Posting hiatus may be put down to sheer indecisiveness and lack of industry. Hoping to resume better than normal service, and will start with my first, hopefully successful pollination* of a squash flower.

I finally found foot-space on the bed which contains Marina di Chioggia and Olive squashes, and looked about for likely victims to pollinate.  Really, I am anxious to produce seed from the Olive, as I can buy Marina di Chioggia quite easily.  However as it is the nicest squash I’m personally acquainted with, I was happy to give it a go when I found that only this variety had with a matching pair of nearly-ready-to-open flowers, (with the distinctive yellow colour showing at the top and the flowers starting to change shape).

In the past I’ve been advised even by keen food gardeners not to bother saving squash seed - the cucurbits seem to be extremely tarty and will breed with anything they can share pollen with.  However they are relatively conservative in that they don’t seem to like to breed with other species - eg, Real Seeds recommends its West Indian Gherkins for those growing hybrid cucumbers because as a different species you won’t get bitter fertilised cucumbers if you grow them in the same greenhouse - http://www.realseeds.co.uk/cucumbers.html).

Even more encouragingly, a lot of seed saving guidelines recommend squashes as a good starting point for hand pollination, because the flowers are large, the pollen plentiful, and male and female easily identifiable even from a very early stage. And with winter squash, you will allow the fruit to fully ripen for eating, so you won’t lose any of your crop as you might with courgettes.

So I’ve been looking for a chance to put in to practice the guidelines from http://www.realseeds.co.uk/wintersquash.html and from Sue Stickland’s Back Garden Seed Saving. I don’t have access to perforated plastic bread bags as we make all our own bread, but I do have a lot of unusable wool leftovers, some of it in a rather fetching shade of red.  I gently but securely tied up each flower at the tip to prevent it opening the next day - the red wool makes it easier to spot the flowers.  This morning I checked on them and untied the male flower, where I was fairly sure I could see pollen, but I tied it back up again until the sun had hit the bed and I thought both flowers might be more amenable to my matchmaking.  As I only had one of each flower I cut the male flower off, stripped the petals and used the whole stamen to rub pollen on to the stigma - there’s a very good picture of this on the Real Seed’s squash page referred to above.  Once finished I tied the female flower back up again to prevent any insects bringing other pollen to it and competing with my “work”!

Now, I’m not at all sure this is going to work.  The flowers may have been too young? I was forced to use a male and female from the same plant for now which isn’t ideal, although Sue Stickland says it is acceptable at a push.  Having to tie up the female flower strikes me as not such a good idea as wrapping it with a more airy perforated bag, for example (it’s just struck me that old tights might be a good alternative).  And there are probably other things I’ve not thought of yet.  But I’m feeling rather pleased with myself just for trying, it hasn’t done any harm to try, and if it does fail at least I will be able to learn from it for my next exploit when, I hope, I get a chance to try the technique out on the Olive squash (where even the unfertilised “embryo” fruit are whoppers!).

(*Why is pollination spelled with an i and not an e as in pollen?)

I haven’t been entirely lazy all the time I’ve not been posting and have a pile of photos to help with getting back up to date, so hope to add a bit more soon. In the meantime, the most relevant picture I could find - the first flower on our Nano Verde di Milano courgettes, from early June which we’ve been eating for about a month now.

The rogues with the biggest price on their heads this week:

Slugs and snails - in this case the price in question is about £2.50 for some eggs (or rather the resultant shells) and about 40p for some copper tape..but I suspect this price is going to go up, as the little blighters keep breaking through the barricades. The helpless victims are the Victorian Purple Podded peas (of course - they are the ones I had the fewest seeds of!) - even though they’re being grown in a huge container, set out on what other people might call a lawn, if they did lawn-type things to it. Still, they’re moved further out still, and sitting on a large log, with more egg shells added as fast as we can eat the contents. Half a dozen or so of the plants have made it a foot or so tall so there is hope, but it’s very frustrating.

Vine weevils - this season’s most wanted. As I think I said in the post above I’m annoyed we didn’t act sooner on finding a single adult last year. They are very distinctive, and we should have been less optimistic. Our two interesting rhubarbs, Grooveless Crimson (marvellous name) and Fultons Strawberry Surprise, seem to both have suffered, with at least one of the six plants very close to meeting its maker. We noticed they were looking sad, and my beloved emptied one out to have a look and found the grubs all over it with the remainder of the fat roots coming off in lumps.

Fortunately the nematode treatment has turned up, and the rhubarb, an emergency case because of the difficulty in replacing it, has been treated today, along with the ground born sweet cicely and asparagus (again, some difficult/time consuming plants to replace - and edited to add, prompted by my better half, that we also hope this might provide a nursery situation for the nematodes to spread through our soil a bit). When the heavy rain has passed in a day or two the remainder will come out of the fridge and be shared between our potted plants (a few trees, blueberries, fruit cuttings), which are, I believe, the most vulnerable.

Rather unhappy about them but at least we are doing something. I may have to obtain another barrier treatment of some sort against the slugs - we are reluctant to use nematodes for them as most of our vegetables are grown above our wildlife ponds.

Weekend of 19-20 April

Sowed cucurbits for the propagator

6x Black Forest F1 climbing courgette (T+M)
4x Squash early yellow straightneck (Real Seeds)
3x Gherkins Parisian Pickling (Real Seeds)
2x Cucumber Flamingo F1 (Wallis Seeds)

Once these are out, Loofa and winter squash will go in.  Squash are something I’ve yet to succeed much with seed saving yet, although last year’s loofa seeds are germinating in test pots so that’s rather gratifying.  This year I’ll be trying Olive from the HSL.

Potted up as many tomatoes as have pots for - 9 toms and 3 peppers lined up for a brother’s greenhouse, and sister and a couple of friends are hopefully going to rehome some others.  OH divided another yacon and potted up two of the largest ones.
Peas seem to be doing OK, adding crushed baked eggshells as they become available.

Bad news is the discovery of vine weevil grubs in our precious rhubarb pots.  I suspected we had them last year, and now regret not taking some action at the time, as one plant is nearly dead and another starting to look sick.  I have ordered some nematodes from the Organic Gardening catalogue, along with some coir bricks, of which more later, but chemicals haven’t looked so attractive in years…

22/4/08

One of our Buff Sussex hens laid an egg today.  Nothing momentous except it was the first one this year, and our ladies are 7 years old.  We don’t expect much from them, and as long as they are fit and healthy, we’re happy for them to enjoy their retirement, clearing up the odd slug or eight, providing compost, and stealing broccoli leaves, blackcurrants, strawberries, tomatoes, peas…hmmm.  I actually admire those who are able to dispatch their laying hens humanely and make use of the meat, but these were our first birds, and have taught us - me especially - so much, that they well deserve their time in the sun now.

From this:

to this:

in less than a month. Eek. We might have to move house.

We were a bit sceptical about the growing tips (surely you can see why from the top picture) even though Real Seeds has never let us down, but we followed the advice to pot them up right away and as our house is not particularly warm or draft free house we put the pots in the propagator as space was freed up from chillis and tomatoes. As soon as the green tips showed, we moved them out and gave them as much light as possible (as advised by Simon Hickmott’s Growing Unusual Vegetables, a dangerous book to have near an internet connection if ever there was one). They’re now spending daytimes in the greenhouse and nights in the kitchen (who needs work surfaces anyway?).

Three of the tubers actually have two growing tips on them (bottom left plant in the top picture) so yesterday my better half took a division from one of the plants, potting it up on its own, and leaving the main plant in the original pot.  It drooped a little at first but perked up and can only be interesting.  A maths conundrum..if we didn’t really have room for five yacon plants, how are we going to find space for six?…

We dabble in home brewed beer and wine - time and space and other interests currently keep us from wading as deep as we would like, hic. This was one of the reasons that a few years ago, we obtained some hop plants from Deacon’s nursery on the Isle of Wight . They’re almost certainly planted too close together (suggestions range from 1ft to 5ft - as usual it would seem that six inches of soil on top of pure chalk wouldn’t be top of their list of desirable homes either), but at about 2ft apart we still can keep track of which plant is which while we learn more about them. Cuttings are easy as they root like they’ve been taking lessons from bindweed, and we’ve been able to pass a number on to friends and other gardeners. We chose the popular varieties Fuggles (aha!), Mathon and Cobbs (types of Goldings, of which Mathon is supposedly more rain resistant).

We’ve had a couple of harvests of hop flowers (see above about hopelessly optimistic planting) and used them in beer. Mmmm beer. However, each year, you are only supposed to allow a few shoots to continue growing (one or two in commercial situations!) and the “hills” throw up scores of them. This I suspect is the reason that in times gone by, apparently the shoots used to make a regular appearance in London markets - when Kent and surrounding areas would have had a surplus of such shoots every year, it must have been a useful sideline.

As we are confident our hops are settled in, this year we’ve tried our first few hop shoots, cooked and served “as a side dish similar to asparagus” (a phrase which is only slightly less ominous than “may be used as a spinach substitute”). Wary, we doused them with butter - and were in fact pleasantly surprised. Although I’d say that the predominant flavour could best be described as “green”, there was no bitterness (which some sources warn of and suggest cooking in changes of water) and they were tender quite a long way down the stalk. I can see that if you were growing seriously they would be produced in such quantities that it would be very worthwhile to harvest and sell. Even on our home garden scale, they’re welcome as fresh greenery when a lot of spring vegetables are only just starting to get going.

If you’re unfamiliar with the different uses of hops, PFAF’s site is as always an excellent starting point:
http://www.pfaf.org/database/plants.php?Humulus+lupulus

13/04/08

Sea kale cuttings - two of our three seed-grown seakale Lily White failed to show this spring. Thinking we might as well stop watering the pots, I emptied them out, to find fat, firm yellow roots curled around the bottom under the rotted crown of the plant. They were too curly to make cuttings as long as my books recommend, and rather less than pencil thin in some cases, but all the same I thought it was worth trying some root cuttings (called “thongs”, what fun), and felt terribly professional making my diagonal and flat cuts to differentiate the direction of the roots when I put the cuttings in to their new pots. It’s also, I believe, not the right time to take root cuttings, but if I did everything at only the right time, there’d be a lot I didn’t do at all…

Also, potted out 10 Victorian Purple Podded peas in a huge tub, and 12 Parsley Peas (which don’t grow so high) in another. Ideally this means at a later stage I can move the two tubs a distance apart and be perfectly happy that I’m saving pure seed - peas are one of the things this matters least with of course, but as I want to protect my few seedlings from the ravages of slug, snail and chicken, I might as well take advantage of it and separate them too. The parsley peas tendril/leaves are showing more clearly now - I learn from Rebsie of Daughter of the Soil that these may be known as hypertendrils - see http://daughterofthesoil.blogspot.com/2008/04/things-we-dig-up-in-garden-part-two.html for more on the offspring of parsley peas.

14/04/08

Sowed about 40 stations of Parsnip Guernsey Half Long from the HSL and a tiny patch of Scorzonera from (ahem) Lidl. In another very, verylarge tub as there’s currently not a lot of space available in the ground. A few more parsnip seed will probably go in the ground though, as I have proven to myself that old parsnip seed doesn’t actually germinate (I believe a lot of things I read in books but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to try for yourself!)

And finally, ribes magellanicum - potted up 12 seedlings (one largish plant and 11 tiny ones) in to a multipurpose with John Innes. This plant, from Chiltern Seeds, has taken over a year to germinate, having been abandoned in disgust to the (cold) greenhouse over winter. I actually wanted ribes aureum, the golden currant, of which has many good things to say, but Chiltern ran out and offered these as a replacement - not so heavily lauded, but they sound promisingly tough: http://www.pfaf.org/database/plants.php?Ribes+magellanicum

5-6 April 2008

So far the answer to “can” you grown canned tomatoes is “Well, *I* can’t” but I’m leaving them in for now. This weekend saw a few sowings and a small accident with some Broad Ripple Yellow Currant seeds, compost and the propagator (well, I thought it would encourage the canned ones).

Some old basil seed refused to germinate but a fresh pot has come on quickly and I have used up a couple of old packets as well while the propagator remains on. This also contains lemon tree cuttings, turmeric roots, and some myrtus ugni, which I bought from Chiltern Seeds last year, but had no luck with. I’ve put the remaining seed, half just under and half on the surface of the compost. The plant was mentioned on Gardener’s World a couple of weeks ago (the same programme as the yacon) so I thought I’d dig out the seed - I don’t have a lot of hope for it but it’s more likely to grow in some soil than inside a wooden wine box on top of the wardrobe where the rest of our seed collection lives. Also, I’m trying to rationalise my seed collection and make sure things are used up and given the chance to grow or given away if I have too much of any one plant.

Potted up the British Green Tiger and Salt Spring Sunrise tomatoes, three Trifetti chillis and a couple of extra Rotoco (Rocoto? I must look it up) chillis. Have also popped in some more beans (if I put three beans in this pot and two beans in this pot, what do I have, Baldrick?) of Ferrari and Triumph de Farcy two Nano di Milano (I think) courgettes, to have another go at a couple in large pots in the greenhouse - this worked well last year and we ate our first in mid-May last year, followed by almost exactly none for the rest of the summer as the sun sulked and the rain poured down. Here’s hoping for just a little more sun this year - this week we’ve had wild garlic and rocket in a sandwich so at least we’re starting off on the right foot!

Didn’t get time to post last week’s pottering up (really only of interest to myself - I want to find a way to differentiate my “diary” posts from more detailed mutterings).

29 March 2008
Successful germination for 13/14 field beans
No show on Canadian Wonder dwarf french bean (believed to be about 4 year old seed, possibly more, so not a surprise). Removed the ailing beans from the rootrainers and replaced them with nasturtium seeds
Dwarf beans Rocquencourt and Ferrari look promising even in the greenhouse through cold weather
Excellent germination on Bath Cos lettuce from the HSL
Hungarian Blue breadseed poppy not looking promising - used last year’s seed so have sown another potful, from last year’s pods (100s of seeds in each pod) (note added - the seed from last year’s pods came up within two days!)
Started harvesting a little rocket
Spinach in pots looking quite fat - am going to pot up in to larger tubs and possibly move outdoors
Victorian Purple Podded and Parsley Peas now in the greenhouse hardening off. The Parsley Pea strikes all manner of interesting poses as it grows, as there are leaves where there would normally be tendrils and on the small pea plants they look like hands at the end of arms. Photo in this post is one of its yoga impressions!
Potted up some tomatoes:
15 My Girl (HSL)
7 Black Master (Real Seeds)
7 Purple Ukraine (Real Seeds)
100% germination on those (and leaving me with many more tomatoes than I have room for..at current rates I will have 45 plants, with the greenhouse able to take 12 and room outdoors for perhaps half a dozen. Some rehoming will have to go on again this year. And this is me being good!)

Field beans
We know very little about these…obtained them from a friend of a friend, who described them as popular in the Middle East, but was unsure exactly how they are eaten. Obviously they are very close to garden broad beans but I think these are more used as a pulse - http://www.ukagriculture.com/crops/field_beans_uk.cfm has some nice detail and pictures, and says “The major human consumption market for beans is the Middle East where beans are used prior to the Ramadan fasting period.” We will probably keep most of any harvest this year for seed, so we have plenty of time to find out more about them.

And not a drop to drink. Mainly, because I believe we’ve drunk it all and have to wait for the new harvest, which for us is just starting. We had a very small rhubarb crumble this week, sweetened partly with sweet cicely…I was surprised at how it kept its aniseed taste and while it was definitely nice enough, we felt it detracted from the taste of the “fruit” itself. So perhaps one to try again in the future but not to hurry back to.

We have two new flavours of rhubarb to look forward to this year, along with our existing plants.

Giant Grooveless Crimson

Fultons Strawberry Surprise

Both are in large pots, we’re mollycoddling them a bit, as they were microplants from Thompson and Morgan last year, propagated I believe (but can no longer find the information to prove) from plants held by the RHS. Very little information seems to be available, both were awarded the AGM in 2003 subject to availability and I think T&M stocked them again this season.  The Jamie Oliver pages on the Channel 4 website describe Fulton’s Strawberry Surprise as “A vigorous grower with vivid red colouring” and it apparently came joint first in an RHS taste test along with Merton Foremost. Giant Grooveless Crimson is even more elusive.

The rhubarb microplants arrived in small pots but quickly bulked up and we think we can spare just a stalk from each this year to see if there’s any noticeable difference in taste and texture. We really like to make rhubarb wine, so it could be nice to show off our varietal vintages!

Our main crop is a small bed of Victoria seedlings, which are five or six years old now. Our garden is shallow soil over solid chalk and the rhubarb isn’t thrilled with the situation, but with lots of compost manfully handled by my beloved, straw mulches and as much water as we can spare/remember, they produce enough for us and a few bottles of a pretty, pink, fragrant wine. Rhubarb schnapps is also not to be sneezed at…

Rhubarb from seed is supposed to be very variable - the pictures of our bed below, all plants from the same batch of seed, certainly back this up.

Sowed sweet basil on the windowsill.

Experiment - Suma tomatoes, from a can. I’m sure that I have grown from a tin when I was even littler than I am now, but I can’t find anyone definitely saying they have done this , so I wanted to see if I was just imagining it…with a little space in the propagator there’s no harm in trying. About 40 seeds have gone in, to give a good chance of some germinating if they are going to at all. It’s just to see if you *can* (aha) do it, and I promise I will humanely dispatch any resulting seedlings. Honest.

Elsewhere there has been excellent germination on all the proper tomatoes, transplanted chillis are doing well in spite of the snow and frost, beetroot, calendula, and rainbow carrots germinating in the greenhouse. Parsley and cosmos standing up OK to being moved to the greenhouse. I think that’s it for now, everything else seems to be stalling until it stops being quite so arctic.

This year, alongside the main bed, our garlic (planted in the autumn) is also undergoing a few extra trials.

We’ve been told you can manage successful sized bulbs in fairly small individual pots, and there’s no harm in trying it out as we had a number of cloves spare. As many individual pots (about 5 inches - 13 cm) as we could find each hold a single clove.

The very thin cloves - Solent Wight had a lot of these this year - were packed in to a large pot to try for greens.

Finally, last year’s garlic harvest has started sprout too much indoors, so last weekend I started adding the errant cloves to troughs, considering we’d get as much use from the shoots while we continue using those which have kept better.

We have had rust a fair bit so for a few pounds, prefer to buy in fresh seed stock at the moment rather than saving our own for the main planting. The main garlic bed also contains Swift overwintering onions, next to Music garlic from the Really Garlicky Company. Alongside are Purple Wight, Solent Wight, German Red and Spanish Roja from Dobies and these last four are in the pots experiment too. I hope to mulch the garlic in the ground a bit this year as it’s supposed to help the bulbs fatten up by keeping in moisture.

In a similar vein there’s a small patch each of elephant garlic from Taylors’ bulbs, and wild garlic sourced from a native plants nursery.