Asparagus Beetle

We were down at the patch this afternoon and I was pleased to see the asparagus putting out more spears.

I was less than pleased to see that we had an infestation of Crioceris asparagi... or Asparagus Beetle to you and me !

We will now be taking all necessary steps to control these little critters.

Watch this space !

This is what it's all about...

We're just back from the patch before the rain resumes.

Guy is here for dinner tonight and there are friends and family coming to lunch tomorrow and on Monday, so we have been busy pickin' pullin' and liftin'.

On show is our harvest of celery, carrots, a lovely cauliflower, fennel, courgettes, onions, raspberries, potatoes, calabrese and bunching onions.

July Review

It's July and the patch is really showing some growth.

Here's a brief summary of the crops we are growing and how they are performing :

• Potatoes : We are growing Cara, Desiree, International Kidney and Anya. We are currently lifting some of the International Kidney and Anya for the table and the plants have produced good yields of tasty potatoes. A few Desiree were lifted and shown to have good yields, but a few of the tubers were found to have 'hollow heart' and we will have to watch the crop carefully. The Cara have produced good top foliage and I expect them to produce some very good yields when lifted in late Summer.

• Three Sisters : This bed is coming along nicely with the beans growing up the corn and the squash starting to cover the bare earth.

• Brassicas : The cabbage, red cabbage, cauliflower, kale, savoy and purple sprouting broccoli plants are growing strongly in the pigeon and butterfly proof cage. The calabrese produced good quality heads a lot earlier than expected. These have been harvested and frozen and the plants are now producing a secondary growth. We have had to bring on some more calabrese plants and these are now ready to be transplanted into the bed inside the cage.

• Leeks : The seedlings of the two varieties were transplanted to their final positions and are looking strong and healthy.

• Peas and Broad Beans : The October sown plants were removed and this area will be used to grow Spring cabbage and Choi Sum. We have sown another row this month that we hope will take us through to the first frosts.

• Celery : We have some strong healthy looking plants, although the sticks are rather thin.

• Onions, Shallots and Garlic : All bulbs from Autumn planted sets have been harvested and the area used to sow late peas and broad beans. The bulbs from Spring sown sets and seeds are developing nicely, although the changeable weather is likely to induce bolting.

• Asparagus : All ten crowns have produced a number of healthy spears which are now showing ferns which we will leave until the foliage browns and starts to die back.

• Fennel : We are currently harvesting bulbs from the spring sown crops and have also made another sowing of a late developing variety.

• Carrots : Both varieties (Autumn King & Purple Haze) are showing signs of attack from Carrot Root Fly despite all of the preventative measures we have taken. We will now lift all of them and see what we can salvage for freezing. Another row of Autumn King has been sown and we will try to protect this crop as best we can.

• Parsnip, Celeriac & Swede: We have strong plants that should produce some good yields.

• Beetroot : We have already lifted (and pickled) two successive rows and have seedlings growing in a third sown row.

In addition to these main crops, we have catch-crops like radish, spring onion, spinach and also some plantings in odd corners... lettuce, borlotti beans, outdoor cucumber, and tomatoes.

Ahh, but the strawberries...

... that's where I had them.

We too, have had a bit of trouble with the strawberries this year.

Whilst all of our neighbours have been harvesting bucket loads, our plants produced a miserable yield.

So, I decided to bring in reinforcements. A dozen plants were ordered from Ken Muir and these arrived today. We drove straight down to the patch to pull up 12 of the existing plants and replace these with the new ones.

The new plants are Flamenco, a 'perpetual' variety which should crop from mid-August to mid-October... so we may even get some fruit this year.

... keep the vampires from your door !

Here's news of this years crop of garlic.

We grew some Cristo and Moraluz varieties, but the bulbs were small and they are being used up first because they do not keep so well.

We make garlic puree by zapping the cloves to a pulp, placing this in a jar and then covering the pulp with olive oil to exclude the air.



A small teaspoonful of the puree is added to any recipe where garlic is an ingredient. In addition, the remaining oil makes a fantastic salad dressing when mixed with lemon juice or white wine vinegar.

The varieties shown below are Solent Wight (right side) and Early Purple Wight (left side).

Solent Wight is a softneck variety which should last us through to next year. Purple Wight is a semi-hardneck variety which does not last as long and we will start on this once the Cristo and Moraluz have been used up.

I have already ordered my bulbs for planting in October and will only be growing Solent Wight this time because they have proved the most reliable and gave the best yields.

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In a bit of a pickle !

Heather has pickled the beetroot that was pulled on Sunday in a spiced vinegar.

Cinnamon bark, cloves, mustard seed, black peppercorns, chili flakes and ginger were put into a muslin bag and the bag placed in a pan of distilled white vinegar.

The vinegar was brought to the boil and then left to cool for 3 hours allowing the bag of spices to steep in it.

When cool, the spiced vinegar was poured over the sliced beetroot which had been placed into clean jars.

Give it a few weeks to mature, and the beetroot should be ready for eating.

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Another lazy Sunday morning

We have had another long morning down at the patch.

The remaining peas were picked, the plants cut down, cut up and put on the compost heap. The bed was weeded and given a good helping of poultry manure before we sow more brassicas (Spring cabbage, choi sum and purple sprouting broccoli) in August.

The beetroot was lifted, the row weeded and given a dressing of Growmore before Heather sowed a row of carrots (Autumn King).

We had previously sown another row of beetroot and these are just starting to show.

The netting was removed from our strawberries, because a) they had stopped fruiting and b) the net was needed for the raspberries. The strawberries have been very disappointing this season with lots of foliage but very little fruit. I am planning to replace 12 of them with new plants of known quality early in the new year.

Some of the potato hulms were showing signs of wilt and browning, so I lifted the tubers to check on the possible problems. The International Kidney have failed to flower, but there was a nice crop of tubers under the two plants I lifted. The Anya flowered profusely but did not produce much top foliage... once again there was no problems with tubers that I lifted. I then lifted one of the Desiree plants that was looking particularly poorly and found that two of the tubers had rot. This could be the start of blight, so I will have to keep a close eye on the situation and lift them early if the problem continues.