The Gar-Leek question

:: Gar-leeks unearthed ::

First things first, thank you to everyone who commented on my gar-leek conundrum. I've since pulled up a few more - they are, as you can see, quite definitely leeks (which is handy as I didn't get round to sowing any earlier this year) - and, despite my questionable sanity, I quite definitely planted garlic cloves.  Trust me, if I'd sown leeks they wouldn't have been nearly so neatly spaced. When planting garlic cloves, I get my dibber out (aka wooden spoon handle); my seeds, however, are sprinkled enthusiastically and rarely (if ever) transplanted neatly.  Ah well.  They're going to be cooked as leeks, although I'm slightly miffed at having to actually buy garlic in the forthcoming months as I've almost finished my store of last year's crop.

One very plausible suggestion, provided by Alex, has struck a chord:  "are they elephant garlic?".  Considering that elephant garlic is not true garlic but, in fact, a relative of the leek family, it seems that my garlic reverted to its genetic roots.

Reading up on the subject (as always - isn't the internet wonderful?), I've learnt that garlic sets need very specific TLC to thrive. And there's me thinking you just bung them in the ground and wait.  Suitability for the growing location and climate is a good start, as is planting in late autumn (early October-ish) so that the roots establish well before soggy soil and frost become the norm. (I've always gone for spring planting which, although possible, should be my second and last-chance choice.) Plant in free-draining soil (to prevent bulb rot) and, if possible, prepare the soil with a good layer of well-rotted compost to really get them off to a flying start. Mulch if the winter is severe and then clear the mulch off when temperatures rise and days lengthen.  Often the bulbs are triggered to set cloves by the lengthening daylight.

So, where did it all go horribly wrong for me this year?  Well, for starters, I planted my sets in spring and then the weather was unseasonably hot. I've now read that some varieties just will not grow in hot areas or will only set one clove or no bulb at all. The other (big) mistake I made was to make the cardinal error of growing my garlic in the same bed as the year before - although I improved the soil with a top dressing of compost, the sets were still at the mercy of any diseases left in the soil from the previous year; this, apparently, can be another cause for no bulb. None of this, though, explains how the leaves grew looking like leek leaves - although the bulb also looks like a giant spring onion or green garlic.  Hmmm, it will have to remain as one of nature's mysteries.

Am I downhearted by all this?  Not At All. On the contrary, it's amazing the knowledge that a year's hands-on experience will give you.  And expect my sister's Leek and Potato Pie on the menu sometime soon.

---

This evening I've just been out to lift all the gar-leeks; I noticed that a few of the withering leaves seemed to have a light sprinkling of rust.  Again with the research, and I discovered that this is an airborne fungus which lurks in the soil, only affecting onions and leeks.  Triggered by certain levels of wetness and heat, it's advisable to lift the affected plants and destroy the leaves.  Absolutely do not add these to your compost. The bit of the leek that you'd normally eat is still edible.  I think this is nature reminding me to read the rules!

It's not exactly garlic ...

I've got so much catching up to do, I hardly know where to begin.  I want to write about my successful plan to dry onions outdoors (no space inside), my beautiful cerinthe flowers still pulling in the bees, my bountiful harvests, my Tornado tomatoes that are not quite what I was expecting, winter planting, onion storing, a great tomato sauce with fennel seeds, my Fat Baby Exploding Cucumbers (can't wait!) and so on.  For now, though, I have limited access to my laptop due to my son's A levels so I'm lagging behind and will (hopefully) catch up during the week.

So, this is less of a post and more of a conundrum that has me flummoxed:

To the normal eye, I expect this looks like a pot of tomatoes and two leeks. Yes? Err, no. Well, it may be.  At least the tomatoes are a certainty but the leeks are a real puzzle because they're meant to be garlic.   I've waited and waited for the leaves to turn yellow but, as the onions are all out and bad weather has been forecast, I thought I'd get on with lifting my garlic yesterday and starting to dry it ... and this is what I dug up. Lovely leeks. I swear I planted garlic cloves; I know they're all vaguely related, but this is a stumper - and it's wrecked my experiment.

I had resolved this year to try a garlic test:  One bulb of Scottish porcelain garlic from the supermarket, 7 chunky cloves from garlic grown by me last year and 14 Sicilian Red cloves from T&M all went into one raised bed in neat rows.  I wanted to test various theories about growing supermarket cloves versus grower supplied and also to see how my home-grown would adapt (they're supposed to improve year on year as each successive plant adapts).

And the results of my very non-scientific experiment:  T & M cloves -  none at all grew (could be the weather), my home-grown garlic clove became the smaller spring onion sized leek and the Porcelain Garlic turned into the big leek.  I haven't dug the rest up yet because, frankly, I don't need leeks today.

I would absolutely love to know what everyone else thinks about this! There was a small disturbance in that raised bed about a month after planting (at the time, attributed to a fox/pigeon punch up) but that only accounts for the T&M sicilian garlic going awol - unless we have some very clever gardening wildlife who know how to plant in very orderly rows ... (I'm discounting the gnomes and fairies.)

P.S. The forecast hurricane is not quite happening in North London - yet.  It is a very blustery, but dry, day here though!

I love Wight

I've been away again, saying goodbye to the end of the summer by way of a quick trip over the water to the Isle of Wight.  I planned it back in the winter months when I longed for blue skies with fresh salt sea air and, although it felt a bit rushed getting away, it was well worth it.

I've been many times before so I was well into my comfort zone: roads, shops, cafés and campsite were all familiar.  I usually camp but, this time, I hired a small caravan in my favourite site - a place that's been planted with many apple trees and been the worthy recipient of a conservation award several years running.

The caravan made a great base camp and had a gas fire for chilly evenings - bliss! We ate out, bought picnics, and started each day with a swim in the campsite (indoor) pool before heading out over the island in warm breezes and sunshine. 

Sunny day at Freshwater Bay

Four days with minimum domestic chores was the best decision I could have made, I came back feeling totally refreshed - only to pick up a particularly virulent cold that's stopped me in my tracks over the last three days. C'est la vie - but very annoying given the amount of work to do in the garden.

The timing of my island jaunt was planned to coincide with an annual vintage fair that I discovered, quite by accident, several years ago.  At that time, I had a car full of camping gear, not a square inch to spare, and, frustratingly, came across vintage suitcases and wonderful old gardening tools, all reasonably priced. I had my fingers crossed that the fair would still be happening this year and so we ventured down to Old Winkle Street (a suitably named venue, if ever there was) in Calbourne on the Bank Holiday Monday.  Hooray! the fair was there; sadly, it had become a glorified car boot sale. Undeterred, I whizzed round while my son waited in the car - with his ipod, naturally.

This year the gardening tools were there, over- oiled and overpriced: old fork, £30! It makes you think, doesn't it?  Not what I had in mind at all and, although they had some lovely old wooden dibbers, I came away without tools.

Vintage gardening tools

It seemed that the fair's reputation had spread over the years and, accordingly, was priced for the tourists not the locals. It was less about vintage and more like a charity shop. Gone were the Victorian lace making cushions, vintage buttons and old postcards, replaced with masses of decluttered ceramic and glass ornaments - objects I found very easy to resist. Thankfully, my visit was saved by a wonderfully retro stall with 1950s linen, painted wicker furniture and other ephemera and, yes, I did succumb to a vintage linen tablecloth which reminded me of the one my grandmother had on her kitchen table - seen below with some of the kilo of Cosse Violette beans which needed picking on my return. (The plants had produced one or two flowers before I left; I suspected I might come back to an avalanche of beans and I was right!)

Midday Fox

:: The enemy sleeps ::

This cheeky chap was seen around mid-day in the car parking area next to my block of flats and adjacent to the railway line. I just hope that he's not in need of a siesta after a large lunchtime snack of onions. (I pulled mine up yesterday and left them drying on racks in the garden.)  Although he's probably been chasing pigeons or rabbits.  Best check, anyway.

Saturday Snap: Tangled Web Woven

Arachnophobia?  Luckily, not something that affects me - and you have my heartfelt sympathies at this time of year if you really don't like spiders.  This past week, the weather has felt more than a little autumnal and the effects of this on the arachnid population have been seen both indoors and out in my home: I've been releasing spiders back into the wild (aka my balcony) and spotting delicate webs appearing overnight. Spiders are seen most often in September or October in Europe; this little lady (the females are bigger than the males) had spun a large beautiful web on my balcony herbs one morning, so perhaps she could feel the summer's end already. (Although, please, let's be wrong about that!)

It was quite hard to see the fine, sticky threads of the web but I wanted to clearly show the spider and her web to a fascinated but very young visitor - without small pointing fingers wreaking havoc.  Here's how I did it:  I fetched my tea-strainer and a tiny spoonful of flour, then gently sprinkled a dust cloud of flour over the web.  This won't harm the spider - in fact, she didn't even move - but the web and its tiny insect-catching threads can then be clearly seen. (If you have a fine spray bottle, a light misting of water would also work.)

This spider, I think, is an Orb-Weaver and very common in the UK garden. The web is spun in the morning; any insects caught in it are either eaten straightaway or devoured when the web is eaten at suppertime. The next day the process starts again - sort of Groundhog Day, spider style.

There and Back Again

~ Chamomile growing in clumps on the pebbly beach ~

Well that's this year's holiday jaunt over (and the reason it's been oddly silent here). I've been to the seaside for a lovely peaceful week which was a world away from the riots both in nearby Camden and Croydon, the route I unwittingly chose on my way there. It's a week I look forward to as 4 generations of my family gather together without putting undue strain on any one household but, as I invest more of my time in the veg garden, I can't pretend that it's not a wrench to leave the garden behind, even for a short time.

As I see it, there are two main issues in a summertime community garden:  ensuring the veg get the right amount of water and to hope that veg and flowers are harvested as appropriate - which, actually, is what we all worry about, isn't it?  I asked neighbours to help themselves to courgettes, carrots, beetroot, onions and please keep picking the sweet peas;  the beans had not yet flowered and the tomatoes were still green so those would wait for my return.  It's best to designate one person to oversee watering so that the plants aren't deluged morning and night - or forgotten entirely - but, apparently, it rained almost every day while I was away so that task was taken care of by kindly Mother Nature. (The copious plants on my Edible Balcony were taken care of by a trusty friend.)

The picking of produce was another matter entirely. It seems that my time in the garden has earmarked the space as being my own and (most) people are loathe to help themselves for fear of being seen to overstep the mark. (On reflection, this is probably good.) Despite cutting several courgettes before I left, and telling folks to help themselves, most were still there when I returned, as were a few handfuls of raspberries still hanging on the canes and other veg untouched.

After a (blustery but dry) week away, my first thoughts after unpacking were to pop down to the garden where I found plenty of weeds, beans covered in purple flowers (hurrah!), radishes ready to eat (3 weeks after sowing), beetroot needing lifting (some about to bolt which I'll leave for seed), recently sown peas clambering half way up the netting - and a 20 inch courgette which made a nice 'baked and stuffed marrow' supper!

The sweet peas, sadly, have all but died off with just a few Cupani left.  As the weather has been chill and overcast in the last week, this somehow seems symbolic of the slow gentle slide down into autumn - although surely mid-August is too early for this?

---

And where did I go for my fresh sea air?  To Littlehampton, a small harbour town in West Sussex, located between Chichester and Brighton and now plying a fine, but not overwhelming, tourist trade. It's an old fashioned town where, I've since discovered, the tiny cinema is in an old windmill on the seafront. More obviously, the harbour is full of brightly coloured fishing boats and ice cream shops, fresh fish is sold on Rope Walk (the quayside) and you can sit overlooking the Blue Flag beach on the longest bench in the world. This seating continues along the seafront and was installed over the last couple of years at an eye-watering £1 million.

A week goes so quickly so I missed seeing the Art Deco shelters in the award winning municipal gardens, but I did manage a hike along the seafront towards Rustington where the now-pebbly beach was studded with marine vegetation. What could better?