Undergound Surprises

There is nothing like the surprise that you get from root vegetables. The delight in pulling up a perfectly round beetroot or a twisted knobbly carrot.

It's because you can't see what's happening. You just have to let nature takes it course and hope that everything is going according to plan. But when things start to grow, you get a tiny little glimpse of what could be, that's when I start to get impatient! I want to pull that beetroot! I want to see how big the carrots are! Just look at that beetroot - tempting us with a little peak!

But this weekend we've had disappointment to deal with. We pulled some of our first earlies and I must admit I was very underwhelmed. We went for the recently launched Accord – partly because they're ideal for containers and we'd decided early on that all our potatoes we would grow this way. They're also high yeilding and disease resistant – particularly against eelworm

We admit that we were pretty late in chitting and planting them but we honestly thought that they'd been in for a while and were ready to harvest. Here are our results from three plants!
Rubbish! 20 potatoes! And some of those so small they don't really count! We were gutted! Luckily we opted to harvest just one pot first just incase something like this happened. So the other container we're going to leave for maybe another month to hopefully increase the yield.

I think we'll try and be a little more patient with the rest of our underground friends.
Although... that baby carrot does look REALLY tempting. I must say - I have never tasted something so delicious and surprising than a home grown baby carrot. They beat the supermarket by just miles and miles.
And this year we've attempted to grow onions from seed. We use a lot of onions so it makes sense for us to grow them but I just don't get these set onions. So you buy a small onion – you put it in the ground and you get a bigger onion. Just doesn't seem worth it to me? So we never really bothered with sets. But, fingers crossed, the seeds seem to be doing OK.

Oh Chit!

To encourage your potatoes to have nice sturdy shoots you should chit them before you put them into the ground. You're basically getting them to sprout before you plant them, giving them a bit of a head start.

You need to start about six weeks before you intend to plant them. The piccie above is our Blue Danbue maincrop being chitted. It's easy peasy, you just stand them into an empty egg carton and put them where there is plenty of natural light – a windowsill is ideal. We really need to get them into the ground now – we've run out of compost (again!) so they will have to wait until next weekend now.

This year we've gone for Accord as our earlies, they're great for growing in planters which is exactly what we've done.
The diagram above shows how you plant them in patio containers. As the plant grows you earth it up and add more compost. Last year we just filled it right up straight away and stuck in our seed potato. We got an OK crop but we're hoping this year if we actually plant them correctly we'll get a biggest harvest!

Both our earlies and maincrop are going in containers – we had a lot of trouble last year with our main crop – partly our inexperience and partly the dreaded mollusc invasion. Hopefully this year we'll be able to avert any major disasters.

Happy Mashing!

The Potato Saga Continues....

We harvested most of our potatoes this weekend just passed. Not because we wanted to, ideally we would've left them until August time but out of our 12 or so plants not one of them looked even remotely healthy. Originally we were just going to dig up the one plant we had in a container to see what was going on...
This is what the foilage looked like. On first glance it just looks like he's been munched a little (well a lot really...) but all of our plants were displaying similar traits and seeing as this plant was nowhere near the main patch we were a little worried that maybe our seed potatoes had been harbouring some sort of disease so we investigated by pulling this fella and this is what we found.
Euw. What's that? Well we had a look in a few books and we think it's Potato Scab. We're not sure which type though, there's the Common Scab or the Powdery Scab. We think it might be Powdery Scab. Here's a more detailed shot.
Still edible though which is good as it just affect the skins, just need an extra bit of peeling. Bit of a shame as I was looking forward to making some potato wedges but nevermind. Anyway, on pulling this lot we were now thinking that maybe our whole patch was suffering from scab so we decided to pull some plants from the main patch. Now this patch had been decimated, I mean truly decimated, we thought maybe by snails but honestly I can't see how a few snails could possibly cause this much devistation... but maybe they can?
As this was our first year of growing we didn't really plant the potatoes in a way that made them very accessible (lesson learnt for next year). Ideally we wanted to pull the plants at the back but we couldn't get to them! So we had to go for a couple at the front first.

We didn't really hold out much hope as a lot of the stems had actually withered away. But the first couple of plants had a few potatoes, some of a fairly good size. Not quite bakers but a good roasty. And surprisngly no scab, which was good. But the problem we did have that as huge as these plants once were, at their peak nearly 5ft tall they only had maybe four or five potatoes each. Very odd. So we thought that seeing as most of these plants were not going to survive much longer then what the heck, let's pull the majority of them and leave the healthiest ones to hopefully crawl along to August when we can hopefully get some bakers off them.

So there you go. Our first year of potatoes. Not terribly successful. But then again, not a complete disaster.

This time next year.... watch this space.

Utter Devastation

My goodness. Our poor potatoes. Only last week I was telling everyone how healthy and green they were and look at them today, what a sorry state they're in.

Oh, and who per chance do you think the culprits are?! Our ever friendly garden snails who for some reason, seem to have it in for us.

I'm pretty gutted actually, I mean some of the plants are just decimated. And this has happened in the space of about a week. They've been munching at the leaves below everything so we hadn't really noticed what was going on and then all of a sudden there's a big gaping hole where literally the plants at the back have collapsed. I think we'll loose some, two plants if we're lucky but maybe more. Not sure what to do with them because if they've got potatoes under the ground they'll just rot. So I guess we'll have to dig them up, not going to be easy though because they're right at the back.

I've just picked out about 25 snails and was going to put down some organic pellets but I think I'll wait until the thunderstorms finish.

I hate these things more than ever now. I thought I'd got them under some sort of control but it seems they've just moved to a different part of the garden.

Yeah. So pretty gutted right now. And I'd really really like it to stop raining please, the snails don't need anything else to tempt them out of the dark danky holes they live in. If you could sort that for me that would be great. Thanks.

Our Green and Pleasant Land

Just been out in the garden today to check on everything and it's looking beautifully healthy. Here's an update and some snapshots of our sumptuous back yard.

Herbs
First off, the herb garden. It's so green and lush, especially after the thunderstorm yesterday. The parsley is taking over a bit so we'll have to use some this week to keep him under control. And our coriander seems to be flowering and going all spindly, keep forgetting to look that up and see if that's normal.

Basil
As I said in a previous post, we've been having trouble with Basil. Nibbles by ants, and generally just being a bit pants in the Basil growing area. But, fingers crossed, this last batch seem to be doing OK. We've had them indoors for quite a while so they can establish themselves before they brace the outside world full of critters. We put them out yesterday in the sun but forgot to bring them in.... opps. But all is well in Basil land. They seem fine and all are intact. Got a couple of the purple variety too, just at the back of the photo there.

Potatoes
Now to the potatoes, quite literally a jungle. These are our main crop, Maris Piper. We didn't realise how tall they would grow, they must be about 4 ft by now. We've had some small problems, a few gusty days and the wind blew them right over, we were quite worried about them. But we bought some trellace and pinned them in and they seem to have recovered well and all looking wonderfully healthy. Really looking forward to those, August/September harvest.

TomatoesMmmmm. Look at these little beauties! Tomatoes. Can't wait for these. I must admit, I think we're going to have tomato overload, we have about 24 plants dotted around, we've even had to put some in a hanging basket in the front garden because we've run out of space! But the bees have been busy and doing us proud by pollinating away. I think we probably have about 50-60 tomatoes in various stages of growth at the moment and about 300 flowers across all the plants. Fingers crossed it's going to be a tomato fest.

Lettuce
We had a bit of a lettuce nightmare at the beginning of the season and the snails well and truly caught us out. I was getting really peeved actually, felt like we were fighting a losing battle. But, for some reason, unknown to us, we've got a batch of lettuce in at the moment which have been munch free.... tempting fate I know. But they are looking divine! And I reckon we could pick a few leaves off here... maybe for next weeks work lunchbox?

Beetroot
When I put these little fellas into the ground a local cat dug them up, but I managed to salvage them by repotting them and letting them re-establish themselves. Actually a good little trick that has seemed to work really well to keep the diggers away, we just snapped some cheap garden canes in half and dotted them around the plot. Worked a treat.

Dwarf French Beans
Last but not least, the beans. We sneakily picked a bean yesterday (we went on the finger rule, longer than your finger, then yeah, it's OK) and it was deeelish. I think when we cook these it's literally blanch for 30 seconds and that's it, or I did think diced up raw into a soup to add some crunch, could be nice in a pea and mint. Anyway, we've got five plants, all doing well (apart from a small blackfly infestation on a couple—don't worry, we have the ladybugs on the job) so looking forward to a nice little harvest from these fellas.

So that concludes our little update. I do enjoy the first inspection of the day. It's great to see everything with fresh eyes.

It's a Harvest Festival!

Wow. A beautiful sunny day, a nice glass of Rosé and a wonderful harvest. We got 2.5kg of earlies and our first bowl of homegrown strawberries.

The earlies are the Epicure variety and we can heartily recommend them, they have a delicate flavour, very white flesh and are nice and fluffy. We gently boiled them for about 8 minutes and then lightly fried them with some sage from the herb garden, served with a yogurt and chive dip. The sweet sweet strawberries, with a spoonful of creme fraiche and a dollop of honey. Deeeelish.

Going Underground

We've been watching the potato plants getting bigger and bigger but the world beneath was eternally hidden from us. Were they making nice little tubers and if so were they in good shape or had they provided a nice feast for the slugs and other little blighters?

We've got two sets of potatoes on the go our first earlies and our main crop. The main crop is Maris Piper and our first earlies are the Epicure variety.

Both sets have started budding. We're cutting off the buds from the main crop to hopefully encourage them to put all their effort into the tubers as they've still got some months to go till harvest. However we've let the earlies bud away as from what we've read these will be ready for harvesting once they flower anyway.

But of course we couldn't wait for those buds to open and decided to pull one of our grow bags out to see what we had. We're justifying this as a 'health check' to make sure everything underground was going as planned. So I started foraging around in the top soil to see if there was any sign then realised we were going to have to go deeper to find the fruits of our labour. So we pulled up three plants from one bag and the pic above is one of the results.

We got about 25 of these little fellas varying in size from slightly larger than the above to pea sized. Evidently they could easily have done with more time in the ground but they were out now and looking tasty.

And to give good thanks and a proper send off to this little crop we made a potato salad with some of our radishes and parsley.























Potato Salad with Radishes

• 20 new potatoes, large ones halved and all boiled for 15mins
• 4 or 5 radishes sliced thinly
• 3 or 4 spring onions chopped finely (not from the garden yet sadly, though they are growing)
• 3 table spoons of natural yoghurt
• Small bunch of fresh parsley chopped
• Juice of 1/2 a fresh lemon
• Salt and pepper to taste

Boil the taters and let them steam off and cool down to room temperature. Transfer them to a mixing bowl and spoon in the yoghurt, radishes and spring onion and most of the parsley. Mix this well with a broad plastic or wooden spoon and while doing so slowly squeeze in the lemon juice. Add salt and pepper to taste and give it a final mix in. Ideally it's best if you can then cover this and leave it in the fridge for an hour to let the flavours meld.

The result is a really fresh and tangy potato salad that tends not to be too heavy due to the yoghurt rather than mayonaisse, probably a bit more respectful of the wasteline too.

The potatoes themselves were full of flavour and had a lovely texture. We accompanied this with a little leaf salad from our radiccios and little gem lettuces and a few slices of butternut squash and some crumbled feta cheese (though goats cheese would have been preferable).

It was fantastic to eat our first proper meal from the garden, even if some of the ingredients were from our local grocers.

One thing to note though, when we pulled the taters up we noticed that the roots didn't go very deep inside the potato bag and so not as many taters as the bag and plant could produce. We think this is because we may have been watering them too regularly so the roots haven't had to dig down to search for water. So we've cut back the watering on all the potato plants now in the hope of letting them dig deeper and produce greater yeild.

See I said it was a health check really. Tasty one though!