Smith Period

We had a 'Smith Period' in our back yard sometime last week I think. It wasn't a 'Beaumont Period' because it hasn't been warm enough, but the net net is that I've taken up all the outdoor tomatoes - still green (on the left). I'm hoping some of these will turn red rather than brown, because I've already made all the green tomato chutney that we can possibly stomach. The plants in the greenhouse haven't been affected yet but they have nearly finished producing anyway. It has been 3 fine months of tomatoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with jars of catsup and confit squirreled away for the winter. So, no complaints.
But, for next year, I have devised a cunning plan (well, read 'Tomatoes - The Inside Story by Terry Marshall) to extend that to 5 or 6 months. Firstly, I'm going to start the initial sowing much earlier with fewer plants - February possibly, now that there is a greenhouse. I think I'll restrict them to 4 or 5 trusses. And then I'm going to start to root the shoots that I pinch out along about mid May for a second crop to follow on fruiting after the first dwindles. It didn't occur to me this year until after my July 16th post and ensuing discussion with Patrick. I took some cuttings July 20th (on the right) which have now produced flowers and while it's unlikely that there will be any decent fruit it was a good dry run.

The Complete Guide To Health

I've just come across 'The Reformed Botanic & Indian Physician - A Complete Guide To Health' written in 1855 by Dr. Daniel Smith and available to be perused online here. The Doctor is a great believer in the healing power of a cold water bath (for involuntary urine, diabetes, cholera, scorbutick atrophy & more) and although he hasn't any suggestions for beets (see last post), there are a great many curatives which call for the use of other foodstuffs. I have illustrated below what I consider to be the '12 best food remedies you aren't wearing'.


1. For A High Fever If delirious, use cold bathings, give a little port wine after plunging. Apply warm lamb's lungs to the head.
2. Deafness, With Head Ache and Buzzing In The Head Peel a clove of garlic and dip it in honey, and put it in your ear at night with a little black wool. Lie with your ear upwards, and put it in the other ear the next night, if needed, for eight to ten days.
3. For The Ear-Ache Rub the ear hard for fifteen minutes; or be electrified; or put in the ear a roasted fig, hot.
4. For A Cold In The Head Pare the rind of an orange very thin and roll it up inside out, and put a roll in each nostril.
5. Hard Breasts Apply turnips roasted till soft, wash and mix with a little oil of roses. Change this poultice twice a day, and keep it warm with a flannel.
6. For A Stitch In The Side Apply hot toast spread with molasses.
7. Fever Sores Put on a poultice of stewed pumpkin as warm as can be borne. Repeat it once every two or three hours till cured. It will bring out the loose bones. Or bath the sore in the water where a blacksmith cools his iron.
8. For Falling Of The Fundament Boil one ounce of red rose leaves in one gill of red wine, dip a cloth in it and apply it as hot as can be borne, till all is used, and drink cherry bark tea freely.
9. To Give Action To The Bowels Poultice with powdered carrots. Add and moisten with essence of sassafras.
10. For Warts Rub them daily with radishes.
11. For A Broken Shin Bind on a plaster of balsam, beeswax and mutton tallow, equal parts, melted together.
12. To Cure Chilblains Rub with salt and onions when powdered together; or a poultice of roasted onions kept on two or three days - change often. Seldom fails.

Huddled Masses Food

One crop that has been growing well in spite of there being no sunlight is the beets. We've eaten a few of the 'Bull's Blood' (on the left) and there are enough 'Lutz' (right) to see us through until spring and then some.
The beetroot looks set to be in fashion this year, a superfood even, topping Dr. Jonny Bowden's list of '11 best foods you aren't eating'. While he stipulates that beets should be eaten fresh for maximum antioxidant power, it is frozen blueberries and canned pumpkin which finish in 10th and 11th places respectively. Ms. Parker-Pope who writes the column (and has never cooked a beet) dug deeper in a follow up article. She asked a Leading Beet Expert Irwin L. Goldman, point blank, why it is that the beet is getting no respect. "They are a huddled masses sort of food. They are thought of as peasant food and old-fashioned," said the Beet-Believer,[but] "They really are wonderful, and there are a lot of good things that you can do with them." (?)
Yeah, anyway, I really like them, most especially baked. But I've only just found out (and not in that vacuous bit of reportage) that not everyone's pee is pink the next day. The ability to metabolize the betacyanin is controlled by a single genetic locus and people (like me) with two recessive genes will pass the pigment in their urine.

Closure

According to the Met it was the dullest August since 1929 with only 105 hours of recorded sunshine - 67% of the average. That's about 3 1/2 hours a day. It must have been before I got up. Anyway, now we can move on and talk about what an uncommonly mild autumn it is.

No More Free Lunch

Days are shortening, beans are drying on the vine and apples are dropping. It is about this time of year that the drones destiny is sealed.
"One morning the long expected word of command goes through the hive; and the peaceful workers turn into judges and executioners. The great idle drones, asleep in unconscious groups on the melliferous walls, are rudely torn from their slumbers by a wrathful army of virgins. They wake, in pious wonder; they cannot believe their eyes; and their astonishment struggles through their sloth as a moonbeam through marshy water. They stare amazedly round them, convinced that they must be victims of some mistake; and the mother-idea of their life being first to assert itself in their dull brain, they take a step towards the vats of honey to seek comfort there. But ended for them are the days of May honey, the wine-flower of lime-trees and fragrant ambrosia of thyme and sage, of marjoram and white clover. Where the path once lay open to the kindly, abundant reservoirs, that so invitingly offered their waxen and sugary mouths, there stands now a burning-bush all alive with poisonous, bristling stings. Before the bewildered parasites are able to realise that the happy laws of the city have crumbled, dragging down in most inconceivable fashion their own plentiful destiny, each one is assailed by three or four envoys of justice; and these vigorously proceed to cut off his wings, saw through the petiole that connects the abdomen with the thorax, amputate the feverish antennae, and seek an opening between the rings of his cuirass through which to pass their sword. No defence is attempted by the enormous, but unarmed, creatures; they try to escape, or oppose their mere bulk to the blows that rain down upon them. Forced on to their back, with their relentless enemies clinging doggedly to them, they will use their powerful claws to shift them from side to side; or, turning on themselves, they will drag the whole group round and round in wild circles, which exhaustion soon brings to an end ... The next morning, before setting forth on their journey, the workers will clear the threshold, strewn with the corpses of the useless giants; and all recollections of the idle race disappear till the following spring."
M.Maeterlinck The Life of the Bee

I've just purloined over 30 pounds (11 litres) of honey from our army of wrathful virgins. The early honey is very light and flowery tasting while this late harvest has a much more complex and, I think, interesting flavour. Let's say, the first goes well in tea and the second is better on toast. As you can see it's much darker as well.

The Way Forward

"Let's extensively raise goats in all families." North Korean Poster

Emsworth Village Show

I just stumbled on this virtual garden show in time to send in a few entries before the deadline. There was no category for Curiously Lumpen and Hirsute Root Vegetables which is just as well as I haven't unearthed most of mine yet. But I put in 6 Tomatoes on a Plate, a Misshapen Vegetable and a Collection of Six Different Vegetables (pictured).

Growing from True Seed

There is just one day left to enter your photos in the International Year of the Potato Photo Competition. I'm feeling singularly uninspired right now. I'll blame the drear mid-grey, windless, room temperature 'weather' we've had, day after day, for what seems like months (I griped about this last year around the same time I'm afraid). Most of my potatoes are yet to be harvested but I did reach in and pull out a few Arran Victory tubers which made me smile.
This year I saved some of the true seeds from the fruits, in the hope that I will be the discoverer of a noteworthy variety of hitherto unimagined curiousness, and I've been casting about looking for information on growing them. Alan Romans kindly replied to an email and said to treat them much as tomato seed, which I had guessed, and expect to have small tubers by the end of the year that I can label and store and use as seed potatoes the following year. What I wanted to hear was that I could start them straight away in the greenhouse and have tiny tubers by Christmas that I could plant out in the new year. I have read that the shorter the diurnal duration of light (9-10 hours), the earlier the initiation of tubers. Has anybody out there ever tried this? I'm going to experiment with a few seeds that I'm pre-chilling now in the fridge. What the hey.

Home-Grown Porridge

First sow, water, weed and 9 months later harvest the oats. Second, thresh, separate and clean the oats. Then you can follow this Recipe for Gruel. It's that easy !
Blessed Hildegard has a few things to say about oats.
"They are both rich and healthy nourishment for healthy people; they provide a rich mind and a pure and clear intellect; and they provide good colour and healthy flesh. And oats are good for those that are somewhat and moderately ill. It does not hurt them , whether eaten in bread or cereal. But let whoever is worn out with paralysis and as a result has a split mind and empty thoughts, so that the person is somewhat insane, be in a sweat bath when the 'wheat' in the hot water in which it has been cooked is poured over the hot stones. Let them do this often; they will return to themselves and regain sanity."

The Monstrousest

A few humdingers that the garden has produced this 'summer'. That tomato (Omar's Lebanese) weighs in at 1 and 3/8 pounds or about 625 grams if you're of that persuasion. A total of twelve feet of cucumber (laid end to end) this summer on the 4 vines in the greenhouse, the longest individuals reaching 2 feet. And the potato is a Sharpe's Express, an early, which I missed digging out... early.

The Book of Blessed Hildegard

"Domestic lettuce (latich), which can be eaten, is very cold. Eaten without condiments, it's useless juice makes a person's brain empty and fills the stomach with illness. Therefore, let whoever wishes to eat it first mix it and temper it with dill, vinegar, or garlic so that it is steeped in these for a short times before it is eaten. If eaten tempered in this way, lettuce strengthens the brain and brings good digestion."
From 'The First Book Concerning Plants' Hildegard von Bingen, born 1098 Bockelheim
This has been a great summer for lettuce, with no scorching sun or excessive (any) heat to encourage it to bolt. The second crop of 'Moroccan Little Cress' and 'Black Seeded Simpson' (1&2) are still going strong. Last week I planted out more seedlings of 'Simpson' as well as 'New Red Fire' (4) which I got free with the Kokopelli membership. And the seed I saved from an overwintering 'Craquerelle du Midi'(3) has just successfully germinated. So that should see us into the winter. The RHS magazine this month has advice for growing winter leaves in trays under glass, sowing October through November and harvesting for 4 months. I'm going to give it a go and see how they get along in our unheated greenhouse.

The Birds & The Bees

Green Porno by Isabella Rossellini. More here.

Going West

"Young man, come nearer to me: It was devoured, chewed up, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped a boat!...ah, ah!"
Oh, yes, somebody is posting 'Moby Dick' at the rate of one line every hour. Anyhoo, it sort of works as a caption for this allotment squash casualty.

First Corn-Boil

'They have another way of eating Indian corn, to prepare which they take it in the ear and put it in water under the mud, leaving it two or three months in that state, until they judge that it is putrid; then they take it out and boil it with meat or fish and then eat it. They also roast it, and it is better this way than boiled, but I assure you that nothing smells so bad as this corn when it comes out of the water all covered with mud; yet the women and children take it and suck it like sugar cane, there being nothing they like better, as they plainly show.'
Samuel de Champlain observing the Hurons circa 1616

Summer's Death Toll

Cause of death of the first four: unknown. But I feel responsible for the demise of the bird. I feel like Philip Larkin did after the hedgehog/lawnmower incident.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled it's unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
I've been trying to keep the greenhouse windows clean - even squeegeeing the condensation off in the mornings - in an effort to allow as much sunlight as possible in. The more sun, the sweeter the tomatoes. At best only 91% of sunlight gets through the glass, and there has been so much cloud cover this summer. And then I got carried away and cleaned the windows (that I could reach) at the back of the house... I'm going to leave the resulting smudge there as warning to all the other birds.


Beautiful photos of exhibition preparation for the American Natural History Museum here. (via Curious Expeditions)

Tomato Times

"We're lucky to be living in such interesting tomato times"
So states Amy Goldman on the occasion of the launch of her book The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table.


This season's tomatoes on last year's gourd. Inspired by the Lady in the Tutti Frutti hat. (Mamma I Want To Be Breastfed)

Today

On 08'08'1856, Thoreau made this entry in his journal -
'When I came forth, thinking to empty my boat and go a-meditating along the river,- for the full ditches and drenched grass forbade other routes except the highway, - and this is one advantage of a boat, - I learned to my chagrin that Father's pig was gone. He had leaped out of his pen sometime since his breakfast, but his dinner was untouched. Here was an ugly duty not to be shirked, - a wild shoat that weighed but ninety to be tracked, caught, and penned, - an afternoon's work, at least ( if I were lucky enough to accomplish it so soon), prepared for me, quite different to what I had anticipated... Thanks to the rain, his tracks are quite distinct. Here he went along the edge of the garden over the water and muskmelons, then through the beans and potatoes, and even along the front-yard walk I detect the hint of his divided hoof (ungular)... here are his tracks again in the cornfield, but they are lost in the grass. We lose him; we beat the bushes in vain; he may be far away. But hark! I hear a grunt...'
You can read the whole story on blogthoreau.
And, always interesting, Gilbert White's diary on line @ naruralhistoryofselbourne.com
August 8th 1781 'We have shot 31 black birds, and saved our gooseberries.'
And in 1785 'Pease lie in a sad state, & shatter-out. Gleaning begins: wheat is heavy. Agaricus pratensis champignion, comes up in the fairey-ring on my grass-plot.'
Apparently this is a champion year for truffles here. ( story via Agricultural Biodiversity)

First Apples

Keswick Codlins (pictured) are just coming ripe now.

Job Lot

The glossy, usually bright red and spherical, pulpy fruit of a plant of the deadly nightshade family, Lycopersicon esculentum, eaten in salads, as a cooked vegetable, etc. OED

August

'Sow the principal spring crops this month. Cabbage and endive are best sown early in the month, and cauliflower and lettuce towards the end. Sow giant rocca and tripoli onions to stand the winter, hardy green-top stone and orange jelly turnip, and a final sowing of winter spinach. Give growing crops of celery, leeks, peas, beans, &c., liberal supplies of manure water where practicable.'
So says the thoroughly revised third edition of The Horticultural Notebook, 1914. I'm just off to the allotment to sow some turnip and radish seed.

Zucchini'08

"The story so far... The body of Doris Hazar's Pekingese, unwittingly asphyxiated beneath her husband's bottom during a middle aged spread do at the great house, after the ritual fortnight in the Rawlinson fridge has been given over to Old Scrotum, the wrinkled retainer, for indecent burial under Sir Henry's giant marrow. This monstrous jade zebra veg is the master's puffed pride, and by his stern instruction the greedy gourd is drip fed with a powerful laxative, thus 'should some rascal half inch the blessed thing and eat it, it'll give him the licorice for weeks'. Now think aught..."
Vivian Stanchell Sir Henry at Rawlinson's End



We're trying to eat ours up before they turn into zuccas.

A-watering

The past several days have seen me busied thus. More today with temperature still at 30° but possible respite tomorrow in the shape of a raincloud.
In 1863 Edward Lear, uncertain of income and wishing for a sinecure, requested his friend Fortescue to write to the Queen to ask the King of Greece to give him a 'place' specially created, the title to be "Lord High Bosh and Nonsense Producer ... with permission to wear a fool's cap (or mitre), three pounds of butter yearly and a little pig."

Too Few Foot Candles

I've lifted all the garlic, which I got in trade from Patrick, after the rust had taken over and put an end to any more growth. The Red Toch (above) do look presentable but Metechi were all quite small and miserable so I will probably use whole bulbs in with roast potatoes etc rather than try to fiddle with peeling each clove. I'd like to blame the lack of sun here - but probably somebody has got a bumper crop to show me up to be just an inept farmer.

Add 2" in Just 2 Days!

Accommodating the Tomato

"The tomato is so accommodating in flavour that it lends itself to all styles of dishes, and is equally delicious in them all. On the continent it is in common use, but the Americans appreciate it even more highly than the French, and, exhausting all methods of combining new culinary delicacies, eat it in it's raw state, just gathered as a bonne bouche, at an early breakfast. Fresh tomatoes may be cooked in a variety of ways: cut in thick slices and fried in a little butter, they form an excellent addition to a matutinal chop; or a fresh and delicate flavour may be given to the time-honoured rasher at breakfast, by mashing them up with a little butter and seasoning, and simmering them over the fire for a few minutes until thoroughly hot through..."
Our Wartime Kitchen Garden -The Plants We Grow and How We Cook Them (1917) by Tom Jerrold


A slightly late start this year owing to not having the greenhouse put together until April, but some fruits are now beginning to turn orange. There is a lot to learn about growing under glass, a lot of things that I'll do differently next year. Fewer plants and more space around them (25 are crowded in there, probably 16-18 at most next year), careful pollination and better support. It was so simple when I first grew them back in Canada. Plant out on Victoria Day, stake them and water occasionally and by September we'd be enjoying a matutinal toasted tomato and crispy bacon sandwich. I never encountered blight, magnesium deficiency, dry set (I thought that it was brilliant that the fruit was staggering it's development until it dawned on me that those tiny ovaries are never going to swell) or blossom end rot. The greenhouse should protect against the blight which has snuffed out the crop 4 out of the past 5 years but -whew!- the watering (twice a day), pruning and tying. I had no idea how quickly they would grow in here, taller than I've ever seen them, taller than me. I climbed the ladder and pinched out the apical shoots once they got to be massed and tangled in the roof spine. But, fingers (and legs) crossed we'll get to eat some of this year's crop.

Must-Have Allotment Equipment

From Modern Mechanix

The 'Peep Peep' Show

This weeks top story was the hatching of five of the assorted eggs under Doris. It is impossible to get a good group photograph, somebody always looks the other way, so I've shot individual portraits. We aren't yet knowledgeable enough at chicken sexing to know which ones are male (ie. destined for dinner) and which are female. Just as well really.

Honey Harvest

Just finished bottling up 45 lbs. of honey. So it looks like the shook swarm was a good idea. With a few months yet to go, this may be a bumper year.


Graphics from a honey tin found in a disused pantry in an abandoned house in the middle of the woods near Füchtorf.

The Fatal Ecstasy of Work

"... the spirit of the laws of the hive. For in them the individual is nothing, her existence conditional only, and herself, for one indifferent moment, a winged organ of the race. Her whole life is an entire sacrifice to the manifold, everlasting being whereof she forms part. It is strange to note that it was not always so. We find even to-day, among the melliferous hymenoptera, all the stages of progressive civilisation of our own domestic bee. At the bottom end of the scale we find her working alone, in wretchedness, often not seeing her offspring (the Prosopis, the Colletes, &c.), sometimes living in the midst of the limited family that she produces annually (as in the case of the humblebee). Then she forms temporary associations (the Panurgi, the Dasypodae, the Hacliti, &c.), and at last we arrive, through successive stages, at the most perfect but pitiless society of our hives, where the individual is entirely merged in the republic, and the republic in its turn invariably sacrificed to the abstract and immortal city of the future...
Where there is progress, it is the result only of a more and more complete sacrifice of the individual to the general interest. Each one is compelled first of all to renounce his vices, which are acts of independence. Among the humblebees, for instance, the workers do not dream of renouncing love, whereas our domestic bee lives in a state of perpetual chastity... Little city abounding in faith and mystery and hope, why do your myriad virgins consent to a task that no human slave has ever accepted? Another spring would be theirs, another summer, were they only a little less wasteful of strength, a little less forgetful of self, in their ardour for toil; but at the magnificent moment when the flowers all cry to them they seem to be stricken with the fatal ecstasy of work, and in less than five weeks they almost all will perish, their wings broken, their bodies shrivelled and covered with wounds."
From The Life of the Bee by Maurice Maeterlinck. He goes on to caution "let us not too hastily deduce from these facts conclusions that apply to man."

Kyoto 3 Foot

About 3 inches right now but will grow up to 3 feet according to the packet. I'm growing these inside the greenhouse and 'Kaiser Alexander' out in the garden because the old crone that runs the laundrette says that bitterness will result from commingling different varieties. Only not in those words.

Saves Money, Time & Labour

"...Ensures easy plowing, increased acreage and new rich soil with bigger yields..."
Farming with Dynamite from DuPont published in 1910 can be seen/read here.

Getting Pickled

There was a recipe came through the door this week in the latest HDRA newsletter. Called 'I Can't Believe It's Not Mango' Chutney - made with squash. So I decided that this would be a fitting end for the last of last year's squash (the Marina di Chiogga pictured). Where corn starts to convert it's sugars to starch directly after picking, I believe I've read that squash does the opposite. So, after all these months it's sweeter than ever. Well I'm not sure if the quantities were correctly printed, if it should have taken 5 hours to reduce or if the finished product should look like the devil's own poo poo. We can sample it in a month and let you know if it tastes like mango.


Red & Black Currant schnapps infusing.

N.I.W. No.3

This morning's round up of some of the locals and holiday-makers spending their summer in my garden.
The Good...

...The Bad (passed away shortly after the photograph was taken) & The Ugly (also no longer with us)

More Bugs

Here is a sample from Georgii Georgievich Jakobson's illustrated book 'The Beetles of Russia, Western Europe and Neighbouring Countries' (1917). Click on the picture to enlarge, and the link for hundreds more beautiful beetles. And then if you're in the mood for a tear-jerker, have a read through the biographical notes on Jakobson.

EntOmology 101

It's National Insect Week here, in America it's National Pollinator Week. And look what crawled out of the woodwork today...


Click on the picture for greater detail
... a female stag beetle (Lucanus cervus) about 5 cm. long. I spotted her on a stump in the chicken corral and got to her before they did. Let the Great Stag Hunt know if you find one.

Tiny Fruit

Stuff is starting to happen!

Bantamweight

Doris went broody again this week (the second time in a month), so today we forayed south of the M25 to get some fertilized eggs to put under her. And, along with the eggs, we brought 'Tiny Enid' back with us, in the pannier.

Carrost

Finally got my maincrop beets and carrots sown. Or 'carrosts' as they're called in our house. (you must see 'The Big Snit' if you don't know why).
This year the beets are Lutz Winter Keeper again (self saved seed) and Bull's Blood. And the carrost are both new for me - 'Rodelika' (very productive and vigorous with strongly red roots) and 'Purple Dragon' - from Kokopelli.

Indelible Ink

Take 1 part sal ammoniac, 1 part verdigris, 1/2 part lampblack, and 10 parts of water; mix thoroughly together and keep in a glass-stoppered bottle; shake before using; write with a medium-pointed steel pen. Another useful ink can be readily made by dissolving half a teaspoonful of sulphate of copper in an ordinary penny bottle of writing ink; use with a quill pen.
Garden Recipes from The Horticultural Note-Book


You may have guessed that these are all varieties of tomatoes.

Mondrian Bean Poles

Black Aztec

After several years of 'Stowell's Evergreen' and 'Inca Rainbow' I'm trying a new (old) variety of corn - 'Black Aztec'. I planted out a couple of dozen about a month ago (on the left now) and then got greedy and started another tray (right) which can go in next week I guess. I got the seeds from Baker Creek and their blurb states that the corn is sweet eating at the milk stage but will make a fine corn meal bread if left to mature. So here's hoping.
Below, from Strange Maps (originally from a satirical blog) - illustration of a possible correlation between GM corn production and neo-nazi violence. Hmmm...

Outlook Tonight

Here's the view from the top of our allotment plots (it looked a lot crisper in real life). You'll have to click on it to read my labels.