April is the Cruelest Month?

My rhubarb loves it and so do my lettuces. But I must admit, I'm a bit sick of the rain. And the wind. And the endless shades of grey. I'm sick of soggy shoes, frizzy hair, and having to wear a raincoat. Sick of sliding in the mud when I'm down at the lottie. Where is the sun? I want to put on sunscreen and sunglasses. There might be May flowers out there, but the rain doesn't seem to stop for long enough to allow me to enjoy them.

How is all of this rain going to affect the growing season? Like I said, my moisture-loving crops are doing fine. But I can't imagine this will be a good year for apples. The blossom on my apple trees was blown and battered by the wind and rain and my bees have had a terrible time of getting out of the hive in this weather (and the blossom of apple trees is insect-pollinated). And I know it's still a little early to be worrying about corn, tomatoes, and squash (by June, this could all have been a bad dream), but I admit it, I'm worried. The forecast for the rest of May is similar to that of April, if maybe less extreme in its severity. But still unseasonably cold and wet.

Here are some photos of my plot taken after a rainstorm in April:

Here are some of other plots on the site:



  



This weather is good for ducks. And rhubarb.

Pease Porridge hot, Pease Porridge cold

Time to confess. I haven't had much success with peas. I've often heard it said that peas are extremely easy to grow and so are great for the beginner. You just put a few seeds in the ground and there you go. Except mice love the seeds. And slugs and snails love the young plants. As do pigeons. And don't even get me started on the pea moth. So for the past couple of years, while I have had a pea harvest, it hasn't been much of one. And the road to a few delicious mouthfuls of yummy sweet peaness has been paved with disappointment and despair. Until now. I think.

I have a new system of growing them that seems to work for me as it avoids the mice, slugs/snails, and pigeons (though not the pea moth - that will require other precautions). I sow the seeds into individual modules, let them germinate and get to about an inch tall (on my windowsill), move the trays to the lottie, and leave them undercover to harden off for a week or so. Then I plant them out and put in pea sticks immediately (even though they don't have tendrils yet). So far, and I don't want to tempt fate, this seems to be working. I haven't really lost any and there hasn't been a tremendous wastage of seed as there was when I was feeding all of the mice on the allotment.

 

 
And now to the heart of it...what peas am I growing this year? So far, these are the ones I have either planted in the ground, are waiting to be planted in the ground, or are busily germinating on my windowsills...

Hurst Green Shaft
Carlin
Lancashire Lad
Chibby's Wonders
Goldensweet Snowpea
Purple Goldensweet Snowpea
Douce Provence
Defiance
Telephone
Capucijner
Turner’s Spring
Tom Thumb

They're a mix of standard garden peas with the slightly less standard. Telephone and Turner's Spring are tall varieties which will require more support. Carlin and and Capucijner are eaten as cooked dried peas. More about Tom Thumb in another post. And the one I'm most interested in this year is 'Purple Goldensweet Snowpea.' Last year I grew 'Goldensweet Snowpea' and they mostly did what they said on the packet: produced beautiful plants with lovely golden/yellow green pods. Except for the ones that didn't. A few produced purple pods and I saved the seeds from those and kept them separate from the seeds of the yellow/green podded ones. I'm no Gregor Mendel, but I'm hoping to get some plants that will reliably produce purple-podded snowpeas/mangetout. We shall see.

I've got a Golden Ticket!

OK, make mine a Chelsea ticket. My ticket to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show arrived the other day and I can't wait! After dipping my toe into the flower show world with Hampton Court last summer, I'm ready to step out with the big boys and girls.

I'm guessing it will be sort of like Hampton, but physically smaller and grander everything else. The gardens I'm mostly interested in seeing are the Renault Garden (using waste material to sustain the plants), the Laurent-Perrier Bicentenary Garden (my heart fluttered a bit when I saw the design for it), the Plant Explorer's Garden (I thought the idea behind it was sweet), and the Telegraph Garden (mostly because I read this article).

But I'm really excited about the nurseries and plant sellers that will be there. Edulis, Hooksgreen Herbs, Jamaica Horticultural Society, Pennard Plants, Tendercare, Victorian Violas, Whetman Pinks. And so many others selling things that I don't even know that I want/need yet.

Time to dust off my flamboyant floral hat and get my wallet ready.

Crawling

As part of my plan to switch careers (from working in education to almost anything in horticulture), I'm taking classes at Capel Manor College. I finished the RHS Level 2 course in February (word is the results are in April 27th...fingers crossed...) and in September I plan on starting the Level 3 Garden Design course. In order to do that, I have to take an 11 week course called Drawing and Graphics which I started last night. The second half of the course will involve learning how to use real drawing pens and tools, but the first half is just getting us comfortable with the idea that we can really draw despite what our brains (and maybe some unkind people) have been telling us since we were about 10 years old. Not even a walking before you can run sort of thing. We're definitely just learning how to crawl.

Ok, so it's no Piet Oudolf, but it's a start. (You can tell it's a hand, can't you??!)

Little Orphan Annie

I'm a member of the Heritage Seed Library. It's an organization that conserves vegetable varieties that are no longer (and maybe never were) widely available. This includes ex-commercial varieties and heirlooms. The organization is not a seed bank and they make their seeds available to members. In December, a catalogue is sent to each member (a highlight of the gardening year!) and the member may choose up to 6 varieties to grow (and save their own seed from). It's a fantastic organization, and if you're not already a member (and why aren't you??), join now!

This year I selected:
Beet 'Avon Early'
Dwarf French Bean 'Eastern Butterwax'
Kale 'Daubenton'
Lettuce 'Rouge d' Hiver'
Pea 'Turner Spring'
Squash 'White Serpent'

But, in addition to being a member, I'm also a seed guardian. In March, a separate list goes out to people who have asked to be guardians. It contains the names of some of the varieties whose stock has gotten a bit low and needs increasing. Guardians choose two varieties to grow and save seed from. They are allowed to keep a bit of the seed for themselves, but the majority goes back to the HSL. When the stocks are sufficiently high, the variety appears in the catalogue again.

The list this year contains 7 climbing beans, 4 dwarf beans, 10 peas, 1 cucumber, 1 pepper, 1 radish, and 3 tomatoes. They have names like 'Veitch's Western Express,' 'Blacksmith's Bean,' and 'Macedonian Sweet.' And I can't wait to receive mine. I'm putting in for a pea and a tomato (I'll let you know which ones I get when they arrive) and I'll chronicle their growth here with regular photos and updates.

                              "and remember that all of our orphans need Guardians."


And if you're in the US, Seed Savers Exchange does something similar.

A Rose By Any Other Name Would Still Be A Physalis

Groundcherry, wintercherry, Cape gooseberry, poha. Physalis. An orange-yellow fruit in a charming paper husk which has nothing to do with cherries or gooseberries. It's more closely related to tomatoes (though sweet and tangy rather than savory) and needs similar conditions (and suffers from similar problems) to grow. And it's my wild card. That one crazy plant you are pretty sure won't grow for you, will probably curl its toes up and die before it has even gotten started, but you try anyway. Because if it does work...

It needs warmer conditions than I will probably be able to give it and even with my walk-in plastic greenhouse, the summer may still be too short for it to produce mature fruit. But I love them. I like them raw as a snack or in fruit salads and they are apparently nice cooked in pies or jammed. I didn't buy the seed, but instead saved it from some physalis I bought at ASDA. I don't usually save seed from store-bought fruit and vegetables as most are F1 hybrids (the offspring of two genetically different parents whose seed will NOT produce true-to-type. F1 Hybrids), but a very cursory google search seemed to imply that this wouldn't make a difference with physalis. So I happily munched through a bag and saved a few seeds. A couple of weeks ago I planted five seeds into a pot (peat-free MPC with vermiculite) and placed that into a sealed plastic bag. Five seeds germinated and so far five little plants are growing.

I'm feeling lucky this year. This could be the year my wild card pays off.

What's your wild card for this growing season?

Spray with Acid and Beat with Sticks

Tomatoes and squash never fail to reach maturity. You can spray them with acid, beat them with sticks and burn them; they love it.  --S. J. Perelman

Tomatoes! If you promise not to tell, I'll share the list of tomato varieties that I have. But please don't tell anyone; it's embarrassing...

Red Siberian

Silvery Fir Tree

Jelly Bean Red and Yellow

Zapotec Pleated
Tigerella
German Lunchbox
Christel's Plum
Tumbling Tom
Cuore di Bue
Harbinger
Gardener's Delight
Minibel
Red Zebra
Polish Linguisa
Principe Borghese
Kenilworth/King George
Losetto
Piccolo
Atkin's Stuffing
Mortgage Lifter
Nepal
Maja
TOGI
Giant Plum
Sweet Pea Currant

Cream Sausage                   

Yellow Stuffer                     
Millefleur
Goldkrone
Golden Sunrise
Golden Queen
Black Cherry
Cherokee Purple
Lime Green Salad
Hillbilly
Pink Plum
Snow White
Black Truffle
French Black
Green Velvet
Brad’s Black Heart
Blue OSU

You see what I mean? But I love tomatoes and I really love heritage tomatoes...their names, shapes, colors. It makes it very hard to choose which ones to grow, so before I even looked over my list, I capped it at 10. The varieties I chose are:

Piccolo
Losetto
Goldkrone
Blue OSU
Red Siberian
French Black
Black Truffle
Yellow Stuffer
Zapotec Pleated
Silvery Fir Tree
Snow White

And if you're better at counting than I am, you will have noticed a problem with that list. Oh well.

These varieties are all new to me this year. I've put aside a few old favorites (such as Black Cherry and Cream Sausage) to see if I can find some new old favorites. A bit risky, but I'm hoping it pays off. I chose these particular varieties so that I would have a mix of colors and shapes and also a few of them (namely Red Siberian and Silvery Fir Tree) are supposed to do well in shorter growing seasons.

I sowed them all the same way I did my eggplants (both plants needing similar growing conditions): in a yogurt pot using peat-free compost mixed with vermiculite. The pots have all been sealed into bags and will stay there until they germinate.

So, if you're growing your own tomatoes from seed this year (and you really should -- it's so easy and there's a much greater choice than if you buy them as plants from a garden center -- or even as tomatoes from a grocery store), you'd better get sowing because they need a long growing season to do well.

How many varieties will you have in your garden this summer?

The Great Eggplant Experiment

I've never tried to grow eggplants (aubergines) before. I like eating them, they're pretty, there's enough variety amongst them to satisfy the pickiest of gardeners (in appearance, if not taste). But they can be a bit tricky to grow in the UK. It originated on the Indian sub-continent, so needs more warmth, light, and a longer growing season than we normally get. So I've never bothered to give it a try. But this year I have a plan. I've started my seed off (January 30th) already, to give them the longest growing season possible. And I've also acquired a plastic greenhouse (a 'blowaway') to put them in after the frosts. This will hopefully give them more warmth and light than my windowsill could ever afford.

I'm trialling three types. 'Black Enorma,' 'Little Prince,' and 'Szechuan.' The first (seed from Thompson & Morgan) is supposed to crop early, but prolifically. The second (seed bought from a garden center in NY) is supposed to be early and small enough to grow in containers. The third one (seed from a seed swap) is supposedly very tasty and performs well in the British climate. We shall see.

Seeds in their mini-greenhouse

The first one was up today - a little 'Black Enorma.'

You can just about see it...

They were all sown into peat-free compost mixed with perlite (in yogurt pots with holes cut in the bottom). Then placed in a tray with water in it and put into a bag to make a mini-counter greenhouse. I open the bag daily to ventilate it. I keep them on a sunny counter, but away from my windows for now as they get really chilly.

And what do I plan to do with my bountiful eggplant harvet, you ask? Why this...

Fried Eggplant and Garlic Dip
3 Tb. oil
Eggplant, cut into small pieces
1c water
3-4 cloves of garlic, sliced
5 tsp sugar
1 tsp cornstarch
2 Tb soy sauce

Heat the oil and add the eggplant, cooking till soft. Add the water and garlic and simmer (making sure the garlic does not burn). In a bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients and then add to the pan. Cook until sauce is thickened. Serve with pita.

So what eggplants are you growing this year? And what do you plan on doing with them?