Soilman's Allotment Blog

Cheers... and tears?

Another outrageous success on the plot this weekend. Two hours of work in gorgeous sunshine. Felt like a foreign country.

I have seeds sprouting everywhere with reckless haste, desperate to make up for lost time. Grim and gloomy April is all but forgotten.

The only disappointment is my overwintering cauliflowers. They look terrific – the pigeons were successfully repelled – but no sign of any heads. Which is bloody peculiar, given that it's now May.

Have I lost the Midas touch with my brassicas!?

Early to sow, early to grow

Nothing more delicious – or more satisfying to grow – than a cauliflower. Raising a good cauli is one of the great challenges of vegetable gardening. If you can manage it, the sheer excitement is life-threatening.

Perhaps I should get out more.

Anyway, to get good early summer cauliflowers it's best to sow indoors now. I'll harden these off and plant out in mid to late March.

The tortoise-like progress of celeriac seedlings astounds me. A month after sowing, they've just grown their first true leaf. How did celeriac survive before it was domesticated?

Its preference for boggy conditions can't be coincidence; it relied on herbivorous dinosaurs drowning in the swamp before they got close enough to scoff it.

Of cabbages and kings

Notice anything odd about this January King cabbage? Something a little incongruous, perhaps?

Clue: Look at the calendar. It's the end of February. And this bugger's only just starting to head.

I could rant and rail. I'm tempted. But the truth is, it's my own fault. I was so convinced we'd get a warm autumn that I sowed these in July. With the lousy weather we had, they didn't have time to head for winter.

Now they'll probably bolt the moment it warms up. With luck I may get small, crappy heads. Instead of January King, it'll be March Stunted Prince.

Winter days: Short and sharp

I just love these icy mornings. It's grim getting up in total darkness, but seeing the first light of dawn on a foggy, frosty day almost makes it worthwhile.

Frosted brassicas are particularly photogenic. The ice forms in little beads, like water on a duck's back.

Mercifully, the shortest day is almost here. My spirits lift the moment the days start to lengthen. In only four weeks, I'll be sowing celeriac – the first seeds of the new gardening season. And by mid February, the alarm clock will go off after dawn.

Hurry up, 2008!

It just takes a smidgen to poison a pigeon

The good news: These winter cauliflowers have grown terrifically well.

The bad news: My total netting solution isn't quite so... total. The bastard pigeons have been sitting directly on the supports and nibbling the upper leaves through the nets.

The damage is only minor. It won't affect the plants seriously. But these flying rats do my head in. I have tried everything – and I mean everything – to keep them off my crops. Nothing is 100% effective.

My latest wheeze is poison. Some French vintners inject 1 in 100 bottles of their prized vintages with strychnine and advertise this with warnings in their cellars to deter burglars.

Is it in keeping with organic standards, do you think, to sacrifice one cauliflower as a deadly meal for these buggers?

No sow, no reap

These are the January King cabbages I'm counting on to give us greens in late autumn. Whether they'll have time to heart is a bit iffy.

Confession: my June-Xmas self-sufficiency is in the balance. Frankly, I blew it. The weather was so vile in June and July that I didn't sow much. Didn't think it would work (Translation: I was a big girl's blouse and didn't want to get soaked).

Now I'm reaping the result. Or rather, I'm not. There's beetroot, spuds and carrots aplenty... but our only green veg is coming out of the freezer. I'm praying for frost so I can attack the parsnips.

Can you die from eating too much root veg, do you reckon?

Preparing for battle

Here are the Walcheren Winter cauliflowers I'm relying on for my spring brassica hit. Calling them cauliflowers is a bit of a con. Really they're heading broccoli, but no less tasty for that.

Note the heavy duty, ultra-tall, anti-pigeon netting. Over-wintering brassicas are a prime target for enemy attack. Defences must be unbreachable. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

This morning felt like the first day of autumn. The air has that heavy, damp, smoky feel. Let's hope it's not a wet one; poor old Blighty will become part of the North Sea.

Gratuitous brassica shot

I know, I know. You've seen it all before. Thing is, I have four excellent reasons for posting this picture:

1. Cauliflowers are gorgeous
2. They're almost over
3. The purple one is enormous
4. These ones match the colour scheme of my blog

Now do you understand?

Psychedelic feast

Great excitement at the plot. These Romanesco cauliflowers are starting to come on stream.

I picked this a bit young. Greedy and impatient, as usual. One look at a Romanesco and I start slavering.

They are quite the most delicious brassica of all. And they're amazing to look at. Stare at this for 10 secs and your eyes boggle.

Game on

It's glut time. Everything's coming at once and I'm loving it.

Even the dismal fennel has picked up. The one in the basket is a runt that I pulled to make room for the better specimens.

The only disappointment is the carrots. I grew Amsterdam Forcing as an early crop, and they're crap. Erratic germination and tiny, tasteless carrots. Should have stuck with Early Nantes, my old favourite.

Warning: more cauliflower pictures. I know I shouldn't. Vainglorious pride is a terrible thing in a middle-aged suburban man.

But you know, they're so utterly gorgeous. And I'm cock-a-hoop.

 

Soilman: Despair "one of the options"

Today's harvest. Looks like it's going to be a grand year for cauliflowers. And the courgettes have pulled themselves together to produce a few fruits.

Which is nice. Shame my onions are so horrendous. Basically I've lost the crop. Will post a picture when I've finished mourning.

Sense of humour report: Am now past denial. Wrestling, instead, with impotent rage. I will find this weather funny, or die trying.

Early to head

This should be a moment of triumph. But as usual this year, it's not all good news.

This is a nice purple cauliflower, but it should have been twice the size. It's a semi-buttonhead; the cauliflower headed prematurely. They do this when their growth has been checked for some reason.

I'm guessing it's the rain and the cold. Everything on my plot stopped growing a fortnight ago. This cauli obviously decided that autumn had come, so it had better flower pretty damn quick.

No sign of heads on any of the others, so I'm hoping this is a one-off.

Standing room only

It's midsummer – you can tell from the weather. So I thought I should post some 'state of the union' pictures of the allotment. Just about every inch is now planted up or sown:

There are some salads at the front, too, but they're still very small. This is the view further back:

Behind the asparagus are the peas and onions:

There's a row of celeriac behind the onions. Leeks will soon replace the First Early spuds. And my winter brassicas will go in the gap left by the onions. Which I'll probably have to harvest soon, because downy mildew is knackering them.

The glut would start any minute... if the sun came out. But I'm beginning to suspect – aren't you? – that we're in for a traditional, old fashioned British summer.

In other words, an utterly shit one.

O reader, peccavi

Grown a bit, haven't they? These cauliflowers are coming on a treat. All the rain we've been having is suiting them. That and the chicken shit I've been watering on.

For every ying, however, there's a yang. Check out my onions:

This is downy mildew, which we got last year too. Left to spread, it either kills the plants or renders them useless for storage. Bad news.

It's serious enough to demand serious action. I've done what I loathe doing, which is spraying with something non-organic – in this case, mancozeb.

How I justify it: This is my most important crop. It makes me almost self-sufficient in onions. Better one spray than losing the whole crop and buying shop onions all year. Onions that are sprayed endlessly with everything. And that come mostly from Spain.

How I really feel about it: Shitty and guilty.

Should have been a fisherman

More nets, huh?

It's true that I'm netting-obsessed. No apologies. Without netting, my allotment's just a pigeon feeding station.

Here's the last lot of brassicas planted out. They're Romanesco broccoli, my favourite vegetable. Barring further disaster, they'll be ready around September. I find them mesmerising to look at; the florets are arranged in a psychedelic fractal pattern that makes your eyes boggle.

Oh, and they taste fantastic.

The way to rusty death

Here's something you don't want to find on the allotment: Garlic rust. The orange pustules on the stems contain millions of spores that will gradually colonise the whole plant.

I have a problem with rust. It comes every year, although weirdly it never affects leeks... which it should, in theory. It's not a terrible drama, though. Provided I catch it early, one spray of Bordeaux mixture usually keeps it in check. Some people use Dithane, but for me that's a step too far into agri-chemical gardening.

Got the cauliflower seedlings out today. Deeply satisfying. I love growing brassicas. Great to eat and a challenge to grow well.

It will be extra challenging (for which read 'impossible') if the weather forecast is accurate. They say it will hit 40C this summer (gulp). Say what you like about global warming. At least we'll die with a tan.

Seedlings

Hard to believe these will one day be edible. They look pretty anaemic now, but leeks are the most valuable of all winter veg. They stand for months and provide valuable fresh greens during the dark days. This is Musselburgh, probably the UK's favourite leek. I love them fried in butter (obviously). Actually, here's the thing: I love everything fried in butter. Probably comes as a shock, I know, but there it is.

Growing some other seedlings, too. These are cauliflowers:

It's a purple variety called Graffiti. Very expensive seeds. I hope they're worth it.