Tag: growing chillies

Too hot – even for red peppers

We had to remove five of these pepper plants from the greenhouse this week, because they were in danger of expiring in the heat. It’s hardly surprising that plants can be extremely fussy about their environment. A couple of years ago we had aubergines in pots in the same greenhouse and they sulked and looked deficient until I moved them outside into a border where they instantly revived and produced a decent crop. Even chillies will complain if they get too much heat.

This week I also learned an entirely new and very useful term from a book on the economics of so-called green capitalism. I’ve mentioned it before – “The Value of a Whale” by Adrienne Buller and I thoroughly recommend it. The term is “Knightian uncertainty” which describes the likelihood of an event occurring for which there is no possibility of assembling any predictive data. We’re very comfortable with the idea of risk because, as the author points out, when you’re throwing dice it’s simple to calculate the odds of throwing (say) three sixes in a row. A Knightian uncertainty is the kind we might ascribe to ecological and climate events like the ones we call “tipping points” and she cites the example of the possibility of the Thwaites Glacier collapsing completely – it already dumps 50 billion tonnes a year into the Antarctic Ocean and if it failed would raise sea levels by up to ten feet! We know it’s capable of happening but the scenario leading to such a catastrophe is simply too complicated to calculate. There are too many variables and too many possible contributory factors to make a calculation of risk. Therefore the only rational response is to abide by the precautionary principle that minimises any activities which even might be a contributory factor.

Anyway – enough of the dismal science; today we may or may not be in the midst of one of those climactic moments because we won’t know until a few more drought affected summers have passed, by which time it might be too late to do anything. “Wait and see” is not a coherent basis for climate change policy any more.

In the real world we get up increasingly early to tend the allotment and then we pretty much lock ourselves into the flat with the windows and shutters closed against the heat. Today we watered and went just as the Farmers Market was opening, and where we discovered that hundreds of other people had adopted the same heat busting tactic.

After a long process of trying out all the local butchers we’ve finally settled on Kimbers Farm Shop who are at the market every Saturday. We’ve got to know them pretty well and today the conversation inevitably turned to the drought and how it was affecting their grass-fed herd of beef cattle and the flock of sheep kept by one of the sons in law, nearby. They’ve been farming the same land for 300 years so for a long view of farming they bring a world of experience, and they’re having a desperate time at the moment. Their grass is so parched and brown that they’ve had to start cutting grass and taking it to the animals rather than grazing them in open fields. As she explained the rationale to us, one of the family members told us how – with four legs to trample, and a rear end to distribute the manure – cattle and sheep make a significant amount of precious grass inedible. It’s immensely labour intensive taking the food to the animals, and they’ve had trouble with some machinery clogging with seed heads, so it’s being done by hand. The shame, she said, is that so many wealthy incomers have bought up farms in the district and refuse to allow farming on them. In a sane system, they would be forced either to maintain the land properly themselves or rent it to farmers who would do it for them, but here in the UK if you’ve got the money you can take prime agricultural land out of circulation during what’s becoming a food crisis – just so you can enjoy the view without the bother of cows and sheep making noise and smells. We all too easily forget that there are a series of interrelated crises going on simultaneously. It’s not just climate because food production is an intimately related

Of course there are ways of regenerative farming that can preserve and build up the soil and its capacity to hold water, but they all take time to implement. Today’s Guardian featured a nice photo of a sheep dozing in the shade of a tall oak tree. The trouble with the photo is that the tree must have been at the very least fifty years old as the old joke related of the man asked for directions to a distant place and who responded with “well I wouldn’t start from here!”

Yesterday we went out into the heat to plan a route to the hospital I need to attend for a routine surveillance procedure next week. With thoughts of the drought, the heatwave and the increasing evidence that a climate catastrophe upon us right now; We had discovered that it’s only accessible by car since there’s no bus service – it’s a private hospital that only takes patients like me for a fat fee when the local NHS hospital need to massage their figures. We had to negotiate much of a ring road which was as close to hell as anything else I’ve ever experienced, and eventually after several false turns emerged into a business/industrial park in which our building was sited and indistinguishable from all the other units in which -for all I know – Russian oligarchs are busy waterboarding prisoners they’ve hijacked and sent to this country for ‘interrogation‘. It was not an encouraging introduction to these state of the art facilities in which I will be sedated and unable to flee.

I’m maundering I know, but these crises are bowling down the road towards us and yet no-one seems to be taking ownership of them or even attempting to formulate some policies. Anyone can make a mistake but to run a whole country into the buffers takes a peculiarly ideological kind of stupidity. We’re promised a bit of rain next week so we should be able to report soon on how well the Potwell Inn allotment has coped with this second heatwave in a difficult summer.

Something hot?

Habanero – the hottest one we grow!

Well, in the midst of this strangest of seasons we have managed to grow enough chillies to keep us going through the winter, although taking the extraordinary weather into account it looks as if ripening the last few stragglers is going to be a problem. For the first year since we’ve been on the plot, we managed to eat all our sweetcorn before the badgers/rats/squirrels and possibly deer got to them. We only managed this by planting them in the most inaccessible place and surrounding them with sheep netting barriers – it was, however, worth the hassle because home grown corn (like most veg) is so much better than the shop version. You wonder if they’ve been 3D printing them from cardboard.

The chillies seem to be a bit of a blokey enthusiasm, with fierce competition to grow a chilli hot enough to heat a small town for a week – a sort of vegetable willie waving, if that’s not too lively a metaphor for a Tuesday morning. We don’t even eat anything much hotter than a Jalapeño, so my Apache chillies are dutifully frozen, and the Habaneros respectfully avoided. The pleasure it seems is in the achievement of getting them to bear fruit and ripen – which in a season that’s swerved between the biblical extremes of flood, fire and storm is a bit of a problem. *Even the frogs have done exceptionally well this year but the boils have mercifully stayed away.

However the cherry tomatoes have suffered terribly from brown rot, and that’s down to the erratic rain and sunshine and exacerbated by water splash on the leaves. But we’ve gathered enough from the rather sad looking bushes to make a couple of litres of oven dried tomatoes in oil. It’s a skill to balance dryness with sheer toughness because once they’ve gone to far, no amount of olive oil will bring them back to life. I like to give these tomatoes twenty minutes in their oil at around 110C in the oven after drying them overnight at 65C because low acidity bottled fruits can, in exceptional circumstances, develop botulinus contamination.

The same problem happens with figs if you dry them in their skins. To be fair, nearly everything is better eaten fresh, straight out of the ground or off the tree. I’d make some fig compôte except we’re cutting out sugar at the moment and all of my favourite preserves are close to pure carbohydrate. As Oscar Wilde said – “I can withstand anything except temptation”, and DH Lawrence got positively aroused by them, but I think they’d both be quite safe with this year’s efforts in the Potwell Inn kitchen.

So this year has been pretty good. I love the fact that the old, unglamorous plants like savoy cabbages, brussels sprouts, and especially leeks are all loving it. The autumn leeks are stout and sweet and the succession ones are coming along far better than they have for the past four years, which – I guess – is what allotmenteering is all about. You have to embrace and enjoy success when it comes, but never get blown off course by failure. Once you’ve renounced the chemicals and given up the extractive attitude then you’re in a one on one relationship with the earth which has its own ways and is a far better teacher than any book. In many ways, ‘though I can’t claim any deep knowledge of the subject, the earth teaches a form of Tai Chi, or Taoist spirituality. I don’t mean all that stuff about being ‘closer to God in a garden’ which completely misunderstands what happens when merely looking at something miraculously becomes beholding. Forgive me, I’m digging deep here but it’s a crucial distinction.

There really is a huge difference between hard gardening that wants to bully and harry the earth into submission, and contemplative gardening that opens intangible channels through which we can ‘hear’ and even ‘understand’ what response is asked of us.

Don’t cling! Don’t strive! Abandon yourself! Look beneath your feet!

Ryōkan

* Biblical joke, sorry. Old habits die hard.

Still waiting for the police to drop by!

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Well, we’re not exactly expecting anyone to break down the doors but every time we walk back to the flat we look up and see the daylight lamps blazing away over the propagators we think it should at least raise a tiny bit of interest. In any case I’m longing to invite a suspicious officer into the flat to check us out, with –   “Sorry mate – Madame’s maxed out on the basil today and she can’t really speak at the moment, but do come in for a cup of green tea and a flapjack“. 

We love our propagators.  They take a bit of getting used to but once you’ve got the hang of it even so-called difficult subjects become a lot easier.  The first year I sowed chillies I faffed about so much with the temperatures that the only seeds that germinated at all were the Hungarian Hot Wax. The second year went much better, but we discovered that far from being terribly delicate, the old monsters – well at least the Hot Wax and Jalapeno actually preferred it in a sheltered spot outside on the allotment. Only the hottest ones needed protection.  They also resented overcrowding – so if you’re struggling with hot chillies try giving them more space. We also went from ordinary seed compost to composted coir, but we’ve decided that for all its green credentials it’s better to make a home made mix of compost, soil and vermiculite rather than pure coir. One more thing worth trying is to get them germinated and then turn the heat down a bit.  Ours germinate well at 25C but once they’re looking healthy we’ll turn the heat down but still give them lots of light – about 12 hours.  I’m sure there are dozens of experts out there who know better but this year we’ve had 100% germination of the chillies.  ‘Don’t worry’ seems to be the order of the day.

But we’ve also had two dry days and so at last I made a start with moving the water butts to a new and much higher position alongside the shed. There’s room for three 250 litre butts, but when they’re full they’ll weigh 750 Kg  and so the stand needs to be really – no really strong.  The maths is easy –  one litre weighs a kilogramme. I like that kind of unit.  But I don’t like the proliferation of standards that makes joining the water butts together into a nightmare. When Britain ruled the world we just made up a standard, announced it to the world and expected everyone else to comply – and if they didn’t we sent a gunboat up the high street.  So in what ought to be the simple issue of things like nuts, bolts and pipe fittings there are always two standards – one for the heritage lovers, let’s say British Standard Pipe fittings – doesn’t that sound grand – and another for the rest of the slightly more intelligent world. But marooned on this delusional island as we are, it becomes necessary to learn three standards for almost every fitting except those you can hit, and there is a flourishing but incomprehensible market in adaptors which sit like translating apps between a threaded hole and a pipe.

Why bother? you might wonder.  Well it’s because standard water butt taps turn a big – 25mm outlet into a very small one – about 1/3 the diameter which, when you’re filling a watering can or trying to feed a soaker hose turns a generous flow into something with prostate problems.  So my idea is to replace the cheap plastic taps with much more expensive 25mm all-the-way-to-the-pipe taps, and join all the butts together with fancy blue pipe so I can fill a watering can before it gets dark.

The carpentry bit went smoothly and I was able to build the platform without any outlay, just using timber left over from other projects on the allotment. I baled out the first butt and moved it on to the stand but my first attempt to fit a new bung failed miserably.  Like all good gardeners I carry a vernier in my toolbox – no really – and the replacement seems to be just under 1mm bigger in diameter than the original, although they’re both supposed to be 3/4 BSP. Is this, I wonder, because these mains pressure components are meant to be what we experts call “a bash fit”?  Who knows? But as a precautionary measure I’ve ordered a different manufacturer’s so-called ‘compatible’ component which I’ll try tomorrow.  The take-home lesson for today is the one that all plumbers understand and cost into their quotations, namely nothing ever fits first time and endless waiting at the stores counter is just part of life’s rich tapestry.

The fates never smile across the whole of the Potwell Inn at once, and I’ll settle for 100% germination even if the payback is a lot of fiddling around with pipes – at least the sun shone and the birds sang and Madame sowed the first parsnips – which will probably take until midsummer to germinate. In a tiny vignette from our charmed existence at the Inn, we were sitting companionably on the sofa watching something tedious on the idiots’ lantern and I turned to Madame and said – “you smell nice”.  “Oh” she said – “you smell sweaty”. Hm.

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Rats vanquished, Seville oranges in!

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After a somewhat gloomy posting yesterday I think it’s time to put the more positive side of life forward. For instance – today we spent a few hours at the allotment, weeding and gathering dead leaves (they attract slugs).  The sun was shining and as I turned the compost heap I could see that it’s thriving and aerobic in spite of the wet weather and the preponderance of green kitchen waste which makes it rather dense. But the worms don’t seem to mind and they were there in their tens of thousands.  We did nothing at all to introduce worms to the heap, they just moved in and they’re doing a brilliant job of reducing everything down. We’ve put substantial amounts of cardboard in with the waste – in fact all of the cardboard packaging that comes into the flat except the stuff that looks too shiny to be true because we suspect it’s probably got a plastic coating. Biodegradable tea bags go in and quickly reduce to something that looks like slime mould. The so-called green caddy bags are very persistent and so we now take them out.  I think some manufacturers think that breaking big bits of plastic into tiny bits is biodegrading – it isn’t. The other big addition is the large corrugated cardboard boxes that come with furniture and especially bicycles.  We saw the larger sheets up roughly and within a week or two they completely disappear.

The only disappointment was the fact that our persistent thief has stolen one of the rat traps.  We’ve lost so much stuff over the past three years we’ve racked our brains to think who it might be, and we think it’s probably the tenant who was evicted from half of our allotment because he neglected it completely. He seemed to be bearing some kind of grudge against us – I see him often in the street and he gurns at me in a knowing way as if he knows something I don’t. What is it about thieves that makes them want to make their criminality known to the victims? In a thoroughly uncharitable manner I take delight that he’s expending so much spiritual energy trying to get at us and I smile back wondering if it ever penetrates his dull brain that we know and we don’t care. We just bolt things down more carefully.

Anyway the sun was shining and that was enough to redeem the shining hour; so it was a bonus when we found a box of Seville oranges to make this year’s marmalade – that’s a job for tomorrow, I think.  I’ve also got to do some baking because our grandson is putting on a cake stall at his primary school, to raise funds for the victims of the Australian bush fires – his mum’s Australian. He’s only seven years old and we’re all immensely proud of him.

The street weeds are growing about an inch a day and I’m slowly checking and double checking what’s there. With no flowers you’ve only got growth habit, leaf shape and stalk colour and shape to go on which demands a bit more detective work sometimes but saying hello to them by name makes the walk to the shops more fun. Tonight, because the sky was clear, we had an extra half hour of daylight, a lovely feeling.

The other bit of positive news is that we went through the seeds today and we’ve got enough of nearly all the chillies to get them in very soon. Seed doesn’t last forever but four varieties of chilli cost quite a bit if you’re buying them fresh, so there’s just one more to buy.  Last season’s habaneros are so hot that I think we’ve got enough dried to last for years.

And finally, if you’re a regular reader, you’ll know I took a load of books to a local charity shop last year.  They emailed me today to say that they’d sold them and raised just under £500 for the charity. I think I’ll take another batch.

Chilli round-up+

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This little boxful was the third crop of chillies this season and I’m properly pleased with the way they’ve gone.  All five varieties provided a crop, and following James Wong’s advice to stress them a bit has paid dividends in the heat department as they’ve all reached somewhere near their potential. What’s been so interesting is the difference in flavour between the varieties, and the fact that some of the milder ones did better out in the sheltered parts of the open allotment than in the greenhouse. So next year I’ll look around for perhaps one new variety but I think I’ve found a good range of heat and flavour with an abundant crop. We’ve made chilli oil, chilli sauce; we dried some and we’ve eaten some raw. When I first thought of growing them, like most people I suspect, I thought they’d be far more difficult than they turned out to be.  I didn’t use any special compost and they only got fed with liquid seaweed.  The only specialist kit we used was the propagator with its daylight lamps to get them going in the late winter so we could give them the longest possible season. Looking back over the past two years the only real failures have been in germination – I think in the first year I had the temperature set far too high, in nervous anticipation of the supposed difficulty, because a steady 20 – 25C brought more reliable results in our set-up. The organge ones in the photo are Habaneros and the smaller red ones are the third flush of F1 Apache – much smaller than their earlier flushes. The organic farm shop in the market were selling these at 35p each, so they’ve more than earned their keep.

But much of today was spent at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath where we went to see an exhibition of ceramics by James Tower, and very fine it was.

It’s great to see a finished piece with its preparatory drawings – this one’s called “Copse” and I think it’s very beautiful.  Yesterday’s RWA Open was a selling exhibition and as always, very densely hung. I often find one or two pieces in a show that I really like, but the Open left me stone cold and I couldn’t quite figure out why. The pieces of work were often very competent (that sounds like faint praise, I know) but seen en masse it felt like gorging on sweets.  The James Tower exhibition gave the work (and us) room to breathe and we loved it. Suffering as I always do, from morbid introspection, I wondered why this work  seemed so much better. One awful possibility is that I’m old and set in my ways and unwilling to accept new media and ideas.  But really I don’t think that’s the case so much as the difficulty I have with much recent work that’s trying to teach me something. Didactic, concept driven art often lacks the contemplative and quiet side that I prefer.  I sat once in the Rothko room in Tate Modern, I was there for about 3/4 hour and during that time dozens of people walked in, walked around and out again. The work demands, and repays time spent with it. The much derided practice of copying favourite paintings is actually a rather good way of understanding them, and the sheer discipline of drawing is all-but disappearing from the curriculum. Does that make me an old fogey? I’m sure there’s a great deal of recently produced art that emerges from the kind of obsessive study and contemplation I’m talking about and, in fact, it’s possible think that those artists who are still pursuing drawing as a means of understanding, are still carrying the flame. We always make a point of going to the Jerwood Drawing Prize exhibitions, obviously only possible if you’re in the UK.

Anyway, there we are – I expect I’ve annoyed quite enough people by mixing up allotments and art but tough.  I’m also interested in philosophy, the price of fish, heading off the coming ecological and climate crisis and (consequently) economics.  I’ve spent a lifetime refusing to be simple and so should anyone who cares about thriving. Our culture wants us all to live as if we could fit life into a small shed, but I’ve discovered (with a great deal of help) that I actually live in a large, rambling and poorly maintained stately home which I choose to call the Potwell Inn. There are still rooms I haven’t been in yet; we’re not subsidised by the National Trust; it’s open all hours, and we’re always happy to have a lock-in with the right company. Tonight’s special is toasted cheese on sourdough.

The allotment, a recipe, some history, a bit about medicinal herbs and even a bit about bread! No botany.

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Enough botany for now, then – it’s back to ‘real’ life, sweating it out at 30C on the allotment and then bizarrely cooking supper in the oven, raising the temperature in the kitchen to about 40C, ‘nothing’ for my two chef sons, I can hear them saying, but plenty hot enough for me.  We went up at 8.30am in the hope that we could get things done in the cool part of the day, but 2 hours later we were still at it when Madame got the vapours and went on strike under the umbrella. It’s great having the umbrella on the allotment but despite its size it seems only to provide shade for one. I think I’m going to invent a pivotable sail to attach to the shed so we can move it around with the sun.

This year we’ve followed the advice of James Wong in his book about growing for flavour.  He says that chillies get hotter if they’re subjected to stress, and so it seems mollycoddling them with with auto watering last year may have prevented them from reaching their full potential. This year they’ve been watered only when almost dried out and they’ve loved it.  Last year’s F1 Apache chillies were so mild I could pick them off the plant and eat them.  I did the same thing today and they almost blew my head off – I was left scampering around the allotment looking for something cold to drink. So I’ve managed to grow successfully all five varieties including the Scotch Bonnet type which around the top of the Scoville scale, but I shan’t be randomly picking them!

Last Friday’s rain was a decent soaking and when I dug the shallots today the earth was quite moist.  A couple of haulm’s worth of Arran Pilot potatoes were looking good and plump.

Back home with a trug full of fresh veg I cooked an old favourite dish – Carbonnade Nîmoise a very simple French dish which would have been cooked in a cooling bread oven back in the day, and makes a very small amount of lamb go a long way.  Garlic, carrots potatoes and fresh herbs all dug and picked this morning and baked in the oven with some olive oil, a couple of slices of bacon, a glass of wine and a dollop of reduced stock from the fridge. It’s impossible to overcook it, sealed in an extra foil cover under the lid. The star of the show is usually the potatoes which seem to soak up all the flavours, and if it’s cooked right it’s so tender you could eat it with a spoon.

More good new too on the allotment.  I was starting to clear the 50 square metres of loaned land, on which we grew potatoes this year,  and our neighbour said he was happy to continue the loan for another season, so we decided on the spot that we would overwinter our broad beans there this autumn.  To be honest we grew far too many spuds this year but we pay our neighbour in kind for the loan and he takes a share of the produce from his piece of land – it works very well.

And although the field botany phase has ended, there’s still all the typing up to do.  I usually make a sortable list in Word so I can eliminate any duplicates and do a final check on any doubtfuls. Luckily I have a contact in the Bath Nats who is willing to cast an eye over any dubious identifications and we’ll be seeing him on Thursday anyway because he’s running a workshop on identifying Rumex spp – yes I’m a complete propeller head!

On another tack, if you’ve been following for a while, you’ll know that I’ve been sharpening my skills in identifying plants with medicinal uses. That’s raised some very interesting ethical issues, for instance I found dozens of Betony plants on the clifftop at St Davids, but nothing would induce me to pick them because there just aren’t enough, and there are many medicinal plants that are in danger of being foraged into extinction, sometimes for money. I mentioned in a previous posting how I watched in horror when, on a fungus foray, I saw a young woman (known to me) pick every single Ragged Parasol fungus in a stand of a couple of dozen – far more than any family could reasonably eat. In fact foraging is becoming something of a menace in places.  I know there are many medicinal herbs we can grow on the allotment and some – couch root, dandelions and nettles, for instance, are so prolific that it’s perfectly OK to take a regular cut.  I’m trying to make a list of sustainably available plants in our immediate area and, trust me, I shan’t be publishing their whereabouts. However the vast quantities of these plants that are being processed and added to everything from cough mixture to cosmetics makes you wonder how sustainable or ethical the supply line is.  There’s no real compulsion to monitor it – for instance I was greatly shocked to read on the Plantlife website that even the supply of licorice is under threat.  We know it can be (or was) at least grown in Pontefract and presumably could be grown again – a nice little niche income for a farm with the right soil conditions.

This has been a bit of a mixed bag of a posting but, in my defence, I haven’t mentioned sourdough, mainly because we bake less in the summer.  While we were away Madame was reading about farm life on Ramsey Island and in those days (the 1940’s) ‘mother’ would bake 30 loaves a week in a paraffin fuelled oven. The same book had many photos of the family, and it was clear that the grandson of the family is still farming in the area – in fact he was the one with the brilliant sheepdogs – and the image of his grandfather. A photo of the flock of sheep is at the top of the post.

If you’re interested in following up on the sustainability of medicinal plants I found this paper – but be warned, it’s mind bogglingly thorough!

Click to access European_med_plants.pdf

 

The carnival art of the window box

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Yesterday, when I took this photo from the kitchen, looking out over the park, I fully intended to write something about the indelicate art of window boxes. Ours are so grossly over the top they’re positively pink wigs and leopard skin tights but that’s the point.  Window boxes work from a distance and aren’t intended to impress with their subtlety.  They’re also very useful from the inside of the flat because they create an intermediate space between inside and outside.  All very comforting and – even better – they act as a bottom-up blind giving us some privacy from the road.  If you add in the number of visiting pollinators and insects they’re worth every penny (or pound) we spend on them.

So that was it really.  I probably would have waffled on a bit more but it was a busy day with an early visit to our grandchilds nursery for a grandparent’s day – brilliant, we both wanted to go to that school! Then straight up to the allotment and then on to a meeting in the evening.

The allotment has reached one of those states of stasis that happen from time to time.  It never lasts very long, but you just get a breather and time to step back for  moment and see what’s what. What was what in the greenhouse yesterday was the growing feeling that the violent temperature changes that happen in small greenhouses, (ours is 6X4) and can go from 15C to 40C in a couple of hours, is not a good environment even for heat loving chllies. If the greenhouse is in your garden – ie twenty steps away – its possible to control things a bit, but an allotment is necessarily a bit more remote and you can’t spend all day and every day fussing over it. The wet spring and low temperatures kept the automatic vents closed, much to the delight of the whitefly who just loved it.  So the plants were set back and looked a bit sorry for themselves.  But over the last couple of weeks I’ve been moving tender subjects into the open plots and they’ve loved it. Peppers, chillies, aubergines and tomatoes have all done much better outside.  A bit of space and unrestricted root growth has given them a new lease of life. This enabled more space in the greenhouse and even these plants began to look a bit happier.  So over the last two days, and by way of another of my beloved experiments I’ve re-potted some of them and moved some into open ground and some into the cold frames, leaving a small number in the greenhouse but in much larger pots.

IMG_5710Only one variety of chilli has done well in the greenhouse and the label claimed it was an Apachi F1, but we had real trouble with labels this year.  We moved over to wooden labels and within weeks they were illegible.  I think it was almost certainly a Romital.  Anyway I took a ripe one off the plant today and tasted it and it was just lovely – full of flavour, pretty hot and perfect – I’d say – for a curry. Luckily there’s a good crop on the way.  The Hungarian Hot Wax have had a splendid season so far.  They’re mild and warm and again, full of flavour. The Apaches – the real ones – have done well, and the worst looking of the lot are the Habaneros which look terrible.  I hope their new environment suits them better.

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We’ve been living on fresh peas and broad beans, and yesterday we harvested some Pink Fir Apple potatoes which are brilliant for potato salads.  Last year we evolved a recipe that included fresh basil and pink peppercorns – “baises roses” – pink kisses in French. I could eat it three times a day!

So home and then straight out to a meeting  – details below:

Ted Howard, Co-Founder and President of the Democracy Collaborative in the USA and described as ‘one of 25 visionaries changing your world’ has agreed to talk at a Bath Co-operative Alliance public meeting on Community Wealth Building .This is a powerful tool for more inclusive and democratic local economies which is being implemented in places as diverse as the US city of Cleveland, Barcelona, Bologna and Preston (named as the UKs most rapidly improving urban area in 2018).

Introduction by Jules Peck who has a thirty year career working on sustainable development.

It was packed – half a dozen local councillors and some famous faces – Ken Loach, for instance, was one of the sponsors. It was extremely stimulating stuff and and gave us enough to go on talking about it for most of today.  I do hope something will come of it – the Preston (UK) project sounded repeatable.

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Spectacular skies as we walked home after the meeting and so late to bed for the third night on the run, and then up with the seagulls. Today was more of the same.  Produce is coming off the allotment so fast we were forced to examine the stored, dried and pickled food from last year. The pickled cucumbers had not survived.  It wasn’t so much the taste as the slimy texture, and so they went into the bin along with the salted beans which I only did out of curiosity because I read about them in Patience Gray’s biography.  I think the fairest thing you can say about them is that if there was nothing else green on the plate you might eat them.  We really don’t need to! Last year’s raspberry vinegar has been pressed into service to pickle this year’s glut of beetroot.

Today we bumped into the owner of the plot with the collapsing shed.  I took what might well be the last photo before it goes on to a bonfire. Farewell old friend!

 

Please welcome the Mark IV water feeder

IMG_5022The Potwell Inn is proud to present the very latest and most sophisticated ever version of the semi-automatic propagator watering device (world patents pending). Having thought through the problems and making several minor adjustments to the width of the feeder strip a sudden bright idea came to me and I added a second cork to hold the ribbon of capillary mat above the surface. Then as a final whimsical thought I added a twig of bay as a kind of mast to which I could lash the ribbon with a piece of string. It now resembles a raft and is bobbing very satisfyingly at the top of the cistern. Whether it works better that the previous iterations is yet to be seen.  Meanwhile the hottest of the chillies are refusing every temptation to germinate while the Hungarian Hot Wax are thriving but I refuse to give up because it’s the first day of spring.

Back on the allotment the hot bed has worked pretty well and the seeds I sowed about a week ago are beginning to germinate, so lettuce, spring onion, radish and beetroot are on their way. In the kitchen, the sauerkraut is almost ready to go into the fridge. Busy times are ahead.

Hot stuff in the study

IMG_4952Sorry about the utterly naff heading but I keep getting advice from Mr WordPress that suggests snappy headlines reap many benefits in the circulation department. Truth to tell, I think I almost prefer the Potwell Inn the way it is because it’s easier to get to know the locals. Anyway, as planned, the timber for the compost bins all arrived today amidst gale force winds and driving rain and for the third time in as many weeks I got soaked to the skin.  But the driver from the sawmill is so cheerful it’s almost a pleasure to talk about not very much with the rain running down your neck.  Sensibly he prefers to wear shorts because when you’re out delivering all weathers you don’t have to put up with wet trousers flapping around your legs.

Back at the Potwell Inn with the wind moaning through the windows it seemed like a perfect day for a bit of armchair gardening and so I spent a happy hour browsing the fruit tree catalogue and making a list for another line of cordon fruit trees. I think we’ll get a damson, a Victoria type plum, an old style greengage, a pear of some sort and then maybe three more if we extend the bed to the bottom of the plot. But that sent me straight back to the computer because it would mean relocating some of our planned crops and then I wondered if we could plant a stepover espalier along the bottom and catch twenty two played out in its usual way –

However much land you’ve got you always need just a bit more

But really, I was just like a child delaying opening the last present because today was ordained for the sowing of chillies. There’s something profound about putting the first seeds into the dirt, and this year I’m determined to germinate at least one Habanero after not getting any at all last season. So the propagator was warmed and set up in my study, the new lights installed and the compost warmed and watered with a very dilute seaweed solution. And there it is behind me as I type, glowing daylight in the depths of winter and daring the local police to pay us a visit!  I love it.  I love looking after them, reading them a story at night and turning the light off at a sensible time (I made some of that up). When I finished with the chillies I had one half-tray left and so I sowed a few Corno Rosso red peppers – a bit early and possibly a bit hot for them, but nature is a constant surprise and with an early start they may well fruit just a bit earlier too. Anyone who’s ever grown an allotment will know that the real skill (which I don’t possess) is to space things out a bit. It’s great having a cornucopia in late july, but it’s better to have a constant supply of goodies through the seasons.

Looking at the enormous pile of wood waiting to be built into a three bay compost bin, it’s not hard to feel slightly uneasy at the expense.  I’ve no idea why allotmenteers seem to regard it as a point of honour to furnish the entire plot with old pallets and carpets and refuse to buy a tomato seed if they can scrape one out of the morning’s bacon and eggs. I’ve never met a birdwatcher who boasted that they’d built their binoculars out of a couple of tin cans and the bottom of a wine bottle; or a runner who would run a triathlon in two left shoes they’d just salvaged from the tip. We recycle a lot – today we liberated a large polystyrene fish box that will protect our tender plants from late frosts. The compost bins, the hotbed and the cold frames are the beating heart of the whole setup because they provide the food and the nurture for what feeds us.

It takes me twenty minutes to sow and label fifty seeds which, in my imagination I can already see ripening.  Apart from the usual TLC which really isn’t that onerous, the whole miracle is accomplished within nature and handed back to us as a gift.  Surely a few pounds to pay our respect to the soil isn’t an extravagance? When we moved on to the first plot we found an old bicycle in the compost heap. I’ve no idea how long it takes to compost a bike, or a piece of carpet underlay but I’ll guarantee it would still have been there long after I re-enter the carbon cycle!

So no I don’t feel bad about spending out on making the plot work as well and as easily as possible. As one of my mentors once said to me after I commiserated with him about having to do an awful visit, he replied “it was my duty”. That’s not a word we hear too often round here.

And finally – I just closed the shutters and noticed that we have a first quarter waxing moon. Since my seeds are in darkness under artificial light they won’t be affected by any light but ……. who knows?