Showing posts with label potatoes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label potatoes. Show all posts

26.4.12

mud and rain


This week is most certainly a vegetable week as I haven't actually finished my winter digging yet.  Is it still winter?
I'm currently using the car as a mobile potato chitting shelf as the seedling table in the house is now covered with baby tomatoes and brussel sprouts (number one vegetable in our house) and so a backlog is developing.
I think the fact that I can no longer offer anyone a lift because the potatoes are using the seat could suggest to some people that I have a problem, but it is one which can only be solved by digging the potato patch, so that is what I have been doing...in the rain.


1.8.11

summer snacks


No one asks me for snacks at home anymore because they know what they will be offered...

I have a strong squirreling instinct and it extends to many things (okay, mostly food).  Why plant ten pea plants when I can plant fifty and fill the freezer with peas and dry some for the winter?  Why plant enough onions for a few weeks of feasting when I could plant a couple of hundred and have onions for every meal well into the next year?

I think some would say the fact that I live in a small house and have zero storage space for two hundred onions and tens of kilos of potatoes should be a consideration and the fact that drying the onions means that we all have to leap the length of the kitchen because the floor is completely covered and we now can barely cook anything unless you have arms like Mr Tickle (only in the evening - I take my onions out for an airing everyday before breakfast and bring them in later, unless it looks like rain...).

I do like the philosophy of those who buy the cheaper, space taking vegetables from shops and concentrate on the more expensive, unusual or must be eaten the second they are picked ones on their allotments, but I just can't do it - I have to plant the lot, in triplicate.  It's the squirreling thing...

2.5.11

bumper berries



After all these holidays those of us with allotments should be way ahead this year - gulp.

At the moment I'm dreaming of thistle roots, having just turfed all my baby peas out of their spiky nursery in order to dig it over for the THIRD time this year...at this rate I'll have perfect soil by September, with not a crop to show.  Move over thistles and bindweed, the potatoes are coming.  My new tactic is to plant more potatoes than we will eat in our lifetimes in the spiky end of the allotment and then ignore it....

The lovely end of the allotment is doing well (if you don't count zero precipitation thus stopping all germination) and there are an exciting number of berries on their way this year - hurrah.