There’s been some long gaps between postings this autumn and winter. So what have I been up? In brief – a lot of writing, a most enormous amount of wall-building and not enough gardening to save us from a Zucchini Tsunami and the Giant Monster Squash.
The wall in question is the second wall for the veg patch. Our garden slopes gently down from the southern corner to the northern corner, so previous owners have flattened that slope by creating terraces. We built a wall at the top of the vegetable patch in 2020, and this year we have replaced the rotting wooden barricade at the lower end of the patch with another, taller wall. One paragraph, but a lot of work and a huge amount of fun.
At a price, though. We neglected to practise the Art of Self-Defence (Gardener style). About two-thirds of the courgettes grew up to be marrows. One of the monster Pacific Giant squashes got bitten by a vampire slug and rotted on the vine. The tomatoes were cramped together in a tray in the greenhouse rather than being planted out in the polytunnel or in growbags. The promise I made to sacrifice the entire mange-tout crop to a Chinese stir-fry went the way of all politician’s promises (“Did I say that?”).
It hasn’t turned out too badly. I have a large bagful of Greek soup beans, lots of kale and leeks and even some surviving Brussel sprouts this year. A good crop of cucumbers and sweet peppers, and even one enthusiastic Wicked Witch chilli plant which is going to provide me with enough seeds to plant Wicked Witches for the next five or six years. Incidentally, if you harvest seeds from a pepper plant and don’t label them, I have discovered an easy way to distinguish sweet pepper seeds from chili pepper seeds. Bite one. Just one. If your whole face isn’t numb within seconds, it’s a sweet pepper seed. I wish it had been a sweet pepper seed.
We mixed the last lot of cement for bricks in September and in October we set the coping stones and cleared away the debris. I brought in one of the Pacific squashes as it had turned Hallowe’en orange and was ready to cook. I asked himself for help bringing in the last Pacific squash. He thought I already had brought it in? No, I said. That was the smallest squash. This is the biggest one – so fetch the wheelbarrow. It lurked under cover for a week, thirty three kilos of loveliness, huge and orange like a certain politician but a damn sight more useful. It took three days to cut it up, process it into cubes and soups and save the seeds. Though I was asked more than once if I really needed to save the seeds – do I intend to go on growing squashes bigger than I could lift?
I’ve learned a fair bit from this year of vegetable neglect. The tomatoes have been prolific even without being pinched out, and we’ve had more tomato sauce from them than in any year before. The potatoes gave up early on, but the onions grew fat and juicy. The early carrots did well, but the later sowings should have been thinned out in August. The melons we sowed deliberately have provided one tiny fruit between four plants; the Eden’s Gem vine sprouting from the seeds of a melon carelessly dropped and split in 2022 provided five fruit. A bit more neglect and less frantic gardening might give us better results. And more time for sitting in the sun.
If I needed any incentive to sit back and chill out more, I got it from the local news in October. A lorry overturned on a major local road (the driver escaped with minor cuts) and the road was covered with some poor farmer’s whole crop of red onions. Tons of them. The FaceBook Warriors had a ruddy field day, pardon the pun. “Find a hard shoulder to cry on” “Peel off that road and find another root” “That’s shallot guys”. I reckon top prize for wit goes to; “The driver remains onionymous”. If you enjoyed the beef in the passenger seat from Norfolk, Nebraska in August (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-66668411) then Suffolk’s vegetable offering will have you crying with laughter.
The next stage is hard work, but fun. Making soup out of the squashes and Greek soup beans. Jelly from the quinces. Pickling and braising the red cabbages. We’ll be eating the onions and potatoes all winter, and the soups will freeze in batches and last round to the cold days of next spring. There’s something about eating meals made from your own vegetables that gives that extra cheering element. The leeks are starting to thicken a little and the kale and cabbage and brussels are putting on muscle in preparation for winter.
First we had to fend off the local muntjac. Not content with wandering around the garden most nights belching like a pack of beer-soaked teenagers, they discovered that we’d grown some tasty brassicas and helped themselves. They stripped most of the leaves off the brussel sprout plants I’d planted from seed in February and had been coaxing to full size since, and ripped some of the cavallo nero kale to shreds. I had to cover the brassica patch with mesh to give the plants a thin chance of escaping being eaten by deer until we’re ready to… yeah, their fate was sealed one way or another from the moment they put their green sprouts above the soil.
Earlier today my worries got the better of me and I dug up the best sprout plant to fetch it indoors. It’s standing with its roots in a bucket of water in a cool corner of the utility room right now, safe from marauding venison. It would be the last stalk of sprouts left in any decent greengrocers, the tatty little sprouts very loose-leaved – but it’s ours, and we will enjoy it. Those sprouts will sit alongside the few remaining potatoes that we grew this year, a baked onion (ours), our own parsnips mashed with cream and pepper and roasted carrots (local farm shop… but I picked up some good ideas on how to grow great carrots next year from the shopkeeper).
The carnivore of the household will tell you about the turkey fighting for a patch among the veg on the plate. We haven’t been daft enough to raise our own turkey. We’d be the soft lot serving up nut roast and rushing out to feed the turkey – who had looked at us so adoringly when we went out with the axe that we couldn’t bear to… We supported the local butcher’s shop instead.
I wish you all a happy Christmas, hope you raised a glass of your favourite liquid to the turn of the year from darker to lighter and may 2024 be kind to you all.
Julia Chalkley 