Santa's been to town

As each year passes, it must be harder and harder to buy Christmas presents for me. This year has been slightly different with my newly acquired interest in the vegetable patch (scandalously neglected over the past few weeks with the coming of winter).

Dorothy had the brilliant idea of getting me a seed sprouter, complete with alfalfa, lentils and chick peas. She also presented me with the biggest size present of this Christmas - a mushroom growing kit. They're white cap mushrooms and I shall start them off them either today or tomorrow, together with the seed sprouter.

My friend Kate bought me a seed roll, which is just as it says - a roll with seeds, flowers in this case. Apparently, I just unroll it, put in the ground, cover it with a bit of soil and go away again. It'll be great to see it.

I walked in the woods with the dog on Christmas Day, stalking at a discrete distance another man with his dog. The bloke was on the mobile phone almost the whole time. What did he get out of the joys of nature?

Talking of Christmas Day gives me the opportunity to mention my beloved parsley. We had it in stuffing balls for our dinner. Made all the difference.

Parsley talk

We held a pre-Christmas dinner party the other night, managing to get 15 people around the table. It was no mean feat in our small house.

Susan and Dorothy put on a magnificent spread of curries and desserts, which everybody liked. As well as doing fetching, carrying and cleaning, my contribution was again the parsley I have been growing. I moaned last time it was supplied for a meal that nobody had mentioned it. That was so this time, with the addition that even I had forgotten about it by the time it came to eating.

Such is life, but where would we be without parsley?

More frosty thoughts

I've had the monthly email newsletter from the splendid allotment advice website run by John Harrison and he has something to say about the cold snap.

He writes: "There's a really hard frost on the ground, which is good news. A good cold winter is just what we want to kill off those slugs and other beasties that think we grow our crops for their benefit."

A positive way of looking at the weather, I feel. Hard on the slugs, though.

Jack Frost visits

Woke up yesterday morning to a heavy frost all around, as it had been on the previous day. The vegetable plot, tucked away in a sheltered area, was still frosty when I inspected it at noon. Whiteness gleamed on the green manure, a pretty enough sight to my eyes.

Something had been walking across the plot, its small paw prints embedded in the hard ground. I suspect it may have been a cat, out on its rounds in our neighbourhood.

Later on I was to walk in the woods with our dog. I wore my woolly bobble hat for the first time this winter, something of a necessity in the cold for a man with thinning hair.

I was lucky enough to see three deer in the woods. They disappeared from sight when they saw me, although it was more of an amble than a run. Indeed, one of the animals stopped for a good look at me - a gaze which I returned. Do they go home, I wonder, and tell their mates they have seen a man down the woods?

A winter's musing

It was bitterly cold here last night and we had fully expected snow by the morning. Alas, or hoorah, depending on your view, there was none when I opened the curtains, just evidence that it had rained overnight. Yet talking to folk during the morning I learned that it had snowed in Dunfermline, Kent and Bingley, just a dozen miles from us. Funny how weather works.

I was able to get out and have a brief look at the vegetable patch, clearing it of leaves and other detritus which had blown on to the soil. I strongly suspect something has been into a few of the holes I made for the garlic and has made off with it. Only time will tell.

And what did I spy? A small piece of broken china, just lying on top of the dirt. Where did that come from?

Just a bit baffled

As I have said before, my opportunities for tending to the vegetable patch are a bit limited these days. It's dark when I get home and fairly soon it will be dark when I get up.

Today being Saturday I had the chance for a look. There's nothing happening much there at the moment, just a some chives and a bit of garlic planted and waiting.

What puzzled me, though, was the green manure - the phacelia tanacetifolia. Now the patch is divided into two distinct halves with a bit of paving down the middle for met to stand on. The phacelia is growing fine on one half, but not on the other. The bit where it is not taking is also the part where I had the lettuce and spinach which didn't take.

Is there something wrong with the soil? And why? It's virtually the same patch, after all. I'm mystified.

The proof of the pudding...

A lot of activity in the house this morning as we had invited guests for Sunday lunch. All three of us were involved in busy preparations for Dick and Liz, who we hadn't seen for a couple of years, and friend Jan, who knew Dick way back.

Dorothy made the canapies for starters and Bakewell tart for dessert, while Susan did ham and a leek and potato au gratin. My contribution was some of the parsley I have been growing in the conservatory.

It was all very nice and plenty of compliments were made. Inexplicably, no-one mentioned my parsley. But I was able to sit back with a warm inner glow, knowing this was something I had grown myself.

Now hear this, now hear this: Veg patch under attack

It's a great blessing of where we live that there is so much wildlife around. Badgers, deer, foxes, rabbits and squirrels (not red, sadly) make their home nearby. Some folk have even reported the Beast of Brighouse just a short distance away. If such a thing exists it must have been in our woods, perfect lair for it.

I've complained in the past about something digging a big hole in the veg patch, but really I wouldn't be without our animals. They can't go to Tesco.

Little did I expect, however, the latest intruder. Surveying the plot this morning, I found a spent firework. Twas a rocket, no doubt from the organised display held near us last night.

It put me in mind of when I was a lad and your dad nailed Catherine wheels to the shed door and let off those crazy aeroplane fireworks that darted in all directions. Ah, happy days! We survived. Mind you, I'm glad I became a dad after they tightened up on these things and banned them. I'd have been the first to be got. 

The man who planted garlic

A nice autumn day today, dull but not too chilly or raining. It's windy, though, because that's the nature of where we live. You could have sailing boats becalmed at sea and there would still be gusts of wind at our house.

With the clocks having gone back last weekend, I have been unable to tend to my small plot during the week as it is dark by the time I get back from work. This morning was a time for surveying the scene, rooting out a few weeds that have grown hold and getting rid of leaves that are all over the place.

Took the opportunity to pop in a few cloves of garlic around the edges, probably about a dozen holes altogether. Sadly, they are shop-bought rather than any rare or organic type. I think I might move into that sort of thing later when I've got the hang of this thing.

Anyway, the garlic is in now before the frosts come and I gather I just sit back and wait until they start to appear sometime next year. It was a near run thing that I got them in at all as our dog Dolly decided to come out and help me dig. At least her willingness to be near garlic proves she is devoid of any vampiristic tendencies.

Giving garlic a go

One of the nicest smells around is garlic. It will hit you occasionally while on a walk in woods and it is sublime.

Should I grow it? I recently read an article saying that it is traditional to plant garlic on the shortest day and enjoy it on the longest. More practically, an allotment website tells me the time is now, although the job will easily hold over until November. I'll give it a go.

An intruder calls

The days are getting shorter as we edge towards winter. I find it almost impossible to go out in the garden when I get home from work. Soon my opportunities will be restricted to the weekends when we put the clocks back (or is it forward? And do we get another hour in bed or an hour less? You know, that twice-yearly argument).

Carrying out an inspection this morning, before the rain came on, I discovered three or four holes in the vegetable patch. One was quite deep. Susan says it will have been squirrels as they like burying things. This squirrel neither buried anything or covered it up. What was the point?

The red cabbage I pickled has proved to be delicious and I shall make some more soon. Continuing my new regime, I shall be knocking up a Christmas cake this afternoon with ingredients all sourced from the shop. It's a recipe by Stephen Jackson, owner of the Weavers Shed restaurant in Golcar, Huddersfield, and it just struck me, 'This is something I could do'. A good thing about it is that it involves beer and there should be a decent amount left over.

A visitor calls

My mate Alex 'Pip' Paton (he's a bit posh but knows about gardening) came bearing gifts.

As well as a pile of magazines including The Oldie (I like it and I'm but a young 'un), he had some vegetable stuff for me. There's was a splendid Reader's Digest Gardening Year, a couple of catalogues and the 50th anniversary edition of Organic Way - good reading material.

With his package of gifts was a bunch of chives ready to plant out. I can do it now, he says, so I will. Apparently, they will die back a bit and then thrive later on.

He's noticed that I've been reading Maye E Bruce's book on compost and suggests I should try Gardening with Compost, by F C King. The author's name sounds suspiciously made up to me.

Oh Lord, the expense of it all

I've been musing over the pickling and the sheer cost of it.

We of course had only two or three jam jars, so had to obtain more receptacles. Luckily, Wilkinson's had a sale on and we were able to pick up some Kilner jars at a cheap price. What a fine object is a Kilner jar, there's something deeply satisfying about holding one in your hand.

Then, as mentioned before, there was the driving about to find pickling onions and all the petrol that entailed. Not to mention carbon footprints, I suppose. And the vinegar, salt and pickling spices.

It might have been cheaper to go online and order a jar of Fortnum and Masons best (I'll be fashionable here and not include an apostrophe).

But (and there had to be a but, didn't there?) I would have missed out on the sheer satisfaction of achieving something. 

A strange odour fills the kitchen

I've taken the pickling idea a stage further - and actually done it. Two big jars of pickled onions and two small ones of pickled red cabbage are on their way. The kitchen has a certain pungency to it and our dog and cat seem to want to go out all the time.

It was a lot harder than we both thought to get pickling onions, the first three shops not having any. Not only that, but they didn't seem to have had any (at least not on that day). Maybe it's a tad too early for them, I don't know. We finally got lucky in the fourth shop we visited. It was evident there had been a run on them so perhaps shops that don't stock pickling onions are missing a trick or two.

The recipe I used for the onions came originally from Susan's great-grandmother, so it's authentic Derbyshire stuff. The recipe for the red cabbage is from a book put together by the Halifax Courier and was one sent in by a reader, c1960. The old ways are best.

There's been a lot of talk on the news today about share prices plunging, banks in trouble and the whole country of Iceland going belly up in the economic crisis. I'm pulling up my imaginary drawbridge, comfortable in the knowledge that I have pickled onions and cabbage to keep us going. 

Onions, onions, all I want

My attention has turned to the possibility of pickling onions. I'm going to give it a go.

Seems like it will be a satisfying process and not all that difficult to do, except everyone seems to have their own favourite method of doing it. I'll just have to think what's best for me and get on with it.

One slight trouble is that we don't seem to have that many jars, although it's possible there's a stack somewhere in the cellar. Must go and have a root round.

Needless to say, I didn't get to Dewsbury Onion Fair today. Never mind, there's always next year.

Lady Muck entertains

As the evenings draw in and a chill fills the air, we are gathering around the fire with two jumpers on (as recommended by gas company after they hiked their prices). It is a time for reading and my favourite at the moment is Common-Sense Compost Making, by Maye E Bruce.

This little book was first published in 1946 by Faber & Faber. My copy came to me via a car boot sale and is the 1967 revised edition by Lady Eve Balfour. The author spent a lifetime trying to perfect the art of compost making and this is her account of the quick return method which she devised after much experimentation.

Ooh, and she weren't half posh! Look at this for a sample:

Before the war I had a staff of three men: a chauffeur-handyman, who also mowed
the lawns, and two men in the garden...the whole place is 150 acres...in 1940
the whole staff joined up and in their place I had one very old
man.

I'm thinking of getting Susan and daughter Dorothy to do all the stirring when I finally get my compost bin.

Oo, I am awful!

Today I have mostly been pricking out. What state is my brain in that all the time it's trying to think of a good bit of innuendo to go with this? Where is Kenneth Williams when you need him?

With initial guidance from Susan, I transplanted herbs from the seed trays into pots. It's a pleasant and relaxing activity, as is all this vegetable and herb lark. The only anxiety is when you're waiting for the buggers to pop their heads above the soil.

Still, the herbs seem to have come on nicely so far. Except, and there's always an except, for the cress and mint. The cress doesn't seem to have taken at all and neither does the mint, which was in a slightly smaller container. No idea why, but they don't get a second chance. Everything has now either been potted up or ditched on to the garden outside. 

Suppose I'll have to think about taking up cooking now. 

Doing the Monster Mash (not)

When I had my first trip around the garden centre, I saw they had seeds for monster vegetables. There's been an interesting review in the Independent of The Biggest Beetroot in the World, a book by Michael Leapman. He follows five growers of big vegetables through a year of expensive upkeep and brutally competitive judging shows. There's no money in any of it and the veg is inedible, apparently.
 
There's a mention in the book of the annual Dewsbury Onion Fair, not far down the road from me and which I notice is being held this year on October 4. Classes include single largest onion, three heaviest and best dressed. Think I will go along and have a look, but I'm not tempted in the slightest. What's the point of veg you can't eat?

Thoughts of nudism

I'm reading an interesting book by Lucas Bridges called Uttermost Part of the Earth, published in 1948 and the story of his life in the late 19th century and early 20th century on the island of Tierra del Fuego, on the tip of South America. He tells a story about visiting an elderly Indian native on her death-bed in the 1880s. She had been brought to London in the 1830s and presented to King William IV. Fascinating that in one bound I'm taken from someone who lived in my lifetime to the years before Queen Victoria's reign.

Any road, the point is that Tierra del Fuego is one of the most inhospitable places on earth. Think the wild seas of Cape Horn and very few days without rain, slush, hail or snow. Bridges relates in his book how there were gardens on these islands and relates that one couple managed to serve up strawberries and cream to visitors.

So why the hell haven't I been able to get veg to grow in my patch? Apparently, the nomadic people of Tierra del Fuego dressed sparingly, a remarkable feat given the cold climate. Should I give it a go?

A good wheeze

I'm slightly off track with this posting, but we visited Bodnant Garden in north Wales this morning. Not a single vegetable in sight as far as I could see, apart from seed packets in the shop, but it's such a beautiful and relaxing place. Mind you, they've got 14 full-time gardeners plus volunteers. I'm thinking of bequeathing my property to the National Trust so they can maintain it for me.