Happy Solstice!!!

I don't like Christmas and I don't apologise for that.

So this is as Christmassy as it gets.

Arthur is clearly coveting a leading role in panto

Wheareas Boris patently feels the same way as I do about Christmas.

I do, however, very much like sausage rolls and mince pies. And I have made a Christmas cake which I've been feeding alcohol for the last couple of months. I've actually been feeding it Cointreau, for in a deliberate departure from tradition I've made a spicy orange rich fruit cake.
Last night it came to decorating it. When I was little, Christmas cake came with peaks and troughs of royal icing with various traditional figurines poked into the top - Santa Claus, a reindeer, some fir trees.
I felt this would not be appropriate for my cake, so opted to go with the orange theme. This is what I came up with. I'm rather proud of it.

The flowers are about looking forward to Spring. I've decided that a Solstice celebration would be more appropriate for us in future - it's probably where Christmas started anyway. But don't worry. I don't intend to get dressed up in a long cloak with a pointy hat and start prancing around a fire in some woodland clearing. I will celebrate quietly with Sue and the animals.
The Winter Solstice is a turning point in the year, especially for those of us who have chosen to live off the land. The coldest months are ahead of us, but the days get longer. Winter Solstice this year occurs at 04:49 on 22nd December. Hopefully the dank and damp dullness of November and early December will give way to crisp and clear winter days. A bit of frost wouldn't go amiss either and a good cold snap would make a refreshing change.
I'm already thinking about sowing seeds and I've just put in my big seed order for next year. I've started edging the veg beds ready to cultivate them and I've started a big tidy up.
In the next couple of days the shallots and garlic will be planted as they need a cold snap to encourage the cloves to divide.
So I guess that's it. The 2016 season is upon us. Let's hope it's a good one.

And sow we begin again

The dining room table is no longer available for dining.
For the near end is where I am chitting my potatoes and the far end has just been set up as my sowing station.
I normally resist the urge to sow seeds for a couple more weeks at least. In the house they just go leggy and tend to succumb to damping off. I can give them the heat they require, though for most this is only necessary for germination itself. But I can't provide anywhere light enough and airy enough.

I'd love to move them into the polytunnel, but daytime temperatures in there at the moment range from 50 to 70, and that's in a very mild late winter. 50 should be OK for leeks, but I'm not sure about tiny tomato plants, chillies or aubergines.

Pepper seeds. Four varieties in one half tray.
I'll transplant them quickly so they don't get crowded.

Leek Jealousy
Now, every year at the Fenland Smallholders produce show, someone turns up with impossibly perfect leeks, whilst mine are still far from fully grown. Fortunately last year I managed to beat them off with my red cabbage, which took the rosette in 'best vegetable grown above ground' category.
But I resolved that I too would have leeks in September. I scoured the seed catalogues and purchased a packet of leek seeds of the variety Jolant, an early variety. I sowed the seeds last week and they are already coming through.



Babies thrown out
And with the knowledge that I now have a hotbed in the polytunnel which is already beginning to warm up, I've also started off my tomatoes, aubergines, chillies and peppers too. In fact, the smaller seeds of the cherry varieties have germinated already. I'm going to be bold and put them straight out into the mini greenhouses over the hotbed and see what happens. If the experiment fails, there's still plenty enough time to start again.

Cherry Tomato "Honeybee"

Meanwhile, in the outside beds..
Of course, with the passing of winter and the advent of spring, the veg beds need getting ready. There's a constant ebb and flow between the ground drying out and another rainy day making it too wet to work. But the balance is moving towards being workable and if I don't start now, it won't be long before I have queues of young plants waiting to go into beds which are not ready.
Here's the first bed to get the treatment. Doesn't it look neat!

Meanwhile, the garlic cloves which I planted about a month ago have been making the very most of their head start.

88 degrees in early March!
ed. The newly germinated leeks and a few tomatoes which have just started to come through have been thrown into the cauldron today. They are in a mini greenhouse, over the hotbed, in the polytunnel. This morning, under perfectly blue skies, I recorded a temperature of 88 degrees in there! I really need to get myself a max/min thermometer though to see what's happening at night.





Garlic and Daffodils.

The first planting of 2014 - garlic

If you remember, last week I took the opportunity to stock up on some Indian spices while I was down in London. They also had some amazing garlic bulbs for sale, not the dried up ones but plump, juicy bulbs beginning to sprout.

I'm never sure what to do about garlic. All the books say to buy disease-free bulbs and to replace stock each year. But this is not cheap and it would probably be cheaper just to buy garlic in the shop - it would at the very least be a marginal crop. On the other hand, an old gardener I know reckons that once you've bought garlic the once, you're stocked forever.
So last year I used cloves saved from the year before and ... you've guessed ... it almost completely failed. Now, whether this was due to disease, strength of stock or some other factor, I cannot tell.
I've flown in the face of advice on many occasions, usually learning the hard way instead. But this year I decided to order in a few fresh garlic bulbs, since my potato supplier has started to stock them which means I don't end up paying twice for postage.
But there has still been a niggling thought which keeps coming back to me. What about those lovely, juicy garlic bulbs you can get in the shops? Surely they would grow?  And they certainly don't cost the earth, unlike those from the catalogues. And if the ones from the gardening companies can't be used from year to year, then what's the point?

So, back to that Indian grocers shop. I purchased four of his best garlic heads and decided to give them a go in the garden. If each clove developed into anything like what I was purchasing then this would be a very good buy.
The only problem now was that they needed planting, for garlic goes into the soil early in the winter. But with the constant stream of storms and downpours we've been having, I really didn't fancy putting spade to earth.


Despite the photos, it was actually me who planted most of the daff bulbs.
















But another job was pressing, too. For a couple of weeks ago I purchased some daffodil bulbs at a knockdown price. There's a reason why they are sold off so cheap though, as it's really too late to be putting them in. They probably won't all come through, but then they were less than a quarter of their original price. Anyhow, with the weather being as it has, they've just sat in the hallway poking out of their mesh bags and making me feel guilty every time I've walked past them.
So, with a slight frost this morning and a break in the weather, I resolved to make the most of a fine winter's day and get them planted.

The ground was surprisingly unsodden. Crumbly would be exaggerating, but certainly not a sticky mass of lumpy clay.
The daffodil bulbs went in quickly, round the edge of the lawn where I can leave them unmown during their messy phase after flowering.
With the soil so compliant, I bit the bullet and decided to tackle those garlic bulbs too. Sue broke them up and we got exactly fifty cloves from four heads.

I turned the soil over in one of the beds where the root crops will grow next year - I like to grow my garlic and onions in with the roots to help ward off the carrot fly.
With a little 'help' from the chickens (who also did their best to eat the garlic every time I turned my back), the patch was soon dug.

It didn't take long to push the cloves in to the soil, up to their necks. It won't be long before they start sending out roots and getting a headstart ready to shoot up, divide and plump up in the spring and summer. That's as long as I can keep the chickens away from them.

Yours truly planting up a grid of garlic cloves,
being very careful not to tread on the soil.

But I do like the chickens to go into the veg plot in the winter. They search out the overwintering bugs, keep the grass down and fertilise the ground. They keep me company too when I'm digging.
It just means that any winter crops need a little extra protection.

It doesn't look much, but this is the start of the
veg plot 2014.

That's Shallot (and other Alliums)



Alliums ready for drying and processing.
Red Onions, Shallots and Garlic.



Wednesday 29th August 2012

A bit late for this really, but I've been clinging on to the hope that my onions, shallots and garlic might just somehow manage to plump up a little more. This goes against all the laws of nature, as the leaves have faded long ago.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I unearthed a few of my alliums and presented them to Sue to do something with. She consulted her books of potions and turned a dirty, straggly basket of onions and shallots into this...

Last year, Sue conjured up a most wonderful Red Onion Marmalade which went down very well with all who tried it. The lingering aroma of slowly cooked onions has just about left the house in time for this year's harvest to be preserved.

I also had a good first go at plaiting onions and garlic. Unfortunatley a repeat is unlikely this year as the stems are gone.

Anyway, though not a classic year, there's more to pick and process when the weather turns dry again and there'll be enough to keep us going till the next harvest.

Won't be long now until I need to start thinking about autumn planting some garlic. The shallots traditionally go in on the first day of the year, though I suspect this is not too critical if that New Year's Day hangover is too heavy.