My Tiny Plot

My Rocket seedlings are coming up. I didn’t hold out much hope for them in my rickety old popagator, stuck out on the deck in these sub zero temperatures but amazingly enough they’re sprouting. They must be tough little things. Once they get to about an inch high I will transplant them to the cold frame up at mtp. It’s nice to know that in the depths of winter there will be no flea beetles around to munch tiny holes in their leaves and render the whole lot inedible (which is what happened in the summer). I like Rocket, especially wilted on top of a nice mozarella pizza, or with mixed salad - so I’m looking forward to tasting my home grown version for the very first time soon. Go Rocket!

Last year the onions we grew on mtp were very successful. We grew Red Baron from sets, planted them straight in the ground around March time and come the end of the season we had 30 or 40 huge specimens to store over the winter. We just ate the last one a few days ago. So in year 2 my aim is to not only have the same success as last year but to build on that and become completely self-sufficient in onions for the whole year! Yes I know it’s not very Tom and Barbara but going for one vegetable at a time means it’s not so frightening. So we’ll be planting more Red Baron in March, but for now I have started off some Stutgart onions and more Longor shallots in small pots under tiny cloches. Hopefully, this will mean I can harvest these onions slightly earlier than the rest. Obviously, the self sufficiency bit doesn’t start until the first one is pulled and eaten. Oooh… look at me - making up my own rules! The first person to guess which are onions and which are shallots is very smart indeed…

Due to it being winter and cold and wet and dank I’ve been reading a few books. I have lots of gardening books but these three are my favourites. Ryan will testify to that. I’m no book reviewer but here’s a quick summary of why I like them. The first Delia’s Kitchen Garden is a great book full of gorgeous photography. It takes you through month by month and tells you what to plant, sow, pot up etc. It’s all geared towards veg (very little about fruit) and also assumes that you have a greenhouse. And of course there are the seasonal recipes which look delicious (haven’t tried any yet though). The second was a Christmas present from you know who. The Great Vegetable Plot is a personal look at kitchen gardening. Sarah Raven (the one with the unkempt hair on Gardener’s World) provides a little window into her vegetable growing world. I learnt more from this book than the other two put together. She’s great for little tips and tricks that you would never think of yourself. The third is my allotment bible. The Allotment Handbook is a true beginners guide. It tells you exactly what to do when and how. I always read each monthly chapter at least four or five times, just to check I’ve done all my chores that month. So there you go, the mtp reading library. It’s not an exhaustive collection, nor I suspect the book collection of choice for many. I’d be interested to know what everyone else is reading. Come on, there must be some HFW (Hugh Fernley-Wittingstall) fans amongst you, I’ll wager my best trowel.

It’s a well-known fact that you can’t run an efficient kitchen garden without making your own compost. You could buy compost but it doesn’t give you the same sense of satisfaction now does it? Since we bought our giant compost bin and kitchen caddy (small bin to collect kitchen waste such as peelings, coffee grounds, leftovers etc) we have been overwhelmed by the sense of ‘doing good’ that composting brings over you. It’s really quite difficult to explain. To think that all the good stuff that we throw away is being broken down by worms and such like so that we can dig it into the soil to nurish next year’s crop. The whole idea of it blows me away. Anyway you can see I’m pretty excited about it. Here is a photograph that Ryan’s sister took when she came to visit over Christmas. I had never thought of taking a photo inside the bin but it makes a great shot, don’t you think?