Chili Weather is Here!

     Autumn arrived this year on the allotment at a nice gentle pace. There was a pleasant overlap as summer held on well into October. The food from the allotment follows this slow transition in a lovely natural way. Basil mixes with the first tomatoes in late summer, chillies show up just as the nights get cooler to add some heat to your dishes, and then the squashes slowly replace the tomatoes in your soups and sauces as Autumn settles in.


     This year tomatoes were in danger of losing a guaranteed 
spot on the allotment. But after finding a few varieties that seemed to tolerate outside conditions, I have decided to double my effort next year to ensure I have a steady supply for the kitchen.  Super Marmande, Tumbling Tom, and Roma varieties will feature heavily in next years plans.
      I planted approximately 5 different varieties of chili and about 5 plants of each one.  Being still a bit of a novice at documenting however, I mistakenly wrote the variety and date in pencil on my biodegradable pots, which vanished very quickly after repeated waterings!  All of the chilies that were harvested were delicious and provided some nice warmth in pastas, curries, and even a homemade chutney!
     Squashes can really make you feel like a professional gardener.  The picture to the left is the result of about 1 or 2 plants that I had scrambling about underneath my corn this year.  There is both a Barbara Butternut and an Avalon variety.  Other than clearing a few weeds, they were virtually effortless.  They are the best case for the idea that vegetables want to grow, your primary role is to let them!  I have put them to good use in an absolutely delicious soup recipe from Jamie Oliver.  Anyway I have quite a few posts coming up on how to use all this great food we are getting from the ground! 


PS I found a great blog for Chili lovers in the UK http://blog.chilliupnorth.co.uk/ .

The Best of Both Worlds

Late September has got to be the best time of year for Veg gardeners! Fresh food still pours into our house daily; potatoes, tomatoes, chilies, courgettes, lettuce, rasberries, etc. all being enjoyed in some form at almost every meal.

However it may seem strange, but my favourite pastime in the veg garden is clearing out last years crops and starting again with a gorgeous new, freshly overturned vegetable bed full of freshly turned crumbly brown earth. I can finally get rid of all those tired looking leaves or those annoying weeds that escaped my much too infrequent attempts to clear them . Yep, no more delicate and careful hoeing, just indiscriminate ground clearance with my biggest fork!

A topping of well rotted manure and some leaf mulch (my other autumn obsession), and this old potato bed (see previous post) will transform nicely into my experimental companion planting next year. Reservations are yet to be confirmed, but I am thinking this full bed will be for what can be known as the three sisters; sweetcorn, beans and squash. Unlike most humanly sisters they get along wonderfully! The thick leaves of the squash (could use courgettes as well) keeps the weeds to minimum, the sweetcorn doesn't cast much of a shadow over them and provides support for the beans, whose roots, in turn provide much needed nitrogen to their companions.

The added benefit of planting three crops in one space ticks all my boxes for efficiency, harmony and balance.

When do we Start?

It is hard to define a new season on the vegetable patch. Ideally there are always times when something is growing or needs harvesting or clearing. For me, the start of the new season is always kicked off by the planting of my autumn garlic, shallots and onions. There are still plenty of things growing and indeed plenty of plants that have just been planted out recently, broccoli, Chinese leaves, cabbages etc but all of them will always play second fiddle to my allium family! Spring (green) garlic is one of the reasons I wanted a vegetable patch in the first place. It is rarely in the grocery store but it is truly a garlic lover's treat. Roasted whole with a bit of nice extra virgin olive oil and sea salt and crushed onto some rustic bread or mixed, finely chopped with chilies, into pasta or crammed into some little slits, with some rosemary, into a leg of lamb (sorry but I cant seem to stop this sentence!) ....

I planted my first cloves of garlic this year on the 20th of September. I felt like this was a little bit early but a few reliable sources advised that it is best to get it in the ground and established before the really wet weather sets it giving it a great potential to rot in the ground. I chose a variety call Early Purple Wight. It had very large cloves in a nice big bulb. This year I will also make my first attempt at planting a crop from cloves from last years crop. I had a very nice batch of garlic (see photo) from last year and so I will begrudgingly set aside two of the bigger bulbs for planting. If anyone has a better method for plaiting garlic point me to it! The best I could manage was plaiting three stems together then plaiting three plaits together. It all got rather bulky and so I just stuck it on a nail in the wall right above my chopping board where it is within very easy reach! I can already predict that my winter's supply of garlic will last me until about the end of October. This year I am not going to be shy about quantity. I will probably add to my autumn planting with another planting mid February. This should also allow me to indulge in taking lots of spring garlic (May/June) while still having plenty for July main harvest.

Raw Materials

My number one priority in having an allotment is about supplying my other passion (cooking!) with high quality, fresh and seasonal ingredients that are either too expensive, bland or very limited in variety at the grocery store. Here are a few results from my first two seasons of vegetable gardening.

This (above) was my first real harvest from the allotment in year one. Around mid July I started getting about 1 or 2 yellow courgettes a day. Onions, garlic, carrots, beans (from my plot neighbor) and throw in a few herbs, hmmm I think a stir fry is in order! Recipe posts coming soon.

Potatoes, strawberries, lettuces and more herbs (below), all low maintenance must haves. They are easy to grow and very versatile in the kitchen.

Some more yellow courgettes (pasta, stir-fries, on toast etc) with my first successfully formed red cabbage. The shredded cabbage mixed with carrots, apples and shallots kept me in fresh coleslaw all summer! Recipe posts to follow soon.

All of this looking at food has made me want to cook something for lunch!

Digging

Digging

I have basically stuck to the same method of digging throughout my time on the allotment with a few minor adjustments. In the beginning, I would take the top layer of turf off and stack it up, grass part down, in a pile. I would then use the resulting pile (loam) to top up the beds in the following year. This worked well, however it is a lot of work moving the earth around. Since then I have adopted a new approach, I call it, Let Potatoes do the Hard Work approach! Each year when I want a new bed, I begin late autumn or early winter and literally just turn the turf over, a spade full at a time. This has the good effect of exposing weed roots (I take them out when I can). I then cover the overturned earth with either some cardboard or newspapers (a half inch thick or so) remembering to put some earth on top to prevent it from blowing away. In my case, I mainly stick to blank cardboard as it rots into the ground nicely after 8 months or so. It also has the added benefit of adding some fiberous material to my very clay soil. But you could use anything that will block out the light for a few months to kill the rest of the weeds. When Febuary/March comes around and it is time to plant the first potatoes, I cut/dig a hole in whatever material I have layed on top and plant a potato in it. Many hands make small work. Well so do many potatoes! By time August or September rolls around and I start to harvest potatoes, they have done a very nice job of breaking up the soil. The process of earthing up your potatoes and then actually getting them out of the ground improves the texture of the soil for the new bed as well. Once I have harvested all the potatoes, I then pound 4 posts in the corners of the bed, nail some boards to the posts and top up the soil for a shiny new raised bed! If you want to go the extra mile, then at some point add a little more depth to the bed by digging a bit deeper when you are digging up the potatoes. Once the pototo harvest is complete, it is a good idea to add some well rotted manure, some leaf mulch or some compost to make a nice fertile bed for the next resident crop. It should now be October/November and time to put some new potatoes to work!

Taking Shape

The allotment gradually took shape over the next couple of years. To be honest I found the process of digging the beds and planning the layout as enjoyable (if not more so!) than sowing and planting. It probably has something to do with the instant result. I want a new bed here, I dig it. Whereas if i want some corn, then I need to sow the seed, plant out the new little plants, water, hope for sun, and finally if all went to plan, 8 months later I am eating some corn! There is a great saying I heard recently regarding gardening that couldn't be more true,

"Live like there is no tomorrow, garden like you will live forever!"

In the first year, my main ambition was to get in some fruit and veg that would be fairly low maintenence so that I could get on with completing the rest of the plot. I put in a long row of autumn fruiting rasberries and a big bed of strawberries, kindly given to me by Tony and Pat in plot opposite to me. They gave me runners from their strawberries and a few rasberries canes that were popping up where they weren't wanted. I also dug a third bed with the hopes of getting some corn (more on that later).

Even Later and Better!

Humble Beginnings

Well two years have passed now since my last post and that may be a personal record for my procrastination! Anyway just because the blog was neglected The Good Life wasn't. The allotment has been an absolute pleasure to have. As you can see above, it was very humble beginnings. The plot is approximately 25 x 125 feet, so there never was going to be a shortage of space. I feel very fortunate to have gotten a plot now. Right after I got my plot, the Grow Your Own wave really swept, and continues to sweep, the country. Fueled by celebrity chefs such as, Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fernley Wittingstall, with their back to basics rustic style of cooking, allotment plots have been in very fierce demand. Some waiting lists are actually around 4-5 years long!