The potatoes have taken over the asylum

On Saturday I answered the door to the delivery I'd been waiting for, my potatoes and onions. I'd expected them to arrive well before Easter but there'd been a delay, so I was impatiently waiting for them to arrive. You're right I could have spent that time productively preparing a space for them on the allotment, but without them actually being here the urgency didn't seem to be there. Plus while I knew what I'd ordered, I had no idea how much space they'd take up. And of course, I already have a list of jobs to do as long as my arm...

Now they're here that urgency has increased and finding a weed-free space on the plot has moved up a little on my to do list. There's still some time though as there's some chitting to be done, and thankfully that's a job that they can get on and do themselves without any intervention. Phew.

Finally my potatoes arrived on Saturday

While I was unpacking my haul, MOH asked why I'd bought seed potatoes instead of using ones from the greengrocers, which is quite a good question. And the short answer is for their success rate, these seeds are more likely to be disease-free and more likely to crop well. Potatoes from the greengrocers (or the supermarket) might grow as just as well, if they sprout (chit), but it's not guaranteed. So it's a game of percentages really.

And this year I seem to be playing a high percentage game as 4kg of seed potatoes is really rather a lot. We eat potatoes, obviously or else we wouldn't be growing them, but as each potato will yield at least several potatoes, we could be eating a lot more than we usually do this year.

I have four varieties:

  • Jazzy, a salad potato which the website says has "enormous yields" - a second early.
  • Pentland Javelin, a waxy new potato which I can expect to grow more slowly than other first earlies according to the website.
  • Sarpo Mira, a late maincrop variety which has pink tinge to the skin and is a good all-rounder.
  • Belle de Fontenay, an old French salad potato from the late 1800s. And there's a lot of these already (they're the small ones in the front of the picture below)
So it was the time to get chitting my seed potatoes

Last year we grew potatoes that you can't buy in the shops and that was the plan again this year. I wasn't expecting quite so many of the Belle de Fontenay as looking back the order says 16-18 tubers. I've easily double that, in fact there's twenty plus in the photo below and I've another eggbox of the mini-barbapapas.

That's a lot of potatoes now, let alone in a few months time...

I'd been saving egg boxes but was woefully short of them, as I found out with these potatoes

Ah well, there was only one thing for it, and that was to get chitting.

the start of it and it wasn't too bad

And that's when it became clear that i) we hadn't eaten enough eggs or saved enough boxes and ii) the potatoes had taken over the asylum, and the conservatory.

And then the full extent of my potato count became clear

Now *all* I need to do is find that weed-free space, but on the plus side potatoes are great soil improvers and we could do with that on the plot. So here's to eating plenty of potatoes later in the year!

Checking in with the allotment

It's been a while since I've shared an allotment update and there's a very good reason for that. It's because I've not been to our allotment, until Sunday, that is. Unbelievably that was our first visit of the year. We should have gone before, but you know how it is, when you put something off, it's easier to keep putting off and that's the cycle we got ourselves into, until the previous weekend when MOH declared we would spend "all weekend next weekend doing the allotment."

And that sounded promising, although in reality it didn't quite work out like that as we spent Saturday at the Ideal Home Show and then on Sunday I didn't manage to persuade MOH out of the house until gone midday. So not quite all weekend, but we did get there. Well after we'd gone to the garden centre to buy some seed compost and some horse manure to help improve the soil.

That was a good call - the horse manure, not the garden centre which was super busy - as little did I realise just how much our plot needed it, but more on that in a moment. I was keen to see how some of the things we had planted had coped on their own. It turns out the honest answer is mixed, and that's a little disconcerting.

Let's start with the celeriac. Above ground it looked, well like celeriac. The bulb hadn't swelled and pushed itself out of the ground though, so I wasn't sure what I'd find beneath ground. 

It looks like celeriac

And I was right to be cautious, as underneath there was a bunch of roots but no vegetable. Not even a tiny one. Not on any of the plants that had survived MOH's trampling, which was disappointing (both things were disappointing, I'm not sure which was more so). Especially as I'm quite partial to eating some celeriac. We'll try again next year I'm sure, and hopefully that horse manure will make a difference.

It's looking less like a celeriac now

Some of the kale had gone to seed, and while it looked pretty, it's not very edible.

flowering kale, pretty but not so edible

The red cabbages, well they've done better. They at least are starting to look like red cabbages, but just look at the weeds. I'm not sure if I should say it's a red cabbage among weeds, or weeds with a red cabbage.

a red cabbage and weeds, or weeds and a red cabbage?

Yes exactly.

All a bit demoralising really. And despair was starting to creep up on me. But I carried on looking around the plot. 

The crab apple tree caught my eye, with the ladybird and the lichen and I quickly remembered a conversation that MOH and I had after the lichen section on a recent Gardener's World programme, featuring lichen (obviously). One of those daft conversations where we talked about liking our lichen, and seeing it here immediately lifted my spirits.  

And yes, I liken my lichen. Especially this lichen, I'm liking it a lot. See I told you it was daft.

do you liken my lichen, the ladybird seems pretty keen on the crab apple tree

And once I saw this photo it made me pleased again, but of course it's not going to help get rid of those weeds...

Or the grass. Every bed we've dug over is once again full of weeds or grass, including around the rhubarb. But on the positive side, it looks like it won't be too long before we'll be eating our rhubarb.

rhubarb on the way

Underneath the crab apple tree the random artichoke which seems so happy in the strangest of places, continues to thrive. I had meant to move it, but I'm too late it seems. We also appear to have lost our other artichoke which was one of the first plants we planted, and without a single artichoke from it. I'll be reading up on how to take cuttings from this one, as it seems happy and maybe I can persuade some of its offspring to move to the other side of the plot.

the artichoke is doing well, and looks like I won't be moving it this year

The weeds and grass are also growing through the lavender plants, which were supposed to be forming an edging. This is what I found the hardest to deal with, these are supposed to grow unaided and ideally unweeded. If we keep having to weed and de-grass every part of our plot, I can't see us making any progress at all.

weeds and grass among the lavender and pretty much everywhere else

That's not defeatist, but probably more realist than I've been about our plot until now. Wondering if it was all worth it only lasted a short while - most likely until I spotted the raspberry canes - and then I was back to coming up with a plan to help us avoid weeding these edging plants repeatedly. And that's quite simply to plant these edging plants through weed membrane. It's probably not usual for an allotment, but hopefully it will help. Obviously it's not something we can do for the whole plot, we'll need another plan for that, but that needs more thought.  Advice most definitely welcome if you've experienced anything similar.

But the sun was shining, and the raspberry canes were doing well. We'd cleared around these as much as we could at the end of last year and for the first time actually remembered to cut the canes, and the pay back is already clear.  So that's something at least.

looks like we might be successful with raspberries this year

Our other smallish success was the handful - or bunch - of cavolo nero that we picked, and will be eating. I'm not sure if that counts as our last crop of the growing year or our first one of this year, but either way it's a win.

a handful of cavolo nero

So much more to do and many more weeds to conquer, but hopefully with a plan, renewed energy and some more zen-like digging we'll make some progress. And maybe this year will be the year I'll get my cut flower bed - I hope so, the flowers would most definitely help!

2016: French gardens, my garden and on the plot

As well as my usual end of year round ups, this year I thought I'd also look back at some gardens I've visited, my own garden and our plot too. I've realised that I enjoy sharing my love of gardens and gardening here on the blog and so I thought I'd acknowledge that with a gallop through the gardens in the Loire from our cycling trip in the summer.  

French gardens

Most of the French gardens we visited had a rather large chateau attached to them too, which were also great to wander around. Our first chateau was Chambord and while the grounds were extensive, and the chateau breathtaking, the gardens not so much. In fairness we arrived just as it reopened after the floods, but thankfully the gardens at Cheverny and Chenonceau made up for it.

And would you believe it but I stumbled upon a garden full of hedges too!

And the good news is I've still got at least a couple more French gardens to share.  I've been rather slow to get on with these, I think because so much has happened since we've been home. But coming up you can expect more hedges, this time from the very famous parterres at Villandry, which was one of the places I designed the whole holiday around. As well as those little hedges, there were plenty more "garden rooms" there, and the chateau, which for me was a side event, exceeded all my expectations. 

The other post I'm excited to share here is our cycle through a French allotment site, which we *may not* have done entirely by mistake <insert innocent face>. I'm also rather a little bit too proud of these photos as many of them I took "on the go" as we cycled around looking for a way out...

A year in my garden

In my garden 2016 will forever be known as the year of the circles. Although at the rate we're going adding the edging that could easily stretch into at least 2018! But it's good to have a project, isn't it?

Obviously there was more going on than just circles; it was also the year of the gardening gloves, and mouldy pears and much, much smaller trees. At least that's a job that won't need repeating this year.  

This year in our garden we'll be making progress with the edging (we will make progress, we will make progress!) and there'll be all the usual maintenance jobs. This year the greenhouse needs a good scrub because it the glass is rapidly becoming green, ahem.  

We'll be aiming to get the black sheeting down and top that with slate so we can finally get rid of the giant bags of skate that have been decorating our garden since 2013. I'll be looking for some low maintenance plants to accompany the little Christmas tree and other plants I keep acquirin, and we'll be getting our garden summer party ready - as this year we'll be having a 110th celebration out there. That's two significant birthdays and a tenth wedding anniversary in case you were wondering.

A year on the plot

We've had a good year on the plot and are still pulling up turnips, and eating our homegrown butternut squash. There's still the promise of some celeriac (fingers crossed), some leeks, although the ones that survived MOH stomping on them are pencil thin - but the small ones are more expensive to buy right? 

And there's all my brassicas too.   

And because I'm a geek a hear I've been keeping a spreadsheet of what we picked and costing that against the price of produce in the shops, it was prompted by MOH questioning if it was worth having an allotment.

Pffft!

The number of years I waited for one, I'm not about to give it up yet! 

And gardens closer to home too

I've also visited plenty of gardens in the UK. I was wowed by my first visit to RHS Hyde Hall in Essex and rekindled my love of roses, which started in the Loire.  It was a gloriously sunny day the day I visited and I was glad I was able to wander around the gardens instead of the long bike ride MOH was doing. 

As well as Hyde Hall I've been to RHS Wisley in October and I haven't shared anywhere near enough photos from there. In October we had a few days in Devon and I clocked up many National Trust property visits, and have shared none of those yet. And of course, in November there was unquestionably my garden highlight, when I got to visit River Cottage HQ. Yes, that was the day I drive to Devon and back  and yes, that was slightly mad!

So quite a lot to look forward too garden-wise in 2017, and that's before my trip to Munich later this month. It is just a flying visit, but I'm pleased to be visiting the STIHL and Viking factory at Kufstein. I will, of course, be sharing what I get up to. 

What's your garden plans for this year?