Potatoes and seeds

Each year we hold a Potato Day in the Village - and despite the weather plenty of determined gardeners braved the showers and pot-holed roads to come and select their seed potatoes and other plants and seeds.

Here is my list:

Charlotte, First Early, Waxy - always a favourite on the veggie patch and in the kitchen
Marfona, Second Early, Waxy - One of the most flavoursome of potatoes I know.
Rosabelle, First Early, Waxy - a lovely red potato, very tasty.
Roseval, Second Early, Waxy - recommended by Chris, of Pennard Plants - should be tasty.
Sarpo Mira, Main Crop, Floury - the "insurance" potato - if there's blight - they'll still produce.
Valor, Early Main, Waxy - Another favourite from previous years.

I also couldn't resist some of Pennard Plant's Heritage and Heirloom seeds, including:

Pea, Dwarf Mangetout - Shiraz. It's purple podded (I grew a blue podded one last year, really handy for finding them on the plant.)
Tomato, Small - Father Frost - Dedushka Moroz (sounds like a Winter Olympian)
Tomato, Beefsteak - Abraham Lincoln. A deep red cropper, let's hope it doesn't come a cropper like it's name's sake.
Salad leaves:
Bluebells Oriental Bright and Spicy - a cool weather mix
Wild Herby leaf - a herby cut and come again
Japanese leaf, Oriental Greens, Kyoto leaf mustard, more to cut and come again.

Soggy - but this is getting ridiculous - or is it?

This hasn't exactly been the weather for gardening - unless maybe you have a water garden - and people on the Somerset Levels are still seriously flooded. So, when I went up to the veggie patch yesterday and the day before, I wasn't expecting to be able to do much - expecting the ground to be too wet to work.

The paths between my beds were a pretty horrible, mucky mess, but the soil in the beds was friable and not water-logged. So, out came the last of the Brussels Sprout plants - the sprouts are now all in frozen and also out came the last of the parsnips and celeriac - dug into a small clamp on the empty part of the leek bed.

The two newly released beds then got a bit of a forking over before each received 6 bags of well-rotted horse manure - hopefully a happy home for the potatoes in a few months.

The hardy carrots (though to be fair, with all the rain there has been, they haven't had much frost to endure) are still going well, and the turnips too of course.

Carrots with turnips behind, and behind them shallots and garlic.

Parsnip and celeriac removed from foreground bed,
Brussels sprouts bed, behind, already manured

Last of the parsnips and celeriac into a clamp to store for use (before I covered over with soil) .
The canes are to mark them for digging.

Last of the summer tomatoes

One of the delights of summer, for me, is a plentiful supply of tomatoes so that I can enjoy grilled tomatoes on toast.  Here is my final such meal of the year, consumed a few minutes ago,  made with 3 different varieties, which had been sitting on the kitchen window ledge to ripen. They were delicious; roll on next summer!

Winter Weather in the Veggie Garden

It's often said that there isn't much to do in the garden in winter; however, the veggie garden is still yielding loads of vegetables, and, if they are to be enjoyed for Christmas then, whatever the weather, I just have to go out and get on with it. (Which is all I had to do - apart from clearing a blocked drain in the road. Many others are far less fortunate, having to endure widespread disruption across the UK).

As I took these two pictures, I could barely stand, the wind gusts were so violent, whilst the rain lashed down - we've had the best part of an inch of rain in the last 24 hours.

Leeks, red cabbage, parsnips, carrots and turnips (sprouts too but in another container)

Carrots to the right and rain everywhere else

Soggy Day

It really is a soggy day here in Dorset, though at least as a friend said last night, it will be washing the mud off the lanes.

So, whilst I am here catching up on a few things at the computer, Mrs Soggy is being much more productive, filling the house with the delicious aromas of home baking - Stollen loaf, cherry & almond cake and mince pies!

Soggy day in Dorset - view over flower garden

Delicious country kitchen - Cherry & Almond; mince pies; Stollen loaf (rising).

Seeds

Seeds are at the very heart of gardening, yes we can reproduce plants through division and cuttings, but it is only through seeds that plants maintain healthy genetic variety. (A simple illustration of this is to think of a tree being used as a source for cuttings, being widely distributed, used and grown - all effectively the same plant genetically and therefore all susceptible to the same threats ans diseases in the same way. Contrast this with work in the UK, underway at present, to identify those ash trees which have a natural resistance to the disease now threatening our native ash population).

In my latest news message from Garden Organic, I see that the proposed regulation of seeds within the EU, which had been adjusted and improved, in response to representations, from Garden Organic amongst others, is now being put back on the table (by the EU’s Chief Rapporteur for Agriculture, Sergio Silvestris) in its more restrictive form.

Regulation of seeds for a healthy environment is to be welcomed, yet not if it is to the advantage of large scale seed producers over small businesses and individuals and certainly not if it has the effect of reducing genetic diversity and resilience.
More information from Garden Organic

I am happy and able to buy some commercial F1 seeds, and do not mind paying the price for the research that has made them possible, for example this year's included: CARROT Fly Away F1, COURGETTE Black Forest F1 (Upright), CUCUMBER Bella F1 and TOMATO Ferline F1

From other plants and varieties I have enjoyed I wish to keep back some of the seeds, below are pictures of bean and tomato seeds which will hopefully do well for me again next year.

Black Prince and Cosmonaut Volcov tomato seeds with French and runner beans behind

Who knows what new, exciting or useful varieties might pop up, just through the chance of gardeners and growers keeping back seed.

Great British Garden Revival

What better way to spend a winter's evening than with feet up watching a garden programme on the television (well yes, there are other ways of spending a pleasant hour or so, but for the purposes of this blog, let's stick to gardening and leave aside all thoughts of chocolate cake ...)

I have just watched "Wild Flowers and Front Gardens" - the first of 10 episodes in the series. Normally, as my friends and family will tell you, I only really notice vegetables, however, the one thing no organic gardener can ignore is the inter-connectedness of the natural world, and this programme was a useful reminder to the likes of me. Not that I have paved over my front garden - I haven't got one - rows of cottages often don't - but I will admit to not thinking enough about the plants I could be growing to improve the habitat for wildlife in the garden and hence the diversity of species that may thrive there; no organic grower wishes to preside over a desert of uniformity.

Anyway, don't take my word for it - let the presenters inspire you. In the UK you can probably catch up on BBC iPlayer - not sure about abroad - I'm sure you have your ways!

Wild Flowers and Front Gardens

Meadow in May

The Seasons Advance

According to the calendar, summer has given way to autumn here in England, but we have had some fine days which still feel much like summer, though the forecast is for that to change drastically from Wednesday, with much colder weather on the way.

We have enjoyed good crops of virtually everything on the veggie patch this year, with plenty more to come, lots of leeks, parsnips, carrots, Brussels sprouts, cabbage (red and green), kale, turnip and swede still to enjoy, on top of everything safely in store.

As one crop finishes in a bed, so it makes way for the next, sometimes punctuated by green manure.

For green manure, I generally do a mix of buckwheat, field beans and winter tares, they do a mix of bringing up some deeper nutrients and fixing nitrogen, as well as adding bulk to rot into the soil.

So far I have sown:
BEAN, Broad. Aquadulce Claudia
ONION Hi Keeper F1

I have planted
GARLIC Early Purple Wight (Soft neck)
GARLIC Marco (Soft neck)
GARLIC Thermidrome Home (Hard neck)
GARLIC Elephant Home
GARLIC Elephant
(Home means divided from home grown garlic)

Onion Sets:
ONION Senshyo Yellow
ONION Troy
ONION Red, Electric

SHALLOT Jermor

Carrots and parsnips, with Brussels sprouts filling out well in the background

Left: Red cabbage, broccoli, kale. Centre: green manure chopped down. Right: Leeks

Climbing beans left to mature to seeds for gathering

Onions, seed in foreground, sets behind.

Garlic shooting already, only planted on 29th September

Two Potato Plants

Yesterday I wanted some potatoes to roast (Greek style) to enjoy with green beans cooked with tomatoes. So I went to one of the Toluca rows - they really are the most potatoey-tasting potatoes - and dug up 4 monsters, which I have kept for today's dinner. So, I went to a row of Harlequin, and dug, and dug, and just kept digging and they just kept coming, what a haul from one plant. The picture tells it all, a few giant Toluca, and the rest of the basket all Harlequin, one plant of each dug up.

Harlequin and Toluca potatoes

See how the Toluca have that creasing/indentation, they always seem to do that with mine.

Watch Out For Your Potatoes and Tomatoes

I have just had an email from Blight Watch warning of a Smith Period in my area, and with all this wet, humid weather, it's probably widespread.

There is useful advice about Potato Blight here and Tomato Blight here.