My Tiny Plot

The tomatoes are ripening – at last! They needed a bit of help. Basically I had been a bit lazy. I’d let them run amock in the strawberry patch, which meant that several things happened. 1. we had no strawberries because they didn’t have enough light and were overrun with slugs and 2. the toms had so many leaves that I had no idea how many green fruits there were lurking in the undergrowth. Once I had shifted the leaves out and let the sun in they started to go red – and here they are with the first tiny aubergine, some courgettes (that I am trying to cut when small from now on) and some peppers.
I made a yummy tomato salad with all the ingredients chopped really small with a dressing of olive oil, mustard and balsamic vinegar. Pop it in the freezer for a couple of mins to make it really cold…

Whenever I go up to mtp for a bit of a potter around I always come back with armfuls of vegetables that I never intended to pick. I say to Ryan, I’m just popping out to do some watering and when I arrive at the plot I find that the cucumber that was about two inches long several days ago now looks like something you would use to club a giant with (so of course must be picked). And that the courgette plant has gone crazy again and has small marrow-like forms protruding from it (and so they have to be picked). And the corriander is taking over the herb patch and so I have to cut some of that, and there are four gherkins that will be too large for my pickling jars if I leave them any longer… and the list goes on. Before you know it you are stumbling down the field balancing vegetables on every available digit and trying to navigate the allotment garden gate with no hands. So I was overjoyed at the sight of this very rustic basket ensemble that my work collegues bought me (plus a cook book but more on that later). Now I can pick all the vegetables in the world and skip down the path, like Anne of Green-Gables, with a free hand to open the gate and everything. The only thing missing is ‘lashings of ginger beer’…

What a gorgeous day it was yesterday – and how miserable it is today. Oh well. We had a BBQ at the weekend in honour of the first sweetcorn to emerge from mtp. There were only two ready and despite there being three of four earwigs homing inside them (which Ryan fed to our resident house spider, Pidge) they tasted fine. We stripped them bare and laid them on the BBQ to get nice and toasty before munching them away in a matter of mintues. Here’s a picture of Ryan doing just that. The sweetcorn tastes so yummy (Ryan says it’s his favourite thing to emerge from mtp) that we’ve decided to devote one very large bed to it next year. Sweetcorn heaven here we come.

Okay we’re back in the world of gardening. I’ve planted some green manure in the old potato bed. I went for mustard greens as I had heard (can’t remember where) that other seeds are a bit of a pain to get rid of once they start to grow. So, the green manure is in, and growing fast (what with all this rain). I’ll let you know how it goes, when I decided to dig it in and how difficult it is to kill off. Does anyone else have any experience with green manures? Any recommedations?

Today I went up to the plot and started to dig over the fruit bush area (previously riddled with weeds). I successfully dug a small patch when the heavens opened – mainly on me. So, damp and dejected I trundled off home. But what to do on a Saturday afternoon when Ryan is working and there’s no prospect of digging for the rest of the day? There was only one thing for it, I would have to become a domestic goddess. After being seduced by the cupcakes at the Magnolia Bakery (of Sex and the City fame) in Greenwich Village in New York, I decided to make my own version of said cupcakes. I found the required recipe, went and bought a muffin tin and an armful of food colouring and set about making one holy mess in the kitchen. This was the result, seems a shame to eat them really……well, not that much of a shame!

So the story goes like this. We grew some cucumber plants and started to anticipate some lovely fresh cucumbers. Then Ryan said, “you know what I love,” – no what? “I love pickles. You know, pickles, the ones you get on a Big Mac.” Oh right, well we need to grow gherkins. “Cool let’s grow some of those.” So we did. I bought some gherkin seeds, put then in the heated propagator and off we went. I planted them up at mtp around a month ago and last week we harvested our first tiny cucumbers (they’re so sweet…as in cute…not sweet to taste).
But of course growing and harvesting gherkins is only half the battle. You then have to pickle them. I used this recipe which is pretty simple and managed to pickle three whole gherkins (more to come we hope). So now we have our first jar of fresh dill pickles, err.. pickling in the cupboard. They won’t be ready to eat for six weeks but I hope they will make one American boy very happy.

Week 21 is all about onions. Now that I have the plaiting down to a fine art I plan to harvest the majority of my onions this weekend. I’m not sure how many I have. Too many is the answer but as you can store them that doesn’t really matter. I’ll estimate I have around 25 red onions and 10-15 normal onions (as in the picture). I pushed the tops over a few weeks ago (after watching Clive do his!) and so now I reckon they’re ready for pulling. Some of them are huge in onion terms, at least 10cm across. What I will use such massive onions for I dont’ know….Village hotpot? New Year’s curry?…or maybe I could buy a second hand hotdog stand and start selling them (with fried onions) down the market on Saturdays? In reality I’ll probably give them away to our neighbour who works on the toll bridge. Every time he lets us across free he gets another bag of something nice from the plot. Vegetables should become the official international bartering commodity. Who needs oil and arms when you have onions?

All the Dahlias are out now on the plot and they look really great against all the green of the vegetables. There are so many that I decided to capture some for my own purposes to brighten up the windowsill at home. They’re so intricate, I never tire of looking at them and they seem to be lasting very well indoors. Next year I want to grow some gladioli. David, one of our neighbours at the plot grows them and they’re really beautiful. He gave us some to take home and they were so big that they were nearly hitting the kitchen ceiling. So that’s on next year’s ‘flowers to grow’ list.
Infact I’m so excited about next year’s plot that I’ve already sketched out a new plan – but that’s for another post. For now enjoy the Dahlias.

All the garlic came up yesterday. Most it had fallen over and was terribly rusted but when I pulled it up all the bulbs were nice and fat and had split nicely. They’ve pretty much been in the ground since February so that seems like enough time. However, I think I’ll put the new ones in earlier this year just to be on the safe side. Maybe in November? I also managed to dig over the old potato bed and sow some green manure (Mustard) in there. And all before it started raining again!