Of Cabbages and Pens

"The time has come to speak of cabbages -and pens-

And why the tea is cold—

And whether slugs have souls.”

Spent about 3 hours the other day building two pens to keep the cabbages from escaping to attack the pigeons. Having seen the cauliflowers devastated by the pigeons I would be quite willing to go out shooting pigeons. Greedy little dunderheads.

I didn't realise I had so many cabbages in the seed bed. Planted out 30 odd assorted cabbages, january Kings as the label tells me. But courtesy of the numpties at B&Q where I bought the tags and a pen, the name was washed off the label; the pen wasn't water proof, numpties.

The cabbages were a little large, some of them, to be transplanting as they seemed to have quite a large tap root, and they wilted quite quickly, but I gave them a good water and we'll see.

There's still a truck load of red cabbages to take up to the other allotment, another twenty or so. if all these cabbages come good, well we'll be cabbaged out.

I also sowed a few lines of swede; a bit late but we'll see.

Salad Days

Naff headline but I have been sowing lots os salad in the back garden, along dome radish d'avignon, spinach, bella?, along with perpetual spinach and some nero broccoli, a little late but there you go, and a few lines of the beetroots, red ace and the bolthardy.

This afternoon I should make some sowings of swede, magres, that well late like, but what you going about it like, yeah and some spring cabbages, advantage and durham early.

That is all folks.

Oh and I tidied up my pots and planted a small herb bed, oh turned the compost, both bins, sigh.

Courgette a Go Go

The courgettes look like they're taking off. there are two types there an Italian striped one and errr another one, I'll get back to you on that.

Pain de L'eau

It's turning out like Jean de Florette; the tanks were running dry last week. Mmmmm some sort of water rationing going on. I arrived at the tank with me cans and all i saw was a dead donkey lying in the bottom, oh well that may be an exaggeration, but it was certainly pretty low. I had to go on the prowl to other tanks to get some.

I also sprayed the potatoes with Bordeaux, it's expensive but it keeps away the blight, though the Gentlemen of the Can who invade the allotments to suck on my potato leaves are a bit of a problem. That was on July 3, so fingers crossed I'll do that again in two weeks, 17 ish.

I have also augmented the pumpkins and marrows that I put out earlier with more pumpkins from the seed saved last year. Since I saw how strong the runner bean plants looked, which were from seed saved last year, I'm converted to saving my seed. Fnnaaar.

Picked the peas on the eden allotment, but about a quarter had pea moth caterpillars in them. That took a while to sort out those nasty little beggars; I'm going to compost them having drowned the caterpillars in a bucket of water.

Also picked a load of green goosberries, so I might have a tart tonight or possibly a fool. Ther was a bit of a small rain storm when I was picking, but that made a nice change, these days.

Strawberry Fields Forever

The other day I sat down in the strawberry patch, in the stealth fruit tent, and picked 4 lbs of strawberries without having to stretch. The day was sunny so I was working in a sweet, heady strawberry-scented cloud.

What can one do with that many strawberries? Well, we weren't geared up for jam making but we used the newly bought ice-cream making machine (A dangerous purchase, who would have thought the health conscious under gardener would do such a thing?) and churned up a bucket of strawberry ice cream along with a pail of sorbet, while the rest became Cossack strawberries, bathed in vodka as cold as the steppes in January and sprinkled with some sugar.

And the next day, another lb or so of strawberries were collected, more sorbet mixed up and more eating of the strawbs. The whole house is beginning to smell of strawberries.

And it's a sugary, heady combination, so unlike the artificially manufactured strawberry flavourings. One lad at work says he doesn't like real strawberries as he prefers the chemical strawberry taste. You know when you eat strawberry ice cream that it's not quite right, the taste is sweet but not rich enough and redolent enough, the colour a little too glaringly pink, like someone overcompensating and becoming excruciating.

It's an eye opener when you see home made strawberry ice cream, it's a pale delicate pink, more of a misty pinkness, possibly the colour of angel ears, while the taste is complex but understated in a very modest way.

Eat your heart out super, mega, world global mega-brands, pedalling your cloying, saturated dreams of your food scientists.

My strawberries can barely travel more than 2 miles and will only last a few hours after that, hence the sorbet and ice-cream rushes. But the ice cream hawkers have to have industrial strength strawbs, and the resulting concotions ahve to be bolstered by their chemicals.

But then again when you have people who prefer the taste of chemicals and the many more who have never made their own ice cream, then maybe the food giants have inherited the earth.

The next glut to look forward to is blackberries. I pick these wild across south London, yes wild in London, there are many secret places where there are jungles of brambles.

Can A Snail Eat a Large Strawberry

I'd noticed quite a large strawberry reddening in the frame the other morning, and thought "Aye, aye, I'll have that tomorrow." Tomorrow dawned, wandered down to the frame and there was just a stalk, no strawberry, gone, picked clean by something. Now I found a snail in the pot, and he was dispatched to the great snail heap in the sky, but can it have slurped down a whole, large strawberry?

Then I thought, maybe, it was a mouse, or a rat?

Traps, I think.

The words of Genghis Khan sprang to mind, he wasn't a great gardener, but this is certainly good advice,

“The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters.”

Well maybe I won't gather into my bosom the daughters and wives of the snails, mice and rats but I'm certainly going to scatter them.

Those strawberries are mine I say, mine.

The Stealth Fruit Cage

Over the last few weeks I've built a fruit cage on the Eden allotment, it covers the strawberry plants that were there before and the gooseberry bushes I put in, along with a few raspberry canes, and now apparently some rhubarb which has sprung up in the cage. Though it is difficult to see it on a photo, it is there. I was a bit worried about the bees getting in and out, but after watching one force it's way through the mesh like a British Lions forward then there isn't too much to worry about.There's the old greenhouse, a while ago full of runners, sunflowers and pumpkins, which got blown over a couple of weeks later, also the B&Q cloches which are quite good, should have got some more of those, this is in the back garden.
And some of the lettuces started under the cloche, beetroots started under the other one.

Best salad I've grown, those nematodes are doing their job.

These are the beans at Eden, field beans planted as a green manure, but they've really sprung up so I'll let them go on and try the beans, they seem so much more vigorous than the other named types I've sown. We've alreday had a lot of the bean tops with bacon, and in a soupystew.

This is the allium bed at the house, white onions, which are slightly running to seed, garlic which is getting a good kicking from the brown spot disease, I keep rippin leaves off. The garlic are still going, they loved the snow we had. And finally, some afghan shallots, well if they're not shallots we can have opium parties in the shed.

More beans, the bees are loving all the flowers.


And finally one of the cabbages, 9 more to go.