Growing again: Rat-tailed revelations

WARNING: The following post contains NO scenes of parasitic murder, feline or insect defecation defecation and no eight-legged beasties or mucus of any kind. May contain mild swearing.

Normal service will resume soon.

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I grew lots of nice things last year and didn’t write about most of them. But as they were nice I will be growing them again this year and so will start to tell you about them now. First in line, the rat-tailed radish.

the old peppery pink earth-dweller

Now there’s not much wrong with the ordinary radish. I like its peppery kick and I love the fact that seed can turn to lunch in as little as three weeks. I love the seeds for being happy to do their thing in the gaps in which few other plants would cooperate, and I like forgetting where I’ve put them then finding them again when a flash of fluorescent pink has broken the surface. And despite the slugs’ enthusiasm for almost everything I prepare for them (so rewarding to feed grateful mouths…) radish escape relatively unscathed.

But there is a problem with the old peppery-pink earth dweller. Each radish I munch requires  at least one seed to have been put into the ground a few weeks before.  A reliable supply requires regular sowing, and I am not to be trusted.

That got me thinking: wouldn’t it be great if radish grew on trees?

Or even on a small plant, say 1m high? Then one little seed would gives lots and lots of radish mouthfuls, and I wouldn’t mind at all if it took a little longer to grow.

Also, if we are to redesign the radish, please could they could look like the clawing fingers of an extra-terrestrial?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yep that’s pretty good.

So how does it do on taste?

Good.  Not the same, but good. The flavour is primarily the hot-kick element one gets with the ground-radish (as we shall now call it), washed down with some green-tasting fresh air.

And don’t forget: because the poor blighter is so desperate to get some of its little seeds out into the world, the more you eat, the more it will try to grow some more.  Ha ha!

Also there’s the unexpected bonus of eternal youth. You just need to eat it right.

Aged seven, I spent hours and hours alone in the garden in various make-believe worlds. When one is engaged in an epic struggle battling witches (or pirates, or cave monsters, or bone-creatures or crazed goats) it often happens that one can only survive by living off the fat of the land. Nibbling dandelion leaves was not enjoyable, but good for reinforcing feelings of surviving against the odds. Sucking the nectar out of Deadnettle flowers was altogether sweeter (the pixies taught me that trick). Many adventures involved raiding Dad’s vegetable beds then retreating up a tree with muddy radish and spring onions on a lettuce plate; tomato harvests were sometimes lower than expected after small vermin invaded the greenhouse. Once, a thieving rat and her friend carried out a daring raid on a neighbouring garden after days of longing for raspberries which did not belong to them. This thieving rat still hangs her head in shame at the memory, but it can’t be denied that there is a special pleasure in eating something straight from the ground or the branch.

And what fun I could have had with rat-tailed radish! The gnarled and knobbly fingers are ideal for serving as a delicacy at a witches’ feast. They are also perfect for biting straight off the branch – “look! no hands!” -  which is very handy if one is spending the afternoon pretending to be a horse or other grazing animal. I was reflecting on this last August, when I realised I was sat on the ground in front of the plant,  snapping at it like a crocodile. Seven did not seem so far away.

The pixies live somewhere round here

 

Small world: enchanted forest

 

Whack-a-mole and hot flesh

Hello. It’s been a while. Sometimes life throws a lot of bastard-things at you all at once and gardening has to stop for a while whilst you stamp on the bastards and try to throw them back. It’s been a bit like whack-a-mole.

Luckily, not much happens in the garden anyway when it’s covered in snow and not much happens in MY garden when grey skies prevail over my square of patio day after day. And, luckily, nature will carry on doing her thing regardless of whether I go out and prod at her or not.

Three months have passed in which I did nothing except make the occasional outing to put food-waste in the compost bin … and only then when the kitchen started to smell. Now, it’s getting warmer and green shoots are literally emerging so we should all be better equipped for continued bastard-thing-stamping and I have ventured out to take stock.

The inventory:

• Leeks planted at an inappropriate time in inappropriate places continue as they were – unperturbed by bad weather, threats to the nation’s forests and public services, or the fact I heard a really great new band last week.

• The Alpine strawberries still push out the odd speculative fruit in the hope the sun will bring ripening rays before they shrivel. Not long now, my lovelies, not long now [please insert scurrilously piratical accent].
• Mizuna and land-cress are very handy winter salads, and Swiss Chard seems quite happy to sit in a bucket for months, if unmolested by nothing but a fat pigeon or two.

• As before, Jerusalem artichokes absolutely insist on providing delicious meals in exchange for absolutely no effort.

• Oca was fun but not terribly productive. Get out your magnifying glass and look at that Jerusalem artichoke pic again. On the left. In the glass box. Now squint. Yep, that’s my harvest from 4 oca plants. Somehow this has delighted me even more than a middling to good harvest would have and I’m very much looking forward to trying again this year.

• The greenhouse contains a lot of dead aubergine and chilli plants and accompanying fungal growth and spores.

• I still have more dried beans than I planted (despite having eaten several kilos along the way). Right now, they make me smile and marvel every time I see them. In a few weeks they will start the process of making me more beans and bring succour to my soul and stomach. A damn good deal if you ask me.

• All my chilli plants that were brought in to overwinter died through neglect. Including the  hot, fleshy and delicious,* fascinating, beautiful, furry-leaved, purple-flowered, black-seeded, and getting to be properly tree-like in its second year, perennial Alberto’s Locoto**. But I have seeds so they SHALL come again! Where I have left them, some are already shooting in the pots where they fell. Plus something entirely unchilli-like has emerged and is growing at a triffid like rate. I am so excited. What will it be? I have no idea. I wonder if I will find out before it finds me out?

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* I only put these phrases into get more visitors to the blog … and then disappoint them
**Happy to share some. No exchanges necessary, though wouldn’t say no to some Oca that grows tubers as well as leaves…

 

Compost bugs

Lately, I’ve been spending insufficient time harvesting and preserving, a little bit of time sowing something for winter, and a great deal of time watching small beasts.

Even a little pot garden is a city in itself, and the compost bin is a tower block. If bustling life is a good indicator for rapid decomposition, it’s absolutely thriving.

Bustling equals a very audible rustling when the lid is opened and thousands of woodlice react to the intrusion. These busy little detritivores seem to do most of the work and as much as I chuck in the level drops by another few inches each week.

They really have the most peculiar charm.  I understand the reasons why us humans might have (relatively) illogical urges to care for big-eyed fluffy kittens but have not been able to pin down why woodlice can elicit similar feelings. I don’t think it’s just me: I learned recently that some people know them as ‘chuggypigs’ – a name that seems imbued with a certain amount of affection.

I could watch them for a long time and – when I have pressing tasks to do – have watched for a very very long time…

Occasionally I am distracted by juicy great worms which, though mostly content to munch away below, sometimes sashay to the surface. Or by the sight of a truly fearsome slug or a spider very keen to get more closely acquainted with the friendly little woodlice. All good signs of a thriving ecosystem.

I have pictures of these bugs too but it has recently been suggested to me that not everyone likes to look at such things and that perhaps one can overdo the slime, defecation and violent death. So I shall resist and hope there is no objection to the quirky little fellows above.

Flowers or something else pretty/ fragrant/otherwise inoffensive next; more death and poo next week.

 

The very hungry caterpillar

A very hungry caterpillar

Happily the basil seems well able to support a couple of hairy tenants

 

Now for the serious bit…

If you’re here, you’ve obviously got a spare 30 seconds.

I suggest you spend your 30 seconds supporting this campaign, if you haven’t already: Pavlovsk Experimental Station is a  scientific collection of berries and fruit in Russia, under imminent threat from real-estate development. The Russian President could intervene to save it -  but more pressure is needed.

Pavlovsk is a unique resource – a collection of over 5,000 varieties of berries and fruit – 90% of which are not found in any other repository.

Established in 1926, it was conceived of as a legacy for future generations – a vision that should provide some hope in our world of climate change, massive biodiversity loss and industrial agriculture.

As those campaigning to protect it point out: “humanity needs crops to survive. As the climate changes and new threats to existing crop varieties appear, the ones we have now need to adapt, and the diversity found at the Pavlovsk Station provides this adaptation potential for a broad range of fruits and berries. We need to grow new breeds of all kinds of crops — grains, fruits, vegetables — to feed ourselves and our children. To do that, we need the rich diversity of characteristics like those found at Pavlovsk.”

Its plants can’t just be rehoused: it hosts thousands of rare species that can’t just be uprooted and moved and which are hard to breed from seed and so cannot just be stored in ordinary seed banks.

I’ve mentioned that berries actually unhinge me – and the thought of a place which hosts 1000 varieties of strawberries from 40 countries – or 893 varieties of blackcurrant -  just completely blows my awe-and-joy gasket. To think of that lost forever? To real-estate?

There are only a few days left to try to save the collection -  and at this stage that requires a presidential intervention. Internet campaigning-  by petitions and Twitter – has already got President Medvedev’s attention – but more pressure is needed.

During the siege of Leningrad, scientists protecting the station’s resources apparently  starved to death while surrounded by the edible collection – in that context I definitely felt I could spare 30 seconds to do my bit.

 

Snail swapping

Ah, snails! If I had a bigger space I’d grow some extra crops especially for them and we’d all live happily ever after in a fecund nirvana where swathes of green were exquisitely enhanced by delicate trails of silver.

As it is, they plunge me into existential angst as I watch the tattered lace of ex-leaves disappear under a slow wave of grey slime. After much internal debate about killing pests (then externalised), I quickly became a dehumanised killing machine.

My only hope of salvation resides in my continuing guilt pangs and occasional decisions to let one go.  (Which, remarkably, after reflecting on its brush with death and considering how best to find meaning in a fleeting existence, doesn’t conclude its short lifetime would best be spent creating a great work of literature, but rather devotes itself to rampant reproduction).

This offers an excuse to post my entry into last year's Emsworth Village Show in the category of Livestock 1: Best Chicken, so that you can all appreciate how usefully I spend my own fleeting existence.

I’ve been told I should just ‘rehome’ them but, short of taking a bucketful six stops on the Piccadilly line, I’m not sure that will do the job. They actually move damn fast, so I think taking snails on the Tube might be more antisocial than getting on having not washed for some time, whilst broadcasting tinny music from earphones turned up extra loud so it can still be heard over one’s yapping into one’s mobile telephonic device, whilst one’s spare hand shoves one fistful of aromatic fast-f0od after another into one’s animated gob thus spraying oily fragments across the carriage.

(No, I don’t travel well.)

But now, for all embattled gardeners, familiar with the suspicion that snails will always find their way back, there is to be a mass science experiment to test the theory!

Swap snails with your neighbours and see if they come back. Wife swapping is so last season.

I’ve just spent a week in beautiful Devon getting my first taste of field biology, so I’m hungry for more and this sounds like great fun. There are teams and everything! Anyone else planning on joining in?

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Note:  I’m also genuinely pleased to learn there is a publication called Mollusc World.

 

Stockholm syndrome

I’ve been rubbish at blogging. I wanted a detailed record of which poor plants I’d decided to torture with my attentions, which ones thrived despite my tender ministrations and a reminder of the monumental cock-ups never-to-be-repeated. But it’s been a bit patchy … I’m lucky enough to have  a job that I find just as engaging as growing vegetables and last year I signed up to study another degree on one of those whims that will take up another three years of my life and more money than I have.

So I think I’ll accept that I’m never going to have detailed logs of germination time and percentage success rates, to-the-ounce measurements of what was harvested and equivalent retail costings (which i can then compare to be records of time and financial inputs) and just get on with it.

Runner beans then.

When I was growing up I always thought of runner beans as tyrannical vegetables, with shrill triumphant voices.

“Pick me every day or I’ll go old and stringy and stop producing! And that would be a WASTE.”

“Ha! I’ve gone old and stringy anyway! But don’t WASTE me”

“Ha ha! But there’s still more of me that you can possibly eat. Don’t you feel guilty? Go on, give a generous armful to your neighbours who are too polite to tell you they are trying to escape the very same repressive runner regime. They’ll say thank you but nurture a secret hatred for you from this day forth.”

“Ha ha ha! And now you’ve topped me and tailed me and sliced my tough stringy flesh on the diagonal into neat 3″ pieces, what you going to do? Yeah! Boil me up until I go from vibrant- to swampy-green and see me seeping swamp-green juice on the side of your plate every day for the next three months.”

“Ha ha ha ha! Hah! Mwah ha ha!”

Maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome, but I’ve been living in the shadow of the bean for a fortnight now and I’m getting to like it. The beans have told me they’re great, and here’s why:

1) I’ve said it before and now I’ve said it again: these are surely Jack’s magic beans. Look to the right, and tell me you don’t want to sell me your cow?

2) The first plant to grow a foot a day in the slow days before summer kicks in brings immense satisfaction. Muddy ground and bare sticks suddenly covered with relentlessly encroaching green – then covered with flowers to equal any of your purely floral jobs.

3) Forget about building bug-houses. Host your own bug-Butlins by cultivating whole stalks worth of rampant oozing blackfly. Then watch the lovely ladybirds come in with their lizardy larvae and clear up.

This picture is small because it's a bit rubbish. But you get the idea. It's an arch effort.

4) There’s a meal anytime you want it, however many you grow. Limit the number of plants (I’ve gone for just enough to cover my effort at an ‘arch’, and a few up the fence where next door’s cat likes to scrabble, just to piss it off ) to get a nice side-serving every day  and you know what:  if you don’t want them, don’t eat them.  Compost a whole plant’s worth and say you were just growing it to fix some extra nitrogen in the soil for the delicious squash growing alongside. Or give the surplus to the neighbours with the objectionable cat.

5) Fry some onion, garlic, chilli, cumin and coriander for five minutes or until you’ve finished watering/necking the first glass of wine; throw in some more cumin and garlic; maybe some chopped peppers, then however many beans you want to get rid of and a can of tomatoes (or fresh tomatoes, soon!) – and simmer until swamp green. Who cares about swamp green. It’s tasty, and I can cook this daily for at least two weeks before I decide I need a break and go pickle some.

6) You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

 

Swift exit*

Tubing it across the city this evening, a fierce panic seized me. Blight was in my potatoes, and it was about to send its spores tomatowards! Cue apocalyptic visions of spore clouds dispersing disease and fruit rotting on the vine.

Much as I love new potatoes, I don’t think I can grow them next year.

They break all my (rough, loosely-applied) rules of what I should grow and what I shouldn’t. The tubs take up a relatively large bit of space, which is the thing I can spare the least. I can only grow a taste, and when they’re so cheap and easy to buy and easy to store, there’s not much point.

I’ve grown them anyway -  for the fun of earthing up, the delight of digging them and those few amazing meals with the ‘I grew this’ garnish. But No More!

There were definitely a few spots on the leaves. Were they a blighty sort of spot? Probably not, but still I sat out in the twilight and the first rain for three weeks (Warm, moist air! Doom and destruction!) shoving the foliage into a bin-bag and casting anxious looks at the tomatoes.

Totally illogical. I’ve never had blight, the tomatoes were bonny and wonderful last year and, if force of will counts for anything, they’ll be even better this time round. But the fear is infectious and so there was no fun in this potato harvest.

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*This year I grew Swift, Charlotte and Duke of York, as that’s what I was given. All were nice and clean-looking; Swift yielded almost twice as much as the others; tasting to follow.

 

Gooseberry Fool

The sum total of this year’s gooseberry harvest.

Magnificent, isn’t it?