Cranberry Pole Bean Harvest

Pestilence

"I adjure thee, beetles, who dissipate and destroy the food of men in this place, that you should depart henceforth and go where you can harm nobody."
from the text of a manual of exorcism circa 1500


In 1545 the good people of Saint-Julian-de-Maurienne sued a plague of flies for destroying their vineyard. The court ruled that it was 'unbecoming to proceed with rashness and precipitance against the animals'. Thirty years later when the insects returned and the harvest was again lost the court accepted a formal complaint against the insects. It appointed Antoine Filliol, a distinguished lawyer to conduct the defence. He argued that the plaintiffs were acting unjustly, since his clients - like all living things - were commanded by God to 'be fruitful and multiply.'
The plaintiffs acknowledged the insects rights and agreed to set aside a piece of land outside the vineyard for the purpose of feeding and multiplying. We don't know if this was successful or not as the papers recording the outcome were lost, apparently destroyed by insects.
I found this story along with one about a pig hanged for murder in 'Strange Histories' by Darren Oldridge.

Knit Knit Knit

Autumn is now officially upon us. I can draw a line under the worst summer in the garden since, well, since that other one. Time to stoke up the fire and sharpen my knitting needles. And if I get started now I can knit that special someone a soft Christmas present such as the Tudor Jerkin below that's modeled by the mock-Tudor jerk. See more inspired knitwear at 'threadbared.com'

Oriental Roots

Hot radish
Pierced my tongue,
While the autumn wind
Pierced my heart
- Matsuo Basho 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North'

August 30th I sowed seeds of turnip and winter radish. And here they be on September 8th. Still trying to create the illusion of summer. The Giant Luo Buo radish can grow to 10 inches and weigh over 2 pounds and the Hinona Kabu neep grows to 12 inches long and is white with purple shoulders. If anyone has any good recipes for cooking or pickling them please let me know.


Bitten by fleas and lice,
I slept in a bed,
A horse urinating all the time
Close to my pillow.
- Basho again, farther down 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North'

It's Open Season on Mushrooms

A day or two too late for this quarry, something else got to it first.
(9 inches across!)

Stocking the Larder

Hmm, September. I guess that was it for summer then. There aren't too many things that are going to have a sudden spurt of growth at this late stage, but still, I don't feel like tallying up just yet. Something there is lots of right now and that's fruit. We're getting our fill of apples - apple sauce, apple crumble, apple pie - blackberries, and the neighbour's plums. And I've tried to lay in a few stores for the long, cold dark nights ahead. I stewed a couple of bottles of an elderberry cordial, good for sore throats, croup and catarrh. And then made this crabapple cheese, very like quince cheese in texture and probably usage as well, but with the addition of a little cinnamon and clove spices. I'm sure it will cure whatever ails you and it's quite more-ish.

Kaiser Alexander

The longer you garden, the more varieties of each vegetable you discover which are really to your liking and you don't want to be without. But the most fun in growing your own is experimenting with strange things that you won't find in the shops. This year I realize that most of the garden is old favourites and I'm missing that buzz. The 'Kaiser Alexander' cucumber is one of the few new trials for me and I just picked the first one. Yeee-ha! Really crunchy (like biting into a raw potato) and sweet and mild. About 7 inches long and 3+ in diametre and they apparently store for a while. I've come late to cucumbers, this is just the third year. The first time I sowed two varieties of gherkins and they were quite bitter. I read later that you shouldn't grow two different types side by each. But I came across a number of theories for bitterness. Last year I grew just one with mixed results. But this here is a winner. And therefore will probably grow it again next year...

And so I shan't.

More Whingeing

Speaking of tea, the gardeners at the Horniman Museum gardens have planted Camellia sinensis this year. It will be interesting to see how well it grows here on the misty moisty slopes and rarefied air of Forest Hill. Hmmm, I never thought of growing my own tea before.
Meanwhile , I've taken to sitting, crumpled in the potting shed staring out into the sodden gray yonder. And lo and behold found there the birdhouse gourds that I grew last year. They are completely dry now, so I've started cutting little circular doorways in them. Very easy with an exacto blade, rather like cork. Rattling them I imagined a couple of seeds inside but have found over a hundred in each fruit. In other words, I've got more than enough and if anyone wants some just let me know. Otherwise I suggest contacting Chris Bauer, the UK branch of Kokopelli Seeds for a good selection of gourd shapes.


Four to suit tits and two for robins or tree sparrows.

Under the Weather

Minnie Bannister: "Yes, yes, what a nice summer evening, typical english weather."
Henry Crun: "Mnk yes, the rain is lovely and warm. Minnie ?
Minnie: "Yes?"
Henry: "I think I'll take one of my sou'westers off..."
Minnie: " Oh, you devil you!"
from the Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler of Bexhill on Sea


This is the view from my allotment today. I dug the last of the charlotte potatoes and planted out (better late than never) young florence fennel. But really it's a day for staying in and making pots and pots of tea. And now that I've seen 'Tea Making Tips' (flagged up by our friend Mike @ Articles & Texticles), "every cup will be a cup that cheers!"

AllSwell

The garden has survived my absence which happened to coincide with the only two rain-free weeks all summer (thanks Iz!). And below is a testament to the growth that has been happening there.


Once these things get started they develop rather quickly. A curious researcher in 1894 weighed a developing squash fruit hourly and found that they gained at an average of one gram per minute. Last year for a while I was running out with a tape measure every morning and recorded growth in the circumference of up to 5cm. in a day. But those were the days when we had sun and heat...

R&R

We're off to the seaside for a fortnight. We've taken 40 more pounds of honey, tallied up the July rainfall (99mm., the average is 38), packed our haversacks (see Thurs.2nd Feb.in the Hooting Yard archive), battened the hatches and I'm leaving this lot to hold down the fort.

Bud the Spud

I've just harvested the Roseval salad potatoes and I'm well pleased. The weather hasn't adversely affected this lot. There are 100 excluding the top row of little ones, from only 5 seed potatoes.
Here's Stompin'Tom to sing the praises of his home growed potatoes.

Detritus 101

A part of the 'Integrated Pest Management' that beekeepers must routinely do is an inspection of the litter tray. You insert a sticky/greasy paper under the mesh floor and after a few days take a good hard look at what's dropped there. The idea is that if a mite falls it'll stick and be counted. And the good folks at DEFRA have calculated mite populations based on that. Well we've got good news and bad news. One hive with less than 2 mites a day is very good for this time of year. But the other one with about 8 a day will require some immediate action. It's going to interrupt the honey harvest from that hive but hopefully we can get the bee population healthy enough to last the winter. The honey bee got a lot of press this spring (not as much as Paris Hilton maybe) concerning the phenomenon that has been termed 'Colony Collapse Disorder'. Current thinking is that it isn't any one thing but rather like a bee Aids, whereby their immune system is weakened (stress, pesticides, etc.) and then they can be finished off by something that wouldn't normally be fatal. Anyone interested can 'listen again' to a recent Food Programme on Radio 4 which looks at the problem. And I see that Patrick @ Bifurcated Carrots has flagged up an article which has yet another theory.

Vestal Virgins

It's so heartening to see the first female flowers on the squash plants as there can be a long succession of male only, particularly early in the season. And you can already begin to see evidence of the shape, colour and markings of the mature fruit in the unfertilized ovaries.
John Loudon, a best selling garden writer at the turn of the 19th century commented on the growing of squash that " The seeds of pumpkin are scattered in the field, when planting corn, and no further trouble is necessary than throwing them into the wagon when ripe."
While I know this to be essentially true, I still go and check on them daily and wring my hands when the fruit doesn't develop but just turns yellow and drops off. Some plants wait until late August to start producing a real fruit. I have a couple of plants that have only managed one or two male flowers so far. Some of the factors affecting flower production and sexual expression such as temperature, daylength and light intensity, I know I can do nothing about anyway. So I'll take comfort in the evidence of past harvests.

Daylight Robbery

The philosopher Democritus advised that for a long life you must 'moisten your insides with honey and your outsides with oil'. Yesterday we made off with 28 lbs. of the sweet stuff from our two hives and there was a lot of licking up needed doing to get it packed into jars. By the end our innards and outards were well moistened. This crop is very light coloured with a decidedly flowery taste. Mmmm mmm.
Apparently in Slovenia, Job was the protector of beekeepers. Here is a little painting of the guardian sitting atop a pile of manure next to the hives from the Museum of Apiculture in Radovljika.

Tender Buttons

"It was a cress a crescent a cross and an unequal scream, it was upslanting, it was radiant and reasonable with little ins and red."

"Very well. Certainly the length is thinner and the rest, the round rest has a longer summer. To shine, why not shine, to station, to enlarge, to hurry the measure all this means nothing if there is singing, if there is singing then there is the resumption."

Gertrude Stein

Cloud-Cuckoo-Land

We've been having some wild weather here this spring/summer. After a lackadaisical April - the warmest & sunniest since MET records of 1914 with only 2mm. rain - we got the wettest May ever (103mm. in my garden). Typical of the last few weeks is this little sequence that I recorded while sitting in the studio yesterday afternoon. It came complete with lightning and then rainbows when I cycled into town later. It's enough to make you want to join the Cloud Appreciation Society. Have a look at their photo gallery and be amazed.

Stocktaking

Yesterday (Canada, Oh Canada, Day) we got a sunny afternoon so I went around the allotment and garden, camera in hand, to record the growth to date. This is the kind of list that nobody but me wants to read but I'm writing it as if someone will.
(a) A 12 foot row of climbing beans 'True Red Cranberry', after a slow start are now about 2/3 of the way up the pole, leaf amaranthe 'Kahulu' is over a foot tall, Roseval salad potatoes are in flower and 3 squash moschata 'Shishigatani' have vines 4 to 5 feet long.
(b) Corn 'Golden Bantam' (20 plants) is as high as an elephant's thigh (well knee maybe).
(c) Enough Morello cherries this year for 2 bottles of cherry schnapps methinks.
(d) Four courgette 'Costa Romanesca' are producing fruit now. I've also got three 'Albarellodi Sarzana' almost ready to plant out.
(e) One of 8 squash 'Blue Hubbard' in the foreground, some 'Weggiser' snap peas and a couple of the 10 'Green Globe' artichokes that I started for next year.
(f) Parsnips 'Half Long Guernsey' are looking hale while the cabbage 'Holland Late Winter' and brussels sprouts 'Groninger' behind are a bit pigeon-pecked.
(g)'Keswick Codlin' cooking apples will be ready in about 4 weeks.
(h) We're having salads most days to keep up with the lettuce which is thriving in this weather. In the top corner just visible are a few of the leeks I dibbed-in (?) 10 days ago - 30 'Swiss Giant Zermatt' and 45 'Siegfried'.
The cucumbers 'Kaiser Alexander' didn't get their picture taken because they have just sat and stared at me since I planted them out 4 weeks ago. Also not pictured but doing well are a dozen celeriac 'Giant Prague', 2 squash 'Marina di Chiogga', 5 squash 'Buttercup', climbing haricot beans 'Aunt Jean' and 'Soissons', dwarf bean 'Magpie' and 4 each of tomatoes 'Pink Brandywine', 'Yellow Pear', 'Stupice' and 'Isis Candy'. A dozen kale 'Nero di Toscana', 8 purple sprouting broccoli, and a dozen 'Westfalian' kale 5-6 inches in height got planted out yesterday. In modules 'Large Green' chard, corn 'Orchard Baby' and okra 'Beck's Gardenville' are about an inch high.
On Saturday I sowed a tray of lettuce 'Black Grained Simpson' and 'Craquerelle du Midi', more parsley and fennel 'Romanesco'. We have finished the early potatoes and are now on the 'Charlottes'. The 'Guerande' carrots that I thought had failed to germinate have just shown up and beetroot 'Devoy' and 'Lutz' have 2 true leaves.
Hmm, this diary could be useful in years to come if only I had kept a detailed record of sowing dates. Next year.

More Artful Beetles

Three paintings by Joris Hoefnagel (1542-1600) which feature the stag beetle. More of his nature studies can be seen on the National Gallery of the U.S.of A. and at Giornale Nuovo.
Below is the ingenious folding new year's card that we got from Michael's uncle Werner who actually has a beetle named after him. I think it's one Coleoptera westfalia 'Starkei' - but not the one pictured below which is a chafer.