Thursday 24th October, 2002
My apologies to friends I've never met - and thank you to readers who have sent messages over the last couple of months to check whether we were OK!
I would also like to thank friends who have sent in questions and queries - it's often a useful spur to go back and revise a piece I may have written quite some time ago.
My computer died completely in September - a good excuse to spend a bit more time up the road on the allotment? However, now that I've cobbled together a replacement computer, "normal service has been resumed".
And on an astonishly fresh, clean, dry autumn day, with the crispness of last night's frost still in the air, I'm off to put my wellington boots on and do some work - and see what the last few days of rain has done!
Friday 25th October, 2002
During September, we've done little more than get in the last of the summer crops -
- a couple of potimarron squash made richly nutty pumkin soups,
- we've four cobnut squash ripening on the kitchen windowsill,
- the french beans finally came through well; the Slenderette gave a superb crop of very thin beans,
- and lift most of the maincrop potatoes.
The romanesco seems to have got a second wind, and we're getting yet more of it; the new growth is a little misshapen, but tastes just as good! The brussels sprouts have got a lot of whitefly again this year, but it looks like we'll have a really good crop.
Halla was able to take vegetables she'd grown herself to the school Harvest Festival - her first parsnip, beans, salad potatoes, a sunflower, and some romanesco. Beautiful vegetables - although she was a little puzzled that nobody recognised that her contribution was the only home-grown one. Her beans had some stalks and leaves attached, her parsnip still had fresh soil clinging to it, and her sunflower had gone to seed (she was proud of it because it would feed the birds over winter). They looked a little out of place among the bags of supermarket apples and tins of baked beans - a little too genuine a harvest! And we wonder why children understand so little about food!
Autumn is well and truly here! We'd our first proper frosts on Friday and Saturday - clear nights and crisp, clean morning air. We got the beans and squash in just days before. Good timing.
Ideal really for taking the kids up to Harlow Carr on Saturday. A group of us were going as part of our gardening course - just in time to see the first proper autumn colouring.
The children spent much of the time going around the trial vegetable plot, comparing RHS vegetables with our own. Our asparagus is better, but they were impressed by what they saw. Tamanna came back with a page of good ideas she'd jotted down - different types of kale to try, tomatilloes, alpine strawberries, Jeruslaem artichokes, and different herbs. They were also fascinated by the national rhubarb collection. It was just as well the selection of herbs or rhubarb varieties available in the shop was VERY limited - it could have been an expensive day!
The other attraction for the kids was the Northern Fruit Group's Apple Day event. They were fascinated to see and smell the different varieties - there were perhaps 150 of them displayed in the one room. Ducking for apples - the three of them kept going back for more; apple printing; apple tasting - the lot. Kept them happy all afternoon!
More on Yorkshire apple varieties.
Only the toffee/chocolate apples disappointed - they were on Granny Smiths; after an afternoon tasting, smelling, eating beautiful apples, they each took one bite, ate off the covering, and asked if they could chuck the nasty, sour, tasteless Granny Smith in the nearest bin! I know I shouldn't have encouraged them - but you can hardly fault them for developing a taste for good apples!
Got a good day's work in yesterday - I got the herb bed cleaned out. The herbs were far too close together; when I bought them in little pots, they looked so small and insignificant, I didn't want them to look lonely! Anyway, now I've lifted them, pruned them back into an appropriate size, split them, and removed the encroaching couch grass from the root balls, and now I have a herb bed three times larger!
Also got the fruit bush patch cleaned out and forked over, and prepared a bed for the gooseberry bushes. The cuttings I took last year have all taken - and look healthier than the couple of bushes I bought. Now what do I do? Where do I put 14 gooseberry bushes - it doesn't feel right somehow to have tended them all year, only to rip them up and compost them!
There are now only two patches on my plots which I've not brought under cultivation. I've been loath to get started clearing them. It sounds bizarre, but I had almost decided to leave them wild another year, and save the pleasure of clearing them. No, I'm not being sarcastic! I know that once I've got these two corners cultivated, I'll have no more clearing to do.
There is something primal and peasant in the very special pleasure of turning a wild patch into a bed in autumn, watching the potatoes grow the next year, and having a well-tended fertile and fruitful patch the year after.
Anyway, it was still a fine autumn afternoon, clear blue sky, fresh breeze out of the south west - but just too chilly to sit down and listen to the plants drawing their sap down for winter.
I've started clearing the back patch - about 8 foot by 20, rank and riddled with brambles and raspberries gone wild; in the middle are a few rhubarb crowns neglected for years. I've cut the worst down and started digging out the toughest weeds. I'll salvage the rhubarb to replant it somewhere else. The idea was to put in some raspberry canes - but that probably needs rethinking; I wonder if the wild rasps have been harbouring any disease or virus infection?
The other wild spot is at the front end - around and under an old metal bath; I've emptied that, and have promised the kids I'll sink it into the ground to make a pond.
I'd hoped to get that done today, but October storm and rain has returned. As I sit here, there is a distant patch of clear blue sky over the Pennines - but here in Leeds, it's grey, windy, cold, - and raining.