Vegmonkey and the Mrs.

I really didn’t like any sort of cabbage up until recently when we visited a friends house and were served a delicious roast with a healthy serving of savoy cabbage. I am now converted, and made a point of grabbing some seeds at the start of the season and planting them!

There were two plants in the bed until i picked this one (beautifully modelled by the Mrs!), sitting quite happily under the brussel sprouts and broccoli plants. I thought they’d probably died until i went on a caterpillar hunt and saw this one ready to pick. The other has been pretty much nibbled to death by beasties, but the head may survive if i leave it to grow a little longer.

We steamed it over our beans, and it was very, very tasty…there’s something about the crinkliness of it…or am i just rambling!? One plant was enough for 6 serving, which is plenty of cabbage for one week.

I posted a while ago that a lot of out Spring sown onion sets were bolting. It turned out that only a handful went to seed. The rest have happily filled out so much that 80% or so are ready to harvest. I’m going to leave them for a week or so, then pull them up. The plan is to fill the space with carrots – if all goes to plan, the ground will have served us twice in one season, and we’ll be eating some nice Christmas carrots! Either way, i can’t wait to start eating them, particularly the delicious looking red ones…it’ll be a while though as we have loads. I am going to make a point of learning how to plait them correctly this year, rather than just hanging them up individually in the shed, a la last year.

This theory of using the ground twice in a year is a bit of a ‘Mantra’ for us here at Vegmonkey and the Mrs.  We have already grown a crop of early potatoes and Japanese ‘Senshyu’ Onions in the bed closest to the house, and it now has sweetcorn and courgettes growing well…and it’s only mid July. Also, as i posted yesterday, the second lot of cauliflowers have gone into the space the first lot came out of.

They key i think is having the foresight to plant the seeds and have things ready to fill the space. I’ve ended up with an excess of tomato plants and a spare courgette, which is never bad!

After harvesting the potatoes a couple of days ago, i got to thinking about the poor little seed potato. I took so long deciding whether i wanted earlies or maincrops, then which variety to buy, and then the sub variety, then changed my mind, then went to a potato day and made a final decision based on a number of factors. Luckily i chose well – our harvest tastes delicious, with a few chives added for good measure!

The seed potatoes were then meticulously planted and looked after. However, as soon as the green shoots started appearing, i forgot about the tubers until unearthing them, and caught a glimpse of the wrinkled mess that i spent so much time searching for.

It’s quite amazing that seeds turn into what they do. All we do is (hopefully!) give the seed the right conditions for germination. This enables the embryo – a plant in what is essentially a state of frozen animation – to begin it’s growth. Inside the seed is enough food to support it as it begins to absorb water, the embryo begins to grow, it puts roots down and develops baby leaves (cotyledons), so that it can finally provide its own food. Potatoes are a little different, being the size that they are. The really tiny seeds like carrot seeds are particularly amazing.

This is one of the main reasons we decided to begin growing our own – why should we pay somebody else to give the seed the right conditions for germination, look after it during its growth and food production, (spray it with loads of chemicals!), package it and deliver it to somewhere near our home.

We can do that ourselves.

The potatoes by the back wall in the large black potato buckets looked a little worse for wear yesterday, whether it was some form of scab or blight i don’t know, but i knew the crop would be damaged if i left them in the pot any longer…assuming there was a crop.

I’d planted 3 seed potatoes of ‘Ulster Sceptre,’ in each bucket, but, this being my first foray into potato growing, didn’t know that the tubers grow from the stem, not the root. I’d filled the tub up, and planted the seed about half a foot from the top. With hindsight, and consequently, next year, i will half fill the tub, and add more soil as the leaves develop, this hopefully resulting in a much better crop.

After the plants came out, with a few very happy looking potatoes attached, i set to work delving my hands into the soil, unearthing golden nugget, after golden nugget. There aren’t many things in the veg garden that come close to this as a reward…the scrabblin’ around in the soil, resulting in successful little finds. In total, i unearthed 1.3kg – not bad from 6 tubers. If i’d have planted them correctly, we would probably have twice that. It will keep us in potatoes for a good couple of weeks though.

They quickly found a home in a potato bag the Mrs. bought me for Christmas, so as not to expose them to too much light, or they’d go green.

In addition to the pots, we have about 15 plants growing in the raised beds. I took a couple of plants out as i needed the space (post to come!) with little success, about 300g, so i know which method is better. I don’t want to have to earth up the soil in the raised beds too much, as when the plants come out i will have way too much compost in there. I’ve decided to leave them for a while.

In the potato beds, we have this beautiful flower…who ever said veg didn’t look attractive in the garden? I think it was my mum a few weeks ago that said that First Earlies don’t have to flower before harvesting, a fact confirmed by Alan Titchmarsh’s new book (now i’m getting anoraky!?) – and this was certainly the case with the potatoes in the tubs. I’m going to leave the potatoes in the beds alone though until the flowers have died as the space i needed i now have, and it will give us a crop later on next month – plus they look nice, which will hopefully deter the Mrs. from planting every available container with flowers!

The peas i planted out back in April are doing well.This may have something to do with the amazing weather we have been having these last few days. Rather than put netting up i have decided to let the peas climb of their own accord, and tie them up using green twine, rather than that horrid plasticy stuff i used last year. The slugs and snails have pretty much left them alone, largely helped by the copper tape that the Mrs. has strategically and expertly stuck around the beds. It is surprisingly hard-wearing, most of it lasting the winter, and only now does is it starting to need renewing.

The mistake i made with the peas was not labelling which were Feltham First and which were Mange-Tout. It’s going to be interesting when the plants start flowering to see how many of each plant we have. I was going to sow successionally so that we had a supply of peas throughout the summer, but sadly don’t have the space.

I’m going to grow a supply of plants in guttering in July and plant them out if the peas stop producing.  Having never grown peas before, i’m not sure how long this will be, so it will be interesting. I’m assuming they will be like Runner Beans and keep cropping as long as i keep picking.