Self sufficiency

These photos show just how busy my allotment plot still is even at this time of year, when many around me have cleared their plots and started digging in manure before leaving fallow for the winter.
What a waste of space!
The brussel sprouts are swelling up well and we had our first meal off them last week, with many more pickings to come over the next month or so. By that time those spring cabbages will be ready for eating, and I have plenty of red cabbages to last all through the winter as well. We have already cooked plenty of red cabbage and frozen it for use later when other fresh vegetables may be scarce.
The lettuce is also growing well and providing some welcome winter salad.
And those carrots I sowed only 4-5 weeks ago are producing the first edible thinnings - with the promise of some lovely roots to follow soon.


But these are just a few of the vegetables I am harvesting at the moment. To add to the list are spinach, swiss chard, parsnips, beetroots, leeks, celeriac, jerusalem artichoke, and a little late fennel that the frost didn't catch! Not bad for a stony field that 3 years ago no one imagined would come to anything at all!

That Chelsea Chop - and Red Hot Pokers

I visited a beautiful garden yesterday and saw these wonderful Red Hot Pokers.







And this is what happens to Sedum plants when they are not given the Chelsea chop!!

Flowers Fruit and Herbs of the Bible No 3 The Bay Tree

Growing up as a little girl on a farm in Kent, we had a simply enormous Bay tree in our back garden. I was told that this protected us from lightning strike. But I can personally attest to the fact that this is simply not always true!
Nonetheless, Culpeper did write in the 17th century, although on what authority I know not, that:"neither witch nor devil, thunder nor lightening, will hurt a man in the place where a bay-tree is." OK, so we weren't hurt, so perhaps it is true. And we certainly never saw any witches, harmful or otherwise, in our garden!

This picture is of one of two bay trees I bought several years ago and as a pair they stand at the top of the steps leading up to the lawn. Soon, (but then I have been saying this for two long and doing nothing!) I shall start pruning and training them into those spherical blobs on spindly main trunks that you see in posher gardens than mine - ones no doubt where they have a gardener or bought them "ready made" at astronomical cost from a nursery. But i must do my own. I shall start by cutting off their top growing points at the desired height, and trimming all the side shoots to a requisite number of leaves ... and so on ... but that's a story for another day. I hope one day to be able to show you some success with this project.
For now we turn again to my biblical theme.
My tea towel tells me that the Bay Tree is mentioned in Psalm 37 at v. 35. But when I looked this up it refers simply to "a native green tree:"
"I have seen the wicked in great power,
And spreading himself like a native green tree..."
And the trusted commentary in the side margins that I have come to rely on tells me nothing more. So I have had to search further afield. How did the tea towel designer know this verse referred to a bay tree?
I have not yet found the answer, but I have found lots more fascinating facts about the Bay Tree, and will continue these in another post.

Flowers Fruit and Herbs of the Bible No 2 Rue and hypocrisy

"But woe to you Pharisees! (said Jesus to the Pharisees and lawyers as he dined with them) For you tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass by justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone."
Luke ch. 11 v. 42

This is my rue in the garden - gone to seed and heavily cut back for the winter.

In Matthew Jesus is reported as saying something very similar to the multitudes and to his disciples:
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law; justice and mercy and faith."
Matthew ch. 23, v. 23 - Jesus is saying that they have lost a sense of proportion in their spirituality, tithing small seeds but forgetting the major principles of morality.

Flowers Fruit and Herbs of the Bible No 1 Figs

Work at the allotment this month is now all about continuing to tidy up, composting all plant waste, and harvesting as necessary. So I thought I would start talking about the flowers, fruit and herbs of the Bible, prompted by a very old and fading tea towel we still have from many years ago.
So let us start, I thought, with that oldest story of all, the reason why the snake crawls on its belly, the reason why women travail in childbirth, and why we all toil in the dust to which we shall all in due course return.
Who hasn't at some stage heard the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? When the serpent tempted Eve to eat of the forbidden tree, and in her turn she tempted Adam to eat that same fruit, "the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves covering." (Genesis ch. 3 v. 7) And they incurred God's wrath.
I have a fig tree. I only bought it as a young plant a few years ago but in its favoured position against a South facing wall it has more than flourished - it is nearly taking over the whole area. And the crops each year are amazing. I love them just as they are, straight from the tree, but it is not advisable to eat too many in one day (!) and they do not keep well for long, so last year I ended up making loads of fig jam.
The picture here shows immature fruit. I will be taking all these off the plant soon, so as not to weaken the tree, as they have no hope of ripening and will otherwise rot overwinter anyway.

harvesting

Today was dry and windy with some sunshine - an ideal day for harvesting potatoes. Here is one row; I need to dig up 3 more over the next few days, weather permitting.
I left these on top of the soil to dry a little whilst I did other work on the plot, and now they are spread out on the garage floor to finish off before I store them over winter in special hessian potato sacks, in a cool dry and frost free place (garden shed or garage).
Whilst other plotters have suffered blight on their crops, mine are, so far, blight free, but it can hit overnight and spread very rapidly - I have used blight resistant varieties though and this seems to be effective so far.

The Swiss Chard (Bright Lights) is doing extremely well.
This is lovely chopped up, leaves and stalks, and steamed for a short while. The leaves are pulled off the plants from the base, from the outside inwards.The biggest surprise is the way the carrots and spring cabbages that I sowed recently are thriving. I hope we have enough autumn left for the carrots to produce some sort of crop for me. It's looking promising for now!
I finished off my work up there by picking some more runner beans and carting two more loads of manure on to the plot.

old garden artefacts

It's been far too cold, wet and windy the last couple of days to do anything serious in the garden or at the allotment, so I thought I would reminisce on some things that caught my eye in other people's gardens this summer.
I particularly like the cold-frame on wheels!