May already

Haven't really been keeping up with the posting, weather and mood have both been bad. Still, here are a few recent pictures. The gazania above came from the local garden centre, a bit of an impulse purchase that has no place in the garden to go really. I will have to pot it up by itself and use it as an accent in some sunny corner.

We went to the garden centre hoping to get globe artichoke plants but at 12€ each that was obviously a non-starter. That 12€ would have bought us about 10 big heads from the supermarket even this early in the season, and they don't do particularly well here, I just like to have them. I'll start some more from seed, probably not until next winter now.



The new apricot tree has set three little fruit. I think they can be left on the tree without stunting it in its first year and it will interesting to see what they're like. The apples are in full flower now, particularly pretty is the Ellison's Orange which is a nicely shaped little tree - I don't think it can be a maiden even though that's what we paid for. Unfortunately massively strong winds over the last two days have broken a small branch from the Victoria plum. I've popped it into a propagator in the hope of rooting it but really there's little chance of it taking. The actual tree will survive but it is very brittle, it was one of the only trees to suffer during transport over here.



A wisteria gifted to us when we got here by Paul's mum. She gave us three and I killed two of them but this is hanging on in and this year the flowers have avoided the slugs. Needs more TLC but I'm pleased so far.



I'm not a big fan of complications in the veg. patch and find most cloche and floating row covers more trouble than they're worth but I wanted to try some tomatoes in the ground and thought some shelter would bring them on more quickly and provide a measure of protection from blight spores. It's an experiment and the cloche is a very cheap one which is barely going to be big enough to take four bush tomatoes although I'd hoped to get six in. Still, we'll see how it does. I'm still hoping to tuck a couple of rock melons in at either end, no idea if that's a suitable companion planting!

In the greenhouse

Late as I am this year with getting seedlings started I've decided that it's better to do things properly, and by that I mean by traditional methods, than do my usual know-it-all shortcuts that so often lead to disaster. As a result the greenhouse is looking almost professional with lots of cell trays filled with freshly pricked out baby plants.

Mostly in the picture are tomato seedlings. This year I'm growing the old favourite Gezahnte Bührer-Keel. Wladecks, Clibran's Victory, two new to me varieties from Victoriana Seeds; Surender's Curry tomato and Harry's Italian and six plants of Tondino di Manduria, sourced from Kokopelli some years ago. I'm hoping to grow these outdoors under a cheap poly cloche-tunnel. Even with that the greenhouse is going to be overloaded again unless I harden my heart and discard some. I grew Clibran's Victory last year I think but treated the plants so badly I don't think I had any fruit at all, so I'm trying again. Although my seed came from the Heritage seed library there's almost no documentation on the web from anyone who's had a photogenic crop. Perhaps this year will make it into a new star.



Telsing from the Facebook group Friends of Vila Vila sent me seeds from her breeding programme, and I started some a few weeks ago. The baby plants aren't very big yet but they look healthy enough and will be about the right size to plant out by the end of May when the weather should be more reliable. The plan is to select the seedlings that are least spiky and painful to harvest but this year I'll be pleased just to achieve fruiting plants.



It seems I put a picture up of the Symphytum asperum every year but I can't resist those scorpioid cymes and the bees love the flowers.

Shallow Grave

In the last couple of years I've become a convert to bean trenching - digging a deep ditch where the beans are to grow and filling the bottom with organic material from grass clippings to vegetable kitchen waste before backfilling the topsoil and planting the beans. It's a good way of providing a well of moisture in high summer, using up compost materials that aren't fully decomposed and improving the soil at depth with little effort.

Even so I think I've gone a bit mad this year. Some of the land enclosed by our new deer proof fence is not of the best quality and has been lying fallow, growing docks and thistles for some time too. As part of the plan to recuperate this abandoned waste back into the productive plot I decided that a long row of beans and peas, with the associated trench, would be a good start. Digging such a trench, in stony compacted soil and twice the length I'd usually consider seemed like such exhausting work I co-opted the tractor in for the hard labour. A back hoe is a fine tool but maybe it's just a little bit over the top for this job.



There was barely enough room for the tractor to swing a cat but the job was done. It's remarkable how long and strong dock roots are when bodily dug out from their full depth. A day's work got the trench dug and filled with fully and half rotted stuff from the heap but now I have to push the topsoil back by hand after rain softened the surface so much that the tractor was doing more harm than good.

Still, I have high hopes for this bean row if all goes to plan and already have baby pea plants, Carlins and Irish Preans, started to be planted out. I've yet to select climbing beans but will certainly have some of the sort I call Corbieres (Riana's) beans and will grow dwarf Starley Road and Hutterite soup beans for winter use.

The splendid weather of the last week or so has gone away today making it a fine time to stay in and work on the computer. Not that I've done all that much outside either, mostly I've been reading Poldark and sunbathing. It's been so hot that the wood anemones and early bluebells are nearly over and I saw a first inflorescence on the elderberry that grows in the old haybarn.



The weeds are growing well too and I've spent a couple of mornings clearing out the perennial herb beds and freeing the blueberries from the ever encroaching mint and brambles. We only have one globe artichoke left and if I can I'll supplement that this year with a few plants from the garden centre as it's much too late to start any from seed now.

When we arrived a couple of weeks ago I started, again very late, tomatoes and various squashes and melons which are now up and will have to be hurried towards maturity. The ulluco, mashua and oca also went in and are just now beginning to shoot. They can grow on for a while before they need to be planted out, just as well, as there are no beds for them. I'm not sure I should even have bothered with the mashua - we don't like to eat them much and I notice many vigorous volunteers coming up where they were last year.

We continue to get harvests from the purple sprouting and perennial cabbages, a few shoots of asparagus and now Good King Henry and rhubarb are available. It's all good, but the work is already getting away from me. Anyone out there like to come over and give me a hand?

Saving yacon over winter and wapato

 It's very hard getting back into this. Asparagus from the garden, just enough for my tea tonight (along with some other things, I'm not wasting away at all). The patch is struggling with weeds as usual and the seed raised plants rather variable. If I trusted myself more I'd invest in a clutch of commercially prepared roots next autumn, it takes too long to bring them up from seed and even for just the two of us we need a lot more plants to make a few good meals each spring. But, I'm not sure it would be economic without a gardener to set to the weeding or a big change in my self discipline.




And so to Yacon. People sometimes have difficulty in overwintering the parts of the plant that form new growth in the spring. I've failed myself but last year I tried two methods and they were both successful. The simplest and easiest thing to do is to lift a plant comparatively early - yacon aren't slow to form tubers like oca or ulluco so you will still get a reasonably harvest from a plant lifted in mid to late October. Clean it up a bit and pot it in spent compost in a pot just big enough. There will still be a bit of green top growth so trim it back to a few inches. Keep the pot very slightly damp at about 10C. Light isn't too important so a garage window or warm shed will probably do, I keep ours in an unheated room in the house but our walls are thick and the temperature doesn't vary much. One plant preserved like this should make several in the spring when divided into growing points and potted up.

Alternatively wait until frost has killed the top growth but don't wait too long. Take up the plants, remove the storage tubers, shake off the dirt and keep the crowns just as they are until the spring. Again, it's the temperature that's important. Too warm and the roots will dry and die but too cold and they die from that instead. In the spring clean away the dead and dry roots and split the crown into growing tips. Pot and keep warm and lightly moist until they sprout. Plant out in the usual way.



A few weeks ago Rhizowen was kind enough to send me some of his seedling wapato tubers. We have newly cleared the quite extensive water works around the house and I was hoping to be able to introduce them straight into the pond and stream margins but the lovely tidy environment has attracted attention of a less welcome sort and the blasted coypu is back, as can be seen from the rather blurry picture above. He (or she) is currently enjoying the watercress and other water plants and a lingering  doubt about liver flukes leaves me fairly content with this but it does mean I dare not introduce the wapato or indeed put the waterlilies back in position after they were moved during the works.

So for the moment they've been potted into holding pots and are living in the baby bath bought for my son just before his birth 33 years ago... how little I could have imagined that then! I've no idea what I'll do when they start to outgrow this nursery bed, it's not like I'll shoot the wretched creature but I'm at a loss how to encourage it to move away.

By the way, if you interested in odd Andean vegetables take a look at the Oca Breeders Guild where crowd sourcing is being used to speed up development of day length neutral oca varieties suitable for cultivation in Europe and North America. 

Just a quickie

I'm not sure I'll ever be able to blog regularly again but here is a picture of some purple sprouting.

And a swallow.

Back in France,  lots to do and talk about but I've forgotten how to ramble on. More later maybe.

Spudulike

Last autumn when I wasn't really paying much attention at all, too depressed, Paul got the seed potato order organised for me.

The one variety we try always to grow is Ambo but in 2014 we weren't able to source any. We grew a row from some saved tubers which seemed healthy and I'm not sure if they were the cause but we had terrible blight last year which I wasn't able to do much about. So I didn't want to risk home saved seed tubers again. The only supplier we could find this year was Tuckers. They are a well established company with a big range and we've used them before but all the packs of seed potatoes are quite large, 2kg minimum which means we now have 18kg of spuds to plant, with carriage costing over £50.

You can buy an awful lot of commodity potatoes for that sort of money. Still, we've managed to secure a good range of our favourites and perhaps I can find a few local peeps who'd like a handful of novelties to try out for next year.

We have this year then:

Maris Piper - rather more conventional than our usual choices but we wanted to see why they've been so popular for so long.

Sarpo Mira - as everyone knows one of the first varieties with excellent blight resistance from the Sárvári Research Trust

Kestrel - a potato I have mixed feelings about. It's good but in some seasons produces rock hard tubers, fine for slug resistance but strangely unappealing in the kitchen. Seems to be better here in France than on the old allotment in Newport Pagnell.

British Queen - the potato we grow for chips. She's lovely but not terribly tough and needs good soil for a big crop.

BF15 - has a following of devoted fans and I've been one for years. Easier to get in France than the UK, I first grew it from tubers from a packet bought for dinner in a supermarket.

Arran Victory - sturdy, late, lovely purple skin and they do well for us.

Ambo - a good general purpose potato that we've grown since our first gardens together. Makes lovely big baking potatoes and nice roasted. Suits the way we grow potatoes.

Epicure - another old favourite. A first early, not quite as fast as some but much better flavoured.

Shetland Black - delicious, great for soups and stews. There's lots of erudite discussion about the 'true' black but these are the commercially accepted sort and I like them very much.

Reviewing the list it's clear that we are keen on high dry matter, floury potatoes and that seems to set us apart from the French. Judging by the supermarket selections, they mostly prefer the sort known as 'waxy' although that's not a very good description in my opinion and should be reserved for salad potatoes like Pink Fir apple and Ratte. Another reason for growing our own.