Spade Work : From Plot to Plate

Krasnador Red

This is a hardneck marbled purple stripe variety though you'd hardly guess looking at the outer skin.

Coming from Russia as the name suggests it's supposed to do well in cold climates.

The inner skin of each clove, 8 in all, is reddish purple and cooks will like it as they are large and easy to prepare.

I've read that hardneck garlic doesn't store as long as softneck varieties and this one has a life of 5 - 7 months. Time will tell. As I've more hardneck varieties this year maybe I'll experience a 'hungry gap' when I've no garlic left in store. Hope not.

Taste?  Garlicky and it livened up a roast hand of pork.

Potato Yields : Whole Tuber v Half-Cut Tuber

Earlier in the year I wrote that I would experiment with planting whole Charlotte tubers and half-cut tubers and compare yields. I wanted to see if I could get more value from a pack of 30 tubers costing around £6.95. (Of course the best value probably comes from saving your own).

And so I chitted all of my Charlotte tubers in the usual way and selected two. I cut these  in half and let them heal over for about two weeks before planting out. (A few days would probably be enough). Each half had at least one eye.

Come sowing time, the half-cut tubers were set in a spade deep trench, lined with grass clippings, one foot apart and then the whole tubers were planted in the same way, one foot apart. I ridged up the trench about a foot high as I was going away and didn't want the emerging shoots to suffer from a late frost. It also saved earthing up later on.

Both were harvested in early July. The average yield from the half-cut tubers was 810g per half-cut tuber versus 1.2kg from the whole tubers. Over a 30 foot row the half-cut tubers would yield about 24kg and because you cut them in half you would have a second 30 foot row to plant giving a total yield of about 48kg. On the basis of my results from a 30 foot row of whole tubers you could expect about 36kg. (I'm pretty sure my yields are down on last year as I didn't compost/manure enough).

So by going to the trouble of cutting the tubers I can get about 10-12kg more potatoes come harvest time. Worth thinking about if you have the space.

Of course there is the risk that the tubers could fail to heal over when cut or disease is introduced and you lose some. And as I harvested early I don't know if they would have continued to bulk up in the same proportion of 810g versus 1.2kg (don't see why not) or whether the whole tubers would have bulked up more.

Now I want to see if I can get a Christmas crop from chitted Charlottes which I'll plant late August/early September.

Summer Promise

Chillies Ring O' Fire and Apache; tomatoes Golden Sweet and San Marzano promise a good harvest shortly.

Guatemalan Ikeda and Susan Delafield

Guatemalan Ikeda is a hardneck purple stripe variety - you can just about see the purple marking on the clove. Medium size bulbs with nine cloves, it had a powerful garlic fragrance which tamed slightly when it was added to a parsley pesto over salmon steaks and baked.

Morning after dry mouth was rated at six out of a scale of ten. (Taste and fragrance opinions are highly subjective).

Susan Delafield is a porcelain variety and among the largest bulbs this harvest. The white thin skin held seven cloves and when split apart revealed a contrasting bright purple skin.

As for taste and morning after - I'm suffering with a heavy cold so this was all lost on me. Hopefully a feed of garlic scape pesto this evening with pasta will drive the virus out.

Uzbek Turban : The Morning After

My wife has a 'dry mouth scale' when it comes to rating garlic, so a twenty clove of chicken recipe (simple -stuff a chicken with twenty cloves of garlic and roast) is likely to overdo it.

Uzbek Turban scored 8 out of 10 this morning (up there with scapes) and that was from two small cloves in the sauce.

You're on notice - use sparingly! I wonder if its strength will develop or mellow over time?

Garlic Tasting 2008

All thirteen varieties of garlic were harvested last week and left to dry in a ventilated greenhouse which was a bit of a risk as they could have 'cooked' if it had been a hot week.

Despite a really bad attack of rust, the bulbs seem unharmed.

Any that look as if they will not store well I'm using first - just like the Uzbek Turban in the picture - the bulb looks as if the cloves are splitting one from another.

It's not the biggest bulb of the lot - that award goes to the Susan Delafield of which more in a later post. But there are a decent ten cloves in all, nicely coloured with a pink tinge to the skin which is slightly more pronounced on the inside of the clove.

It peeled easily and when crushed for a courgette (zucchini) pasta sauce it rendered oodles of garlicky juice. This packed a punch (not quite in the garlic scape league though) and as I type wafts of garlicky goodness are rising up from the keyboard even though I gave my hands a good scrubbing. As for taste, well, it was garlicky. I'm guessing that this is pretty much all you can say about garlic, except when it's old, hot and bitter.

Thanks go to Patrick of Bifucated Carrots at www.patnsteph.net/weblog/ for the seed.

Friary Fete 2008

The plant stall at the Friary Fete, Sunday 15th  2008. A bigger, better and brighter stall than last year.

Lots of people were looking for trailing plants and something suitable for hanging baskets - which we did not have. Note for next year.

All our veg plants and herbs sold early in the day and we must grow more next year.

Everything in flower sold first, even the gaudiest bedding and the cut flower bunches went quickly.

And with a little persuasion the grasses, cow parsley and fennels eventually sold.

The First Charlottes

This is two plants worth of Charlotte potatoes, just under 500g which on our portion controlled diet is what we now allow ourselves per sitting. So I'm not too bothered that I've started to harvest them early (they flowered only about a week ago and they are still in bloom). I expect in two weeks or so they'll have bulked up and I could get four times the amount per plant and the size of each tuber will be bigger. 

What really made me harvest early was tasting a supermarket Charlotte offering over the weekend, a soapy and soggy travesty. Not at all what I know a Charlotte to be. I do wonder whether its popularity means that varieties are passed off on consumers not lucky enough to have grown the real thing?

We'll have these roasted with baked chicken breasts flavoured with a Spanish marinade inspired by Laura at www.masdudiable.com who is cooking and growing wonderful things.

Pots

Usually the plastic pots you get at the garden centre come in black, green or brown. Sometimes you get them in jazzy yellow, pink and blue. What they all have in common is they block out light to the roots of plants.

Now I've loads of plastic food containers (yoghurt, cottage cheese and the like) which I'd like to use to pot on seedlings. Some are clear and some let a little light in.

My question is will this help or hinder plant growth? Or will it make no difference? (This is what I think as the soil blocks light to the roots, which when they grow through the bottom of the pot it's time to transplant or pot on anyway.)

Any views?

Swift Update

As the title suggests I'll be brief. Sowed another tray of sweetcorn, Swift, in mid May and 80% of these germinated (unlike the first batch early in the month). Maybe it's best to delay sowing.

I'll plant them out next week and we'll see how they yield in comparison to the plants already in the ground.