Gardener's resolutions

New Year's Eve and that time when you think about the year gone, the year to come and whether you will keep awake to midnight (life and soul of the party!).

What could I do better on the garden front next year? Here is my little list:

1. At least get my name down for an allotment, even if the waiting list turns out to be lengthy 
2. Don't just play at being a veg gardener – put a lot, lot more effort into it
3. In fact, try and do something outside every day
4. Don't concentrate solely on the veg – tend to the flowers as well (that's if I can manage to tell them apart from the weeds)  
5. Get the soil into good shape  
6. Cook more, hopefully using ingredients from the garden – and enjoy it  
7. Get the beer kit I had for Christmas on the go sooner rather than later
8. Don't bother attempting to grow tomatoes in pots, it was a hopeless failure in 2010. Use growbags  
9. A hose wouldn't be a bad idea to save endless trips to and from the tap in the kitchen
10. But then I suppose I do need the exercise
11. Be realistic and give up on that back patch where the sun don't hardly shine. It just isn't meant to be
12. Interact with other gardeners to learn from them.

 

No doubt I have left many things out. But above all I must realise this is a fairly modest list, so the biggest resolution of all would be:

Don't recycle it for the 2012 resolutions

A merry Christmas to everyone

Well, it's the white Christmas we all wanted. Somewhere under all this is a garden.

Good tidings to all.

Thinking & eating

I had a very serviceable cheese & chutney sandwich today, combining bread and courgette chutney I made. Not my own cheese, haven't reached that stage yet.

The courgette chutney was part of a batch I made during the summer and it occurred to me today, not for the first time, that it was a bit bland. I cobbled it together from two or three recipes using up what ingredients I had to hand. While I'm happy with the colour and consistency, it's just a bit tasteless. More spices would definitely have helped.

This bit of musing set me off thinking about the courgette cake I made during the the summer. Again OK, but you wouldn't have known it contained courgettes unless you were told.

I think the moral of this is that I need to up my cookery skills. And now that we've got a new gas cooker, that's what I'll do (when we eventually get the thing working).

Expansion plans unveiled

There'd been no jump racing in Britain for almost a week until today because of the snow and not a lot of other horseracing activity, yet Racing Post newspaper managed to keep going. So I feel I must make a new entry in my blog, even though gardening has been non-existent on account of the weather.

The good news is that I'm hoping to get an allotment. The bad news is that I've prevaricated over ringing the secretary and have failed to raise him now that I have finally rung. We'll get there in the end.

I've been told an allotment will do me good in that it will get me away from the house and chatting to people and give me more space for growing. Not being naturally blessed with green fingers, I hope to pick up a good few tips from seasoned gardeners.

I'm not holding my breath on being allocated a plot any time soon, but I need to put a marker down with the secretary. Could be years, could be next week (oh no, not in this snow and frozen ground).

I'm staying in

Fresh snow has been falling for more than an hour as I write this. If anyone thinks I'm going out in it, think again.

The renewed onslaught has produced a sense of hibernation and put a definite full stop to any activity in the garden. I think that planting shallots and garlic can wait a bit, the ground is far too solid to work and buried under a good depth of snow.

All we can do at the moment is drive our daughter mad by talking like old folk about the big freeze of 1963. Now, that was what I call a winter.

Shall I or shall I not?

I've been doing some overdue leaf clearing and digging over the soil before the frosts and really bad weather strike. Not much of a job really in my little space and I don't know why I haven't got round to it before.

Thoughts turned to next year and what to plant as I was working. I had been intending to ditch the space right at the back of the garden where the sun hardly shines. The combination of the leylandii in the neighbouring garden and our shed have combined to make it a dodgy spot for growing anything. The spuds of 2009 were meagre and the beans of this year failed to take off.

My relatively new compost bin now sits in part of this patch, but I was wondering if I should make use of part of the ground. Garlic could go there, I thought. Also, my eye has been caught by a short piece about shallots in the Yorkshire Post gardening column. Both the garlic and shallots could be planted now.

Mmm, I wonder. Should I give this spot another chance? Wouldn't do any harm, I suppose.

Well, we tried some

We've started buying potatoes again after using up the modest stocks of Lady Balfour spuds which I grew this year in the garden.

Our eye was caught the other day by Albert Bartlett Purple Majesty potatoes. That's right, purple. A novelty we could not resist and so we duly trotted off to home from Sainsbury's with a bag.

It was our suspicion that this potato was genetically modified. But not so, says Perthshire-based Albert Bartlett, who reveal it was developed at Colorado State University from a traditional variety. The benefits? According to the growers, the purple potato is healthier than the standard variety of white potato because it contains up to 10 times the level of antioxidants.

All very well, but the proof of the pudding is always in the eating. They didn't taste bad, but we decided the producers have got a mountain to climb because of the colour. First impression on opening up the bag was that they looked like beetroot (no bad thing), but on cooking the outcome is that they take on the appearance of a grey sludge. It didn't look good.

An interesting experiment, but I'm afraid we won't be buying again.

I thought so

The mystery object turned out to be parsley after all. And very nice too in a little parsley & lemon butter I cobbled up at teatime tonight.

At least I hope it was parsley. Come back in a few hours and I'll let you know.

Today's mystery object is...

A real autumn mist pervaded our neighbourhood for most of yesterday morning, the first day on which the clocks had gone back. The days are cracking on now and even I am starting to think of Christmas, have previously slated the shops for starting the season too early. I've succumbed already to buying some bottles of Christmas ale, an offer at the Co-op being too good to refuse. They are sitting there on the shelf now. Will I resist temptation, I wonder?

Among the presents I got last year from my daughter was what I described at the time as a teabag full of herb seeds, bought at the Imperial War Museum North. You had to place it in a bowl of water for a day, then plant under a thin layer of soil.

The label said the bag was embedded with a mix of herbs including parsley, chives and basil. I don't know what has happened to the mixture, but I have succeeded in getting one herb only after about four months of growing very slowly in the pot. But what is it?

Susan suspects it's parsley. In truth, so do I. But I'm not totally sure. I am a dunce, aren't I?

My pungent aroma

It always seems right to make jam and chutney on a Sunday. And in autumn too. They just seem to go together.

I spent a very happy morning yesterday using up the last of my store of green tomatoes during a session in the kitchen. Mind you, there were complaints about the strong smell of vinegar. I don’t mind it. In fact, I find it rather pleasant, preferring to use the word aroma rather than  smell. Do other people think the same?

There was only a jar and a half of chutney, but it was good to make use of the green tomatoes before they went off. The green tomato jam was a bit of an experiment in my state-of-the-art bread maker. But hey, why not try the jam setting if you’ve got it? No-one quite believes me that you can have such a flavour of jam and indeed it’s something I’ve never had before. Time will tell if it’s OK.

And so ends this year’s crop of tomatoes. Not a very successful growing season. Let’s hope it goes better next year.

I've bin thinking

Munching on a banana this lunchtime, the thought occurred to me: Can I compost the skins?

I've been slowly getting to grips with the idea of composting after my friend Kate gave me the bin which now nestles at the bottom of the garden. But it seems a subject fraught with difficulties, different ideas and plain bonkers obsession.

I don't want to carry it to extremes, I just want to know what's safe to chuck in the bin. My wife Susan can usually answer most of my questions, but composting is a blank in her knowledge. Can I compost egg shells? Dunno. Can I compost lemons? Dunno. What about egg boxes? Ditto.

Luckily, I have now found the wonderful Compost This website run by Louisa Parry and John Leach. The beauty of it is that they keep it simple and concise. Browse each of the categories and it gives you a plain yes, no or maybe, leaving it up to you to click and find out why.

It's a bonus that these two active recyclers, reusers and composters live together in Leeds, a city where I spent 17 very happy years after moving north from Kent when I went to university.

Banana skins? Yes. Egg shells? Yes. Lemons? Maybe. Thank goodness for help like this.

And, with Christmas coming, it seems opportune to say that all I need now is a kitchen caddy (hint, hint).

And these I forgot

I realised that I left out a few things in my posting Taking Stock. I forgot about the lettuce and salad leaves.

Well, the salad leaves did OK. Both seeds in pots and straight in the ground outside worked well. The La Rossa lettuce didn't go too well. All right in the beginning, but soon seemed to taste bitter.

Ah well. Try again.

Taking stock

At my suggestion, I snipped off some mint to add to our home-cooked meal tonight. Susan quietly threw it away, telling me later she didn't think it was mint and it just didn't seem right. Obviously past its best and a reminder that the season has grown to a conclusion.

Time to take stock and examine the failures and successes of this year and what I can learn from them.

1. Potatoes - absolutely brilliant. But I need to plant more than one variety.
2. Courgettes - three plants in pots produced about half a courgette between them, but the one planted outside in the soil has been wonderful. It's producing even now.
3. Raspberries - about five grew, a welcome gift for the birds. Bushes dug up after two seasons of failure with them.
4. Rhubarb - continues to baffle me. We've had about one pudding this year from the two crowns in the garden. Susan says it's because I don't feed them.
5. Spinach beet - has done OK.
6. Tomatoes - a major disappointment after being such a winner last year. The outdoor plants caught blight early on and had to go. The plants in the conservatory were hardly big producers. The lesson I have learned is to use growbags rather than pots and to stay away from heritage seeds. They're heritage for a reason, I feel. Mainstream toms for me next summer.
7. Broccoli - doing all right, although it was my friend Kate who started them off before giving them to me as a present.
8. Pak choi - a waste of time. Has failed to grow.
9. Mizuna - also not very successful. Failed to grow outdoors, the indoor pot produced just a few leaves and then stubbornly refused to grow more.
10. Squash - nothing doing from the single plant in the conservatory.
11. Herbs (that's thyme, oregano & basil) - fairly successful, although I don't think we've utilised them to their full extent in our cooking.
12. Broad beans - blighted.
13. Cherokee Trail of Tears beans - about two handfuls produced, a bitter disappointment. 

More failures than successes, but I'm not crying. I'll be trying even harder next year.

Lessons? More effort needed, composting needed, I should learn to propogate more plants in the conservatory rather than planting seed directly in the ground and I must ditch the back plot where I put the broad beans and the Cherokee Trail of Tears this year. The sun just doesn't shine there and also it is very stony, this being the land where they did a lot of quarrying in the past. I plan on digging out a further patch elsewhere in the garden.

Massacre of the innocents

You bring them up, feed them, nurture them, love them - then they let you down.

My tomatoes have been a bit of a disaster after the runaway success of last year. The outdoor ones were ditched a little while ago after being blighted, while the indoor ones have produced very little red fruit. It's been a poor season.

One lesson learned is not to put them in pots again. Growbags did very well last year and they are what I will have next year.

The nine potted plants in the conservatory were finally ditched today, having gradually wilted and yellowed over the last week. There was, though, a bit of a haul of green tomatoes from them and I have saved them to make chutney.

But that job will have to wait until next weekend as we are going on holiday. Hay-on-Wye, seeing as you ask.

Yes, I know it's about time

I've got a compost bin!

My good friend Kate gave it to me last weekend, she having got a splendid new wooden structure for her compost.

To be honest, it's just dumped in the corner at the moment as I have spent hardly any time in the garden this week. It's going to remain where I have put it, at the side of the shed in the corner where the sun don't shine, and I've just got the small job of making sure it's level before I pile the stuff in.

I've written before about how my soil really needs improving, so I'm hoping this will be just the thing. I must say I don't know much about the art of composting and so will have to read up about it.

I'm off now to mull over the debate about whether you should or should not compost teabags.

Oh dear, I hope I don't become obsessed.

Something to bear in mind

I have had a very successful courgette harvest this year, losing count of the number produced by the single outdoor plant which survived. They've gone into innumerable meals and into chutney. Sometimes we haven't known what to do with them.

So I was tickled when I came across this story on the First Post website about a new use for a courgette:

WOMAN FIGHTS BEAR WITH COURGETTE

A US woman fought off a black bear which attacked on the porch of her Montana home by hurling the nearest item to hand at it - a courgette. The woman’s dog was attacked by the bear first. She kicked the animal and it retaliated by swiping at her leg, ripping her jeans. She retreated into her house but the bear followed – until a vegetable to the nose sent it running.

Power of veg!

I go a'foraging

I spent a pleasant hour or so the other day raiding the blackberry bushes that border the unmade and unadopted lane that leads to our house and which also grow in the woods around the corner.

Each year I plunder as many as I can for jam and puddings and consider myself lucky that there is not generally a race with other people to get them.

Armed with a plastic container from the kitchen, I managed to get a decent batch for immediate use. No need to be greedy as our freezer is full and there is always tomorrow for another harvest.

There was a deviation this year when I decided to make blackberry & apple jam in the breadmaker. A lazy way? I don't know, but it makes good bread and I thought it worth experimenting with the jam setting to see what would happen. You never know until you try.

The Morphy Richards Fast Bake model is, by the way, almost brand new and was donated to me by one of my followers on Twitter, who knew from my tweets that I made bread. This was an extraordinary act by a complete stranger who no longer wanted the machine as her husband has to lay off the bread for health reasons. It was so kind of her to think of me.

As this was my first time, I made enough jam just for one jar. Seemed to taste all right when it came out of the pan, while have a proper taste when it settles down in the jar.

The remainder of the blackberries went into a crumble which we shall have for tea tonight (the others being out of the house at the moment on visiting duties).

Only too late did I come across this recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall for blackberry brandy to drink at Christmas. Mmm, that's mighty tempting. Looks like it's back down the woods in a few days.

A satisfying job

I don't have a big lawn or pretend to keep it in pristine condition, but I find something deeply satisfying about mowing.

And so a session this afternoon - long put off because of rain, wet and lethargy - proved to be calming and just what the mind needed. It was 30 minutes or so of gentle work away from everyday cares as I pushed the mower up and down the lawn.

I have a trusty electric lawnmower bought from Woolworths I don't know how many years ago and at one time I used to hurry the job. But since I gave up newspaper work, I don't mind taking a bit more time. I've developed the patience to switch off the mower to move the lead into a better position as I go around the lawn.

As I was cutting the grass, it was chilly and became overcast at one point. I realised there won't be many days left this year for mowing.

A bargain day out

It was a very generous act when Harewood House waived all admission fees on the occasion of Heritage Open Days. We could not resist it and took full advantage.

Summer days may be ending, but the sun was shining and it was very warm for our visit to this stately home near Leeds. We took a pleasant walk in the grounds to see the Himalayan garden and the walled garden, where they grow fruit and vegetables for the house.

I'm a sucker for walled gardens and I enjoyed this one very much, while at the same time wondering why it is so far from the house. Everything was so neat and tidy, the produce growing well and the soil something to envy.

It helps of course to have a team of gardeners, but a lesson for us commoners is that you do need to put a bit of effort into your gardening.

Thank you for small mercies

Dashed out just now to retrieve the washing from the line before it rained. Had a quick inspection of my Cherokee Trail of Tears beans and was absolutely delighted to see some are finally appearing - probably about a fortnight later than last year.

It's good news. But I'm not going back out to take a photo - it's now chucking it down with rain and rumbling with thunder.

A windy day

I spent most of the day working on things inside the house, listening to the wind whistling all around. It was the sort of force bound to dislodge things and so it proved when I did venture out. Nothing grave, just three of my outdoor pots of tomatoes, and righted in a jiffy. My little wigwam of Cherokee Trail of Tears beans survived (fingers crossed, the wind hasn't died down at all), but still no crop from the plants.

I cut three courgettes, two from the plant in the ground and one from a plant in a pot. Decided that now was the time to give up on the three courgette plants in pots and emptied them out. Why is it that they didn't take? The pots were massive, but I only got one courgette from them. Seems it's a plant much happier in the ground.

New website for veg growers

I'm a little remiss in having failed to mention the new UK Veg Gardeners website launched by Gillian Carson, who blogs at My Tiny Plot. Her aim is to help vegetable gardeners meet each other, share ideas and gain inspiration (that's what it says on the welcome page) and at the time of writing 299 people have signed up as members.

I'm one of them, although I confess my contribution has been non-existent so far. Maybe remedy that in time and maybe join the Yorkshire Gardeners group formed by some of the site's members.

One posting on the forum has drawn my attention to the grow2eat website aimed at individual gardeners, clubs and societies and which offers discounts on a wide range of grow-your-own items. Certainly worth keeping an eye on as I'm partial to a bargain.

We are a bit equivocal

The first of this year's tomatoes have been picked and the verdict is a bit iffy. A few of the Lightfruit and Yellow Pear-Shaped were available so we had them with a light lunch of boiled potatoes and lettuce (both mine), together with a Scotch egg (Sainsburys).

In all honesty, they tasted a bit soggy. In fact, Susan kept most of hers aside to put in a curry tonight. I'm more of a gannet and tucked into mine, although I could see what she meant.

Still, they're only the first of the crop and we shall have to see how the rest fare. They were varieties acquired more or less by accident and at this stage my thinking for next year is to have a go with good old Gardener's Delight.

While looking back on this blog to remind myself what sort of tomatoes I had last year, I came across a posting about the first of the Cherokee Trail of Tears beans being ready on August 25. One year on and we've gone almost 10 days beyond that date with no beans ready. A good sign is that there are plenty of little purple flowers, so perhaps soon...

Handy hint

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Just when I'm thinking about green manure, along comes this handy video from the BBC Dig In website. Thanks.

A bountiful harvest

Absolutely wonderful weather over the last few days in our part of Yorkshire and I have dug up the remainder of my Lady Balfour potatoes. Half were lifted a fortnight or so ago and I left the rest in the ground mainly because of the storage issue. A mountain of spuds has come from the 20 tubers I planted earlier this year, far more than the measly crop of last year. I am really pleased.

I think that next year I shall return to two types of potatoes, say an early and a maincrop, just for variety and to ensure a better flow of produce. At the moment I am quite taken with Bonnie Dundee, simply because of the name's association with my Scottish roots, but we will see. As always, it will be enjoyable looking through the catalogues.

A question arises as to the bare soil left after the harvest. Too late to plant anything now and in any case I will need to improve the soil structure, I guess. Time for green manure. I have two types, phacelia and a rye and I think I will go with the latter, simply because I've tried phacelia before and fancy something different.

Now, what for tea...?

Rainy day musings

Lush countryside around Auchterhouse

Really heavy rain yesterday morning prevented all activity in the garden, but we were going out in any case to a family occasion in Derbyshire so I would not have had time.

I have been researching my family history over the course of the last six months or so, a subject you perhaps tend to get more interested in as you get older. Specifically, I have been delving into the background of my mother. She was a very private person and only mentioned it once or twice, so I thought it was time I cracked the mystery.

One of things I know for definite is that she was born at 10 Glebe Street, Dundee, a holy grail address for fans of the Broons cartoon characters. They have lived at this tenement since first appearing in print in the Sunday Post in 1936 and I am now the proud owner of Ma Broon's Cookbook, the inside of which contains an illustration of a postcard addressed to the Broons at 10 Glebe Street, Dundee. I am now officially Oor Andy.

The other thing I know is that my mother's mother, the maternal grandmother I never knew, was the daughter of a ploughman. He and his family moved around farms in the Dundee area from the 1880s onwards and I had the pleasure of visiting Auchterhouse, one of the villages where they lived, during a visit to Scotland earlier this year.

Quite what Charles Stewart Christie would have made of my puny efforts in the garden, I will never know. But I like to think there is something in the genes.

A potty day

I'm still unsure whether my tomatoes are going to work out this year. I've three varieties on the go, Lightfruit, Harbinger and Yellow Pear-Shaped, all from seed packets acquired as a gift or because the price was knocked down in a sale. The few plants outside had to be dug up and destroyed about a week ago because of blight while the indoor plants have yet to ripen.

They are showing nice bunches of fruit and have grown and spread out noticeably in the sun of recent days, so much so that I returned home this lunchtime from a morning out to discover that one of the pots had toppled over and taken two or three of the others with it. A quick rearrangement and a few new stakes have stabilised them, but the basic problem is that this year I eschewed growbags in favour of pots and I chose too small. I think also that nine pots is a step too many for the space I have in our conservatory.

I'm not quite sure at this distance why I decided against going with growbags this time. They worked perfectly satisfactorily last year and gave me a bumper crop. Think on for next year.

I took a photograph of the Lightfruit tomatoes, a name I sniggered over at the time I was given the seeds. They are in fact quite heavy and promise to be productive.

Back in business

The blog is resuming today after a short break when I didn't feel like doing it. I felt at the time that the writing was not very good, that I was spending more time than I really wished on the blog and that it wasn't adding anything to the good of the world.

I'm in a better frame of mind now, have decided to come out of anonymity with it, have added a photo of the real me and will be writing a proper personal profile. What the hell, it's only a diary that I don't mind other people reading.

Gardening has continued, albeit it in a lazy and half-hearted way in comparison to other people. I've recently come across two websites which have inspired me to get back on track with blogging - one called UK Veg Gardeners and the other My Tiny Plot . Both are run by a woman called Gillian Carson, the latter site being her personal blog and the former a social site for veg gardeners in general.

All I've got to do now is grow some bloody veg (puts on his Michael Caine voice).

Thyme marches on

A day of mostly rain and even a little bit of sleet when we ventured out to do some shopping. Even worse weather tomorrow, they say.

On the plus side, the English thyme seeds I started off in the conservatory just a short while ago are starting to come through. Nothing else showing yet in the trays, but they will come. Of that I am sure

Hang on, we’re not there yet

I did it, I remembered to put the clocks forward by one hour. It has been a nice day here as we race towards April, although The Pulse radio station in Bradford was overdoing it a fair bit by claiming on Facebook that it was the first day of summer.

As a matter of fact, they are wrong. It is not the first day of summer, as others have pointed out on Facebook. In addition - and I don't know if it should be described as irony - we are forecast snow and sleet in our part of the country over the next few days. We've got some way to go before summer.

Making the most of today's good weather, I have turned my attention to our neglected flower borders and made a good start on clearing the dead wood from one of them. It was only just over an hour of work, but I felt I had achieved something. The car boot is full of stuff to take to the tip tomorrow.

I was pleased to notice that my rhubarb has sprung back into life after virtually vanishing over winter. I have two lots, one a crown which Kate gave me and the other which was a seedling I must have bought from somewhere. Both died back over winter almost to the point where you were left wondering if they had ever been there.

When I mentioned my concern over their disappearance, Kate suggested that I cover them with pots in an effort to force them. I'm delighted to say it seems to have done the trick and they are growing. The trouble now is knowing when to uncover them, but I think that I shall leave it for a bit if we are due snow and sleet.

Rhubarb is one of my very favourite things from the garden, its tart taste being much to my liking. The seeds I got from the Royal Horticultural Society included a recipe for rhubarb chutney, something I will definitely try if I get a good crop.

A gift is delivered

I realise that I don't know where the expression gift horse comes from, but I know one when I see one. In this case, it's free seeds from the Royal Horticultural Society which I sent away for recently.

They come courtesy of the RHS grow your own campaign and the pack I have received contains carrots (Nantes Frubund) and tomato (Gardener's Delight). I have no immediate need of the latter, having just set off my tomato seeds, but I shall probably give the carrots a whirl sometime.

The pack also includes a container growing guide & some recipe cards. Quite fancy the carrot cake with lemon cheese frosting. Sadly, I would have to use bought ingredients if I made it now.

I am glad to have had this pack. It's good to get something for nothing.

Getting stuck in

Spring is just around the corner, with the equinox this Saturday (17.32, to be precise) and the clocks going forward the following weekend. I am matching the seasonal change with a burst of activity in the garden.

Susan drove me to Kershaw's Garden Centre in Brighouse this morning to get the bags of manure I spotted the other day when I took a walk there. Five bags of J Arthur Bower's Blended Farm Manure, a snip at £20 the lot. As Susan says, this makes it the most expensive vegetables ever.

Two of the bags were dug in as soon as we returned and the remaining three are awaiting the plots being fully prepared. We later went to Wilkinson's in Brighouse to get two tubs of poultry manure which I shall use in the near future and five bags of potting compost.

I noticed with delight while digging in the manure that the white onions I planted last year are at last beginning to come through. There was no sign of shoots just a couple of days ago, but the sun really seems to have done them good. Hope they maintain their progress.

I started off some tomato and herb seeds in propagating trays - three filled with tomatoes and three with oregano, dill and English thyme. It was with some alarm that I noticed the tomatoes are called lightfruit, harbinger and yellow pear-shaped, hardly names to fill you with confidence. The lightfruit packet was from the Dig for Victory set which Dorothy gave me for Christmas and the other two were Thomas Etty packets I got for the knockdown price of 20p each at Oxfam in Ilkley last year. Looking forward to seeing how they turn out.

Chit chat

Met my mate Kevin in the shop this morning and went round the corner with him to look at the allotment he has with his wife Judith. I was envious of what they had growing, but I suppose it's only a reflection of their hard work and application. Puts my puny efforts to shame.

We got to talking about chitting potatoes, both of us agreeing that the jury is still out on whether it is a useful thing to do or not. Generally, the advice if you do chit is that it should be done in a place which is frost free and has light. Kevin told me he does his in the dark in the cellar, partly because that's the best place for him to put them. But he added that it's simply an extension of the chitting process when you do eventually bury the spuds in the ground, so what's wrong with starting them off in the dark? It sounded logical to me when he said it.

Enthused by what I had seen, I took a short stroll to the garden centre this afternoon to buy some more chicken poo, but there was none to be had. Good job too as I realised on the way there that my back was in a bit of a fragile state, although only in a minor way. Hauling a big tub back on foot wouldn't have done me any good. Talking of chickens, I have a bottle of Old Speckled Hen beer at home and will console myself with that.

Passed a lama in the field on my way to the garden centre. I had known the animal was there, but had never seen it close up. Not what you expect to see around our way.

I am born again

My Lady Balfour potatoes have been delivered from Thompson & Morgan and I have put them in an egg box to start the process of chitting. Experts may say I've started late in the day, but they do say everything has been put back at least four weeks because of the poor weather we have had.

Mentioning to friends about the potatoes, I realised no labelling had come with them (other than general instructions for growing potatoes) and that I could not remember whether they were maincrop or what. Turns out they are early maincrop, named after the Soil Association founder. They are claimed to have impressive blight resistance and to give huge yields, even in poorer soils.

Doing a couple of hours of overdue digging this morning, I was reminded of how poor the soil is in my garden and how very many stones there are. Hardly surprising really as our neighbourhood was once noted for its quarries and stone mines. I was surprised today to find three or four pieces of broken glass turning up as I dug the earth over. Where did they come from?

I was pleased that the Lady Balfour spuds are produced in Perth, not far from where my mother came from. Let's hope they live up to expectations.

The spuds are coming, honest

A stunning blue sky today gives the impression that spring must be here. Snowdrops are bursting to life on the field where the owners sprayed poison and then tried to persuade the council that their housing plan would help to encourage wildlife. Whatever was in that poison was good - the snowdrops are the only ones I have seen so far this year. Is irony the right word here?

Yet frosts persist and the ground is still very hard in many places. Digging and planting will have to wait awhile, but I must start chitting the bloody potatoes. Spurred on by an offer of free postage this weekend from Thompson & Morgan, I have ordered 20 tubers of Lady Balfour potatoes. The claim that they give huge yields, even in poorer soils, clinched it for me. 

We shall see if I can do better than last year with my spuds. 

I'm stalled

We're in the first few days of March now and still no progress in the garden. Come on, be honest, no activity at all.

I'm feeling less guilty after reading that the delightful people at Blagger.co.uk have only just started chitting their potatoes. If they can get so far behind, so can I. But I have made a mental resolution to get down to Wilko's fast and buy some spuds. Probably be a main crop this year.

Kate sent me some onion sets today. Will get them in when the ground is less sodden (another excuse).

Latest weather

A heavy dollop of snow last night has quickly turned to vile slush today, although I fear the bad weather is not over yet. All this follows a report last week that spring has been delayed by four weeks because of the cold weather. Ah well, hot chocolate all round! 

Horny-handed son of the soil

I've been doing a bit of delving into my mother's family background, coming from a position of knowing next to nothing about her past. One of the things I have learned is that her mother, my maternal grandmother, was born in 1892 in Scotland, daughter of a ploughman. 

Can any of this farming expertise have been passed down to my genes? The evidence so far would suggest not, but here's to a good growing year. 

Hang on a minute

My friend Kate told me not to worry too much about the garden for another month or so, advice which seemed sound when I awoke this morning to a smattering of snow on the ground. We're forecast some more later in the week, although I was amused that today they were predicting sunny intervals. That's the intervals taken care of, but they were silent about the other bits of the day. 

The time has come

The special Festival of Britain issue of the Illustrated London News for February 11, 1951 has come into our house and the above advertisement naturally caught my eye because the gloves are named after me (prefer not to think I am named after gloves). I fail to grasp the reference to gloves and baldness, however, but it is probable that I was very bald at the time the magazine was published, having been born just over a week previously. Indeed, the publication has a picture of the King opening the festival at noon on Thursday, May 3, 1951, when little Andrew Baldwin would have been just one hour old. Ah!

The lack of blogging for the past month reflects my lack of activity in the garden. The time has come to put a bit of effort in and over the next few days I shall buy potatoes to chit and persuade Susan to drive somewhere where I can get two or three bags of stuff to dig in to the soil.

I have roughly mapped in my mind what's going where, although the back patch where I had the potatoes last year remains a problem. The soil is poor, very stony and the sun doesn't get there much. My mate Steve suggests beans. Runner, broad or French: or all three. They're tough, and their nitrogen-fixing root nodules will help to enrich the soil, he says. That'll do me.

Now then, do they still make Andy gloves? The hunt is on.

Snow joke

Somewhere underneath that snow is a black dog. Aged 12, but acting like a big kid.

As I write, it has been snowing again a couple of times this morning after last night's fall and the forecast is that it doesn't look too good over the next couple of days. Given that, it's a surprise to be reminded by John Harrison in his allotment email newsletter that now's the time to start thinking about your seed potatoes and start chitting them.

Nothing was further from my mind, but I suppose I ought to start thinking about his advice. I need to decide what to grow and where to grow it. Finding a frost free place with some light for chitting is going to take some doing, I have to say. 

John Harrison relates his father-in-law's story about competitions where you had to grow as many potatoes from one seed potato as you could. The competitors would chit them and then carefully cut out each sprout and grow them on in pots. Then they would strike cuttings from the foliage and grow those on. 

Apparently a hundredweight (112 lbs or 51Kg) was often achieved! 

New Year musings

The snow was almost gone yesterday, but a new flurry this morning has left the ground covered again. Before it fell I was able to do a quick inspection of the ground and see loads of cat crap on the patch where I have planted the onions. Nowhere else has this neighbour's cat pooed. Does it think it's dropping a nice piece of manure to help the onions along or is there some scent from the bulbs that attracts animals? I'll be very interested to see if this piece of produce ever comes to fruition.

The people who run the excellent Blagger site have been out tending to their raspberries. They admit themselves it's a little late, but it prompts me to think I am even later and must get on with the job. It's not much of a task, just a bit of pruning to get the plants in order for the new year. Must do it - when it stops snowing.