March- a month of 2 halves
21st March and Charlie is too hot to move
March has been, on the whole, not too bad, but the weather has been a bit weird. For us in Kent the entire month’s rainfall (which was well below average] fell in the first 10-14 days then everything dried up and a mini heatwave ensued, punctuated by some chill cloudy but still dry days. Just the sort of weather to dry up your outside pots, and I only just caught mine in time as the leaves of the newly emerging tulips started to flop. Lawn mowing has officially started now the mower and I wont sink into the boggy bits and disappear without a trace, and seed sowing, pricking out and potting up is in high gear.
Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea
‘After a fairly shaky start to the day, Arthur’s mind was beginning to reassemble itself from the shell-shocked fragments the previous day had left him with. He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.’ The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams.
I’m now a quarter of the way through a one year herbal medicine foundation course. Although it’s well taught by enviably knowledgeable, enthusiastic and engaging tutors, is densely packed with fascinating information, and I’m definitely glad I decided to do it, there is a downside.
It’s the herbal teas. Every single alternative to what I call proper tea (black leaf Camellia sinensis) I’ve ever tried tastes to me like something that’s been swept up off a stable floor and boiled in old pond water, and this course and it’s herbs have not changed my opinion, or tastebuds.
Except for the nettle tea, which having harvested the fresh leaves from a Charlie cocked-leg-free patch, carefully steeped in freshly boiled water for the recommended time, and sipped mindfully, I now know tastes like seaweed boiled in old pond water.
Sadly, I still have a fair number of different herbs still to work through, and as participating personally in the herbs is part of the herbal medicine experience I’ll no doubt be dutifully making and teas of them and gurning my way through the tasting process. Just don’t expect me to enjoy it.
I am enjoying growing the herbs though. I’ve bulk sown German Chamomile, Milk Thistle and Yarrow, established a nice curved sweep of Lemon Balm by moving self sown plants from the veg patch, and sown Calendula to grow along side it. I’ve even grown a few Liquorice, Marshmallow, and Agrimony seedlings. The Meadowsweet is proving to be a recalcitrant bugger to germinate but I’m persevering.
German Chamomile-aka Matricaria chamomilla- which is latin for tastes like hay boiled in old pond water
The plan is to establish a herb garden down by the firepit area, in which I will waft around romantically, harvesting all the lovely herbs that I definitely won’t be drinking in teas.
Let’s move on to something I do like the taste of.
Epic Edibles to start in the next few weeks
Now March is over and the soil is warming up I’m itching to get some delicious fruit and veg growing. Over the 35 years I’ve been growing edibles I’ve tried most crops. Some have succeeded fabulously, some failed dismally, and a third group has caused me to wonder why I bothered at all when I tasted them (Cukamelons spring to mind again). It’s this last group that had the real lessons in it for me.
Nowadays if I’m going to use growing space and go to the effort, it’s got to be for something that I enjoy eating. It’s even better if it’s either expensive to buy, or tastes much nicer fresh grown than shop bought. If I love it and can’t buy it: win double! Your list may look completely different.
Tomatoes are my number one recommended grow your own edible. Quoting David the Good again- As a wise man once said, ‘Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is knowing it doesn’t belong in a fruit salad’.
Homegrown tomatoes are easy, undemanding and very productive. And the taste is like nothing you’ve ever bought in a shop.
Not available in a shop near you
You can occasionally buy okay tasting tomatoes if you’re prepared to pay premium prices but it’s likely that all shop bought tomatoes, no matter how premium, have been picked before they are ripe and refrigerated at some point. That’s a shame because if a tomato is treated in this impertinent manner it may never develop its full flavour potential.
On the plus side the most recent research has debunked the ‘never store your tomatoes in the fridge’ theory. If tomatoes are fully ripe then storing in the fridge for a few days will prolong their shelf life and won’t harm their taste at all.
The reason why most shop bought tomatoes don’t taste as good as homegrown is because commercial varieties are chosen for tough skins and firm pulps that don’t bruise easily. Their skins go red before they are ripe and soft inside (helped by artificial gas ripening). So, they travel well, having been picked before they are ripe, and arrive in the shop looking lovely, but tasting meh, if not bleargh.
No amount of room temperature coddling once you’ve bought them will make these bland over-bred little nuggets taste good.
My recommendations for home grown edibles that will give you flavour you can’t buy:
1. Tomatoes
2. Potatoes, specifically early salad potatoes.
3. Sweetcorn
4. Cucumbers
5. Beetroot
These are all delicious, produce well for the space they take up, are not demanding divas to grow from seed (or seed potato), and available as young plants if seed is too much of a faff. What’s not to love?
Chard comes in a variety of bright colours, but the chickens don’t seem to mind
And if you have space and energy for a few more:
1. Carrots
2. Snap pod peas
3. Parsnips
4. Cavolo Nero Kale
5. Beans of all sorts- especially broad and pole or dwarf French
6 Spinach and chard
7. Winter squash and pumpkins
Spinach and chard I grow for the Henitentiary inmates. They adore them, and their egg yolk colour is amazing because of these carotenoid packed leafy greens. And at £1.50 for a bag for spinach that they could demolish in about 2 minutes it makes sense to grow my own.
All these beauties can be sown directly outside after the worst of the frosts are over, starting in April and early May. The carrots, peas, beans and greens can be succession sown, by which I mean sow some every month from April through to July, and you can be harvesting them from July to October and even later.
My nemesis
What I don’t think is worth growing if there is premium on space or energy (because they are cheap in season and taste about the same if you buy them) are:
1. Lettuce
2. Garlic
3. Onions
4. Leeks- in fact all alliums
5. Courgettes
6. Aubergines
7. Chillies and sweet peppers
8. Sweet potatoes
Aubergines are my nemesis. Seed germination demands heat, and they need an early start, not to mention blood sweat and tears to get going. As young plants they are attacked by every identifiable and few non identifiable sap-sucking insects, and flop bonelessly if left unsupported. To top it off, no matter how careful you are, the nasty little spikes on the fruit stems always manage to stab you viciously as you harvest the single sad pear sized fruit that represents the sum total of the plant’s effort for that growing season.
That being said, I do grow most of these edibles every year and enjoy growing and eating them. I just don’t think they taste that much better than shop bought, and some of them are a bit finicky to get started or not particularly productive, so I can’t recommend them for a list of really worthwhile edibles. If I didn’t have lots of time, space, and an obsessive and contrary nature, I wouldn’t bother. Again, your list may look completely different.
But in the event of an energy crisis (say some idiot in America decides to declare war on Iran and they retaliate by stockading the Straight of Hormuz- ridiculous I know, but bear with me- and fuel becomes so scarce that transporting food is prohibitively expensive), I know how to grow them and I have the seed. Although in that situation I’d be prioritising growing potatoes, brassicas and beans, so we won’t starve or get scurvy. And feeding the flock so we have eggs and looking for a drake and cockerel for my next generations of Henitentiary inmates.
Now it gets a bit weird- I also have some Golden Virginia tobacco seed squirrelled away. Not that I’d ever consider starting to smoke but once all the supermarkets and off licences have been looted I reckon tobacco leaf will have pretty good bartering power. And I’m growing tea bushes. I can’t face a Trumpogenic dystopia without caffeine.
My tea bush- aka Camellia sinensis, which is Latin for plant that makes real tea, not that herbal rubbish
And lastly- Squatter Robins Update
The robins, now known as Robin and Robina Ruddock, finally gave up their pretensions on my shed this month and moved into a watering can I’d left on a garden chair. I couldn’t help feeling this was a passive aggressive comment on my shortcomings as a landlord as it seemed to be a deliberately stupid choice, with all of the security potential of a ground floor flat on a dodgy council estate. Nevertheless I tried to make it a little more habitable, balancing a couple of plant pots around it so it wouldn’t just blow away with the next gust of wind.
Robina poses proudly at the door of her dodgy ground floor flat
A few days later to my relief they’d very sensibly moved on to build a nest at head height in the overgrown rose by the compost bins. Instant security upgrade to the top flat of a gated community with Ring doorbell and security lights- nice one!
New high security residence
