.

Looking for signs of life in mid February

A quick dash to the plot on Saturday was worthwhile if only to remind me what it looked like.

It is a constant source of hope and delight to see plants emerging despite all signs to the contrary.The rhubarb is an ealy star and is gradually emerging. Raspberry canes are developing buds (some even have tiny leaves). Onions etc are mainly just sitting there and need a good hoe.

I cleared the obvious perennial weeds eg dandelion. Apparently you can grind dandelion roots down to a sort of coffee and eat the forced young leaves but I gave it a miss. In the mists of my memory this plant is called pisse en lit in French - which I can only assume refers to diuretic properties. Not appealing. I also cut down a small patch of raspberries as an experiment to work out if they are autumn or summer fruiting. I suspect the majority are summer fruiting (while the ones in my garden are definitely Autumn fruiting).

Summer-fruiting raspberries

• Cut back fruited canes to ground level after harvesting; do not leave old stubs
• Select the strongest young canes, around six to eight per plant, and tie them in 8-10cm (3-4in) apart along the wire supports
• Remove the remaining young stems to ground level

Autumn-fruiting raspberries  - Cut back all the canes to ground level in February. Reduce the number of canes slightly in summer if they are very overcrowded.

Finally I sowed broad beans in a hurry in two patches - fingers crossed as the seeds looked a little withered and are close to their best before date. In another experiment I have (almost) covered one row after watering with a long cloche to see if that speeds up germination. One neighbour has proper little plants on show - maybe they have a greenhouse at home. The garden green eyed monster strikes again.

Drawing inspiration from the RHS Autumn shows

I went to the annual RHS Autumn show - what a great deal.  Free to member and £3 for non-members and slap bang in the middle of town - it gives you a wealth of inspiration and the chance to buy plants (always welcome!).

Among the displays there were some stunning giant vegetables on show - what an amazing amount of work must be involved. I also picked up a couple of recipes from the Vegetable Society. These include a recipe for Runner Bean Chutney (cue a trip to the freezer) and buttered shallots which I am looking forward to trying.



On my list of lovely new buys I got Elephant Garlic and two sorts of garlic to be planted (along with the garlic I bought in France).

I also have a bag of onion sets in three varieties (white, yellow and red).  The sets are mini onions that grow up to be big onions. I will be planting them 20cm apart and covering them to keep the mice and birds away as apparently they like to pull them up.

Amazing size vegetables on show - what an amazing amount of work must be involved
TO add to the onion field I seem to be building up I got shallots sets and an everlasting onion. I wish I had also got Egyptian wandering onions which apparently 'walk' by bending over and rerooting and meandering across the plot.

I have replaced the summer bedding in the steps planters with hardy herbs - pineapple sage, cat mint, thyme and bergamot.

Also on the list of things to do is to sow broad beans 'Aquadulce'.

Less than legendary legumes

The legumes family includes broad, French and runner beans, mangetout and peas and asparagus peas.

I have discovered I like broad beans and these are the earliest to harvest. Their one drawback is that you seem to need a lot of plants to get a substantial crop. They also suffer badly from blackfly which is a bit gross. I definitely plan to sow some in November to get a great harvest early next year as the Hungry Gap hits. If you pick them young enough you don't have to faff about with taking the inner membrane off.

Peas are definitely off the cards next year after yet another lacklustre performance. The purple flowering mangetout will be repeated (if I remember to save the seed) if only for their lovely flowers. Asparagus peas were something of a novelty and grew well but were rarely eaten as they taste of neither asparagus or peas. Not convinced.

Runner beans are just now coming into their own and even though I only have 6 plants they provide more than enough for two without us suffering overload.  They are nice lightly boiled and served with red pesto.

The dwarf french beans are slow taking off but should be OK and I frankly have not idea what to do with the Borlotti beans which looks pretty but I think I have to dry and then cook later (why bother? Canned beans are great).

Whatever variety you grow, once the plants have stopped cropping, cut them down but leave roots in ground so they can give back nitrogen to the soil.

An update from before the rains

1st June (excuse the mixed timeline but I also updated this on the 16th)

The Maris pipers are flowering but are they ready? They are a main crop after all. (I harvested 940g of pentland javelin on the 12th and made salmon and potato salad - yum) I think I'll leave them till I need the space and the other varieties have been harvested.

The peas are nice and fat as are the broad beans. I am always disappointed by the yield of peas once you shell them. The beans on the other hand a great and filling and mashed with some spring onion on sliced ciabatta rubbed with garlic made a delicious pre meal snack. A fortnight later and mangetout are the stars.

I am so enamoured of the beans and mangetout that I will try a second sowing at the weekend. When clearing the old plants I will leave the nitrogen fixing roots in the soil. I will also plan to sow more beans this autumn.

A couple of plants are bolting and going to seed - sorrel and chard. I've pulled up the chard and resown and keep snipping the sorrel spears off.

I am lucky enough to have a surfeit of strawberries way ahead of my birthday. I harvested even the slightly soft ones and lightly boiled them down with sweetener into a sort of jus. Then you can make a pretty healthy pudding. Cut sponge fingers in half line bottom of a medium bowl, pour over half the jus, add more sponge, then the last of the jus, cover in natural yoghurt. Leave to let the flavours mix. Light but tasty. A fortnight later and the raspberries are coming into their own but rarely making it back home - they're just too tempting.

Beetroot is doing well and I can see tiny kohl rabi seedlings.

I still have two spare patches. What to do with them? I am considering maybe planting sweetcorn among squash. A bit like native Americans who traditionally relied on Squash, beans and corn for food.

Bean beasts and other pests

My broad beans are under attack from an aphid invasion. I thought I had escaped but no. Even though I have plenty of ants and they are supposed to clear them I have also heard that they farm them and so don't really decimate them as I would want.

In order to control them I had the rather gruesome task of squashing them in their thousands with my fingers and pinching out the tops to remove the soft fleshy growth they love so much. Perhaps I should have planted some nastursiums as a distraction?

Spring forward

Top tip: sow potatoes with plenty of soil on each side to retain water well and make earthing up easy later on.

Last night the clocks went forward and our evenings will be lighter for longer.

We defied the weather gods who had predicted clouds and rain and had another glorious weekend. Even though the plants would welcome some rain I relish this early sunshine as it encourages me to get down to the allotment and sow more crops.

This weekend, in went peas kevlon wonder (as a border where the sunflowers were - trouble for later?) and beetroot boltardy - which I persist in despite it not being popular at home as beetroot is amazingly healthy and also trendy in the food world. I also sowed broccoli raab 60 days which I believe is a true broccoli not a calabrese and as the name suggests is fast growing so I fully expect a crop at the end of may. I sowed both the beetroot and broccoli side by side in blocks on land where potatoes used to grow as you should avoid planting brassicas in the same place two years in a row. Oh and I also sowed some salsify next to the shallots - an experiment as they are supposed to have a subtle oyster-like taste. Let's see.

Looking at Bernie's plot, I was mightily impressed by the beautifully piled up mounds of earth where he has planted his potatoes. Slightly concerned though as my potato section is flat as a pancake. Wonder if, once the tops come through I can fake it by adding compost on top?

One hopeful shallot is already peeking through and the broad beans are looking lovely though very immature compared to a neighbour's autumn sown ones.

Seven degrees and sowing

They say that 7 degrees are when things start to germinate (including weeds sadly) but to me it feels colder than last week. Though dry, the winds are bitter.

The period between February/ March when the last of the winter veg are harvested and may when the spring veg start to crop is called the hungry gap. It's clearly a hungry gap for the birds as they've stripped the leaves off some of my brassica seedlings. I hasten to add I won't miss them and they were refugees from other parts of the plot that must have germinated late.

I am preparing a list of what to sow and plant.

In March I want to plant:
Outside - mangetout, potatoes, beetroot, corn salad and winter salad leaves.
Indoors (end of the month) - tomato, courgette. Squash, extra mange tout and broad beans just in case the ones I plant outside don't do well.

The magazines suggest waiting till the end of the month before sowing the tomatoes and squash to avoid them getting leggy.

To come later: French beans

I will also get the salads from supermarkets and plant out as I find lettuce difficult to germinate

PS the purple sprouting brocolli is still not sprouting much more. Lovely leaves though.

Peas, planning permission and publicity

Top tip: look ahead to early crops in 2011

I am very excited as my plot has not only featured in an article in Eat Me, a funky new food magazine, but also won a photography prize for 'Best Arty Shot' in Kitchen Garden magazine - they liked my bright poles apparently and called it zany.  Apparently I will get a lot of garden goodies - can't wait to see them though a subscription would have been grand too as it's a good magazine for foodies and growers alike.

Now is the time to sow overwintering peas and broad beans.  The experts recommend sowing peas in a gutter. This apparently allows them to develop and get strong before the spring. This means earlier crops and better resistance to blackfly. Broad beans in particular suffer from black fly - in fact it can be so bad thatit can be frowned upon to grow them on the plot.

Meanwhile the shed saga continues. After finding out we needed planning permission to have it in our front garden we took it down. Well, actually we got our neighbour who put it up to take it down again. Despite not wanting have a shed on my plot and this one is really too big I don't want to waste it so the idea was to rebuild it on the allotment. It would take up the space of the compost bins at the moment and I will revert to using tardis ones dotted about the plot - all the easier to reach when weeding.