Oh yes, this blog is about

france, gardening, self sufficiency and plants.



So I won't dive into a rant about the provision of mental health services in the UK, just note in passing that if anything would drive one mad that would be it.

And back to the main event!

The picture above shows the chinese artichokes, the eddoes and some babington leeks. If you can't work out which is which click on the picture and go to the flickr stream which has notes on it.

The babington leeks are older plants lifted from the allotment last autumn. It's taken them a couple of years to develop this leek shaped character but now it's possible to see why they have the name. I would eat these in the interests of research but think I'll take them with us next time we cross the channel and see if they are as attractive to deer as the real thing.

We also have several more thongs of horseradish to plant out and jerusalem artichokes potted in the autumn which have not yet shown themselves.

Tomorrow I must start making lists for packing, starting with the cat and all his paraphernlia. Watch this space for the next thrilling installment!

Raiding the Divine Archive

So who does remember Be Bop Deluxe anyway? One of my erstwhile favourites and completely out of place in this blog entry except...


this picture of onions has been raided from the archives because I can't take any pictures of the seedlings to illustrate this post.

Nearly all the seeds I planted are now up and a few, the basil primarily, have succumbed to damping off fungal infection, but mostly they're doing o.k. I have pricked out the tomatoes and quite a lot of the onions. By the way, there's no real need to start onions in January unless you're hoping for show winners. Some of the household feel that a small onion is an inadequate onion but the cook, that's me mostly, has no problem with the smaller bulbs and they often keep better too. So start your onions in March or plant sets in April. They'll be fine.

As usual the problem facing me is where to put all these burgeoning shreds of new life. Space indoors is extremely limited and the greenhouses are in need of thorough cleaning and sorting out. Suppose I'll just have to get on with it.

The roots planted are also up. I wish I could show you the eddoes which have done incredibly well and the crosnes are also up and have been moved to the greenhouse already. There are also some Babington Leek babies from a head of bulbils I discovered while clearing out a corner and a pot of Seville orange pips from marmalade making are now up and raring to go.

All great stuff. Really. It's just that I don't know when I'm going to France, how I'll get everything there or how to overcome feeling hopeless about it all.

And I still have to get to Ireland and sort out the Irish house sale.