All posts tagged potato

Waiting

It’s a funny time of year in the garden… so much potential, so little actual produce. There’s still lots of lettuce and plenty of rhubarb, but otherwise, it’s mainly flowers and developing fruit:

Baby melon
Sheep’s nose peppers
Corno di torro rosso pepper
Ripening tomatoes
French bean flowers
Runner bean flowers
Green red currants
Green blueberries
Green red gooseberries
Green raspberries
Potatoes
Broad bean flowers

I’m not sure how much longer the lettuce is going to last in this hot, dry weather, so it may not be long before we are just left with rhubarb to eat…

IMGP9144

it’s been a good season for rhubarb so far

Still, there’s plenty of it!

17 Comments
by The Snail of Happiness on June 7, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in gardening and growing
Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by The Snail of Happiness on June 7, 2016

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2016/06/07/waiting/

Autumn Bounty

Despite a garden full of builders and no indoor growing space until late July, the autumn is proving to be bountiful chez snail. One of the raised beds spent much of the early summer completely covered in building materials, but clearly the tiny potatoes remaining after last years harvest loved the conditions. We went from this:

There's a bed somewhere under there

There’s a bed somewhere under there

to this:

Not bad in two months

Not bad growth!

in a just a couple of months. Resulting in this 615g monster:

Wow!

Wow!

and hopefully many more to harvest, as this was just one very close to the surface that Max would have ‘harvested’ otherwise. We will let them continue growing until the tops die back before we dig the bed over and can see our final crop.

Meanwhile, inside the limery, chillies and sweet peppers abound, tomatoes are ripening and we’ve had a couple of large courgettes from the plant sown in July,. I’ve potted up the plants from the courgette seeds sown in August and we are crossing our fingers for a few fruits from those a bit later in the autumn.

Lemon drop chilli
Bartlett’s bonnet chilli
Kaibi sweet pepper
Beefsteak tomato
Unknown variety
Nova sweet pepper
Pyramid chilli
Lemon drop chilli
It’s very green in there!
Two months after sowing
Bartlett’s bonnets

We are keeping our fingers crossed that the chillies ripen (they have started and the pyramid chillies are already hot) and that the younger courgette plants mature, but even if they don’t, we’ll have had an amazing end to the season, including a couple of months when we haven’t had to buy any sweet peppers.

As to future crops, we found this very promising ginger root in the local organic shop the other day:

A ginger root
Looking good already

It’s now been planted and we’re hoping for good things. In addition, the passionflower has taken off:

Up, up and away

Up, up and away

And I’ve sown some more lettuce in a big tray that can be brought indoors when the weather cools. So, no shortage of fresh goodness here.

15 Comments
by The Snail of Happiness on September 21, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in gardening and growing
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by The Snail of Happiness on September 21, 2015

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2015/09/21/autumn-bounty/

The first green shoots

It may still be winter outside, but indoors there are the first signs of spring.

On the windowsill in my office I have my seed potatoes chitting. There are two varieties: Colleen (an early) and Sarpo Mira (a blight-resistant maincrop). I love to see the signs of life bursting forth:

Sarpo Mira

Sarpo Mira

And in the propagator there are tiny seedlings – they weren’t there yesterday so this is their birthday! First to germinate are a couple of ‘Pyramid’ Rainbow chilli peppers. These seeds were bought from Real Seeds, who have this to say about them:

Pyramid rainbow chilli

Pyramid rainbow chilli

[They] make a bush about 20″ tall, covered in incredibly purple little peppers. They then ripen to a whole range of pinks, oranges and reds, so you get all the colours at the same time. It is ideal as a patio or conservatory pot plant, and is very hot, too!

Can you see it?

Can you see it?

I bought them mainly because I thought they would look pretty, but I’m sure that we will enjoy the chilli peppers in cooking. Second to appear is a tiny shoot of Bartlett’s Bonnet chilli, again from Real Seeds and selected because the fruit are such an interesting shape, described as a “winged bell”. Apparently the plants can grow up to four feet tall… at the moment only the tiniest loop of stem is peaking out from the compost and you might not even be able to spot it, but trust me it’s there. So, we have ‘chilli futures’ and ‘potato futures’, fingers crossed we’ll start to see some sweet peppers germinating soon too.

The pots, by the way, are hand made in Sri Lanka  from coir fibre and latex (read about them here), the compost is made commercially using wool and bracken (details here) and I made the plant labels from strips of plastic cut from the lids of some old takeaway boxes.

 

14 Comments
by The Snail of Happiness on February 5, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in gardening and growing
Tagged , , , , , , ,

Posted by The Snail of Happiness on February 5, 2015

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2015/02/05/the-first-green-shoots/

June Bloom

Mixed weather so far this June, but I’m delighted to report that we have some very welcome flowers starting to appear.

These ones mean that there are potatoes developing underground:

Potato flower

Potato flower

And this bodes well for a harvest of peppers:

Pepper and flower

Pepper and flower

And this is the first of the runner bean flowers:

Bean flower

Bean flower

And this means we might have limes in the winter:

Lime flower

Lime flower

Just waiting for squash and courgette flowers now. Currently, our main crops are lettuce and rhubarb.

What’s doing well in your garden right now?

16 Comments
by The Snail of Happiness on June 6, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in gardening and growing
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by The Snail of Happiness on June 6, 2014

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2014/06/06/june-bloom/

A closer look

Today, I thought I would get up-close to spring by photographing some of the plants currently bursting forth in my garden. Sometimes, we don’t look closely at the beauty around us, but taking the time to do so is really worthwhile.

Alberto Locoto chilli... resprouting in its second year

Alberto Locoto chilli… resprouting in its second year

Sweet potato... this organic tuber was bought to eat, but started sprouting so I kept it

Sweet potato… this organic tuber was bought to eat, but started sprouting so I kept it

Sprouting potato tuber

Sprouting potato tuber

Lettuce seedling - variety Forellenschluss from Kate Chiconi

Lettuce seedling – variety Forellenschluss from Kate Chiconi

Shallot

Shallot

Ashmead's Kernel apple from Karuna

Ashmead’s Kernel apple from Karuna

Blueberry flowers

Blueberry flowers

Red currant flowers

Red currant flowers

Rocket seedlings

Rocket seedlings

Seedlings of Aztec Broccoli

Seedlings of Aztec Broccoli

All these plants are edibles – who says you need to grow flowers to have a beautiful garden?

12 Comments
by The Snail of Happiness on April 12, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in gardening and growing
Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by The Snail of Happiness on April 12, 2014

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2014/04/12/a-closer-look/

Carnival of Capsicums

The first seeds that I plant each year are Capsicums: chillies and sweet peppers. They need a long growing season to maximise fruit production and ripening, so I sow seeds in January or February. The best levels of germination are achieved in warm conditions, so I always plant mine in an electric propagator.

Five varieties of Capsicums sown

Five varieties of Capsicums sown

Last year, in an attempt to reduce my use of resources, I planted them in toilet roll middles filled with compost, but unfortunately the germination rates were very disappointing and I ended up undertaking a second sowing much later. I thought carefully about this and realised that the problem was probably the result of raising the seeds too far from the heat. A toilet roll middle is about 5 inches long and an electric propagator heats from the base, so the seeds were quite a distance from the source of heat. This year I have cut the toilet roll middles in half, thus using less compost and reducing the distance between heat and seed. Fingers crossed that I will have more success this year – I will report back.

The varieties I have sown are: sweet peppers Lipstick and Nova; chillies Lemon drop and Alberto’s locoto; plus a mix of seven Australian heritage sweet peppers (thanks to Kate).

Colleen and Mira

Colleen and Mira

An additional job yesterday was putting the seed potatoes out to chit. When I removed them from their box, I discovered that the first earlies (Colleen) had all already started growing profusely so care was needed to remove them from the nets they had been sent in. The main crop (Mira) also had some small sprouts. I intend to share these tubers  with my sister (who has a new garden) and have a great potato harvest in 2014, like we did in 2013, but this time in both west Wales and Shropshire.

18 Comments
by The Snail of Happiness on January 26, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in gardening and growing
Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Posted by The Snail of Happiness on January 26, 2014

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2014/01/26/carnival-of-capsicums/

And the results are in…

An early harvest of Colleen

An early harvest of Colleen

This year I decided to keep a record of some of the crops that I harvested from the garden (not all of them, I’m not that much of a garden-geek). Really I wanted to demonstrate to myself that I am making a useful contribution to our food consumption, and to show that it is possible to grow a significant amount of food in a relatively small space. The two crops that I recorded were courgettes and potatoes. Since the potatoes were all dug up some weeks ago and the courgette plants have now been finished off by the cold weather, I have the full season’s results.

Prolific courgettes

Prolific courgettes

In total, from an area of approximately four square metres I harvested just over 12kg of courgettes. Of these 7.3kg were from ‘ordinary’ courgettes (two green bush and two Trieste White Cousa) and 4.8kg from three Costata Romanesco plants. We ate the majority of these over the summer, but some of them went into soups that are currently frozen for winter consumption.

Colleen and Valor in a raised bed

Colleen and Valor in a raised bed

The total harvest of potatoes was an impressive 41kg. They have been feeding us since about June and we still have quite a lot stored. We grew these in approximately five square metres of garden plus three dumpy bags* and one small growing sack. The most prolific variety in the dumpy bags was the first early variety Colleen which yielded just over 6.07kg from one dumpy bag filled with grass clippings. garden compost and shredded paper and planted with 9 tubers. In comparison, six tubers planted in a soil-filled raised bed gave us 5.73kg. The main crop varieties Milva and Mira did less well, only yielding 3.5kg from their dumpy bag (I mixed them together). Valor (a second early) did particularly well in the raised bed containing soil, yielding an astonishing 12.7kg  from 6 tubers.

Potatoes in dumpy bags in the 'waste of space' corner

Potatoes in dumpy bags in the ‘waste of space’ corner

All varieties of potato did better in soil in beds than in dumpy bags. I think this is actually related to water availability: we had a very dry summer and the vigorously growing potatoes in the dumpy bags wilted on numerous occasions even with daily watering, whilst those growing in the garden never wilted. Despite this limitation, the dumpy bags were a great success – they increased the growing space available and added significantly to our harvest. My favourite potato has to be Colleen – they grow really well and provide the first potatoes of the season, but I liked Valor too. I think these are the varieties we will focus on next year.

Costata Romanesca - delicious fried with garlic (each of those slices is 5-8cm across)

Costata Romanesca – delicious fried with garlic (each of those slices is 5-8cm across)

The Costata Romanesco courgettes are a favourite of Carol Deppe and she recommends using them for drying. This is something we didn’t get round to doing this year, but I will have a go at next year. The plants are big and start off as bushes, but then get to sprawling around. Whilst not prolific in terms of fruit, those they do grow can get really big but still remain very tasty (unlike marrows) and tender. However, I do like the more normal courgettes, especially for their joyful abundance and will continue to grow them every year.

All in all, it’s been an interesting experiment to weigh our crops. And what’s the most important thing I have learned? Next time make a proper recording sheet, because trying to decipher all those scribbled notes on several tatty sheets of paper is quite a challenge at the end of the season!

-oOo-

* I have been experimenting with growing in containers in a previously unused bit of space. There are several ‘waste of space’ posts if you are interested: here, here and here

8 Comments
by The Snail of Happiness on November 8, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by The Snail of Happiness on November 8, 2013

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2013/11/08/and-the-results-are-in/

Life finds a way

Soil has been on my mind quite a lot recently… mainly because there’s a bare bed in the garden since Mr Snail of Happiness harvested kilos and kilos of potatoes on Saturday afternoon. The potatoes are safely in boxes in the loft now and the bed is awaiting some pleasant weather so I can get out there and plant something in it. I quite like the look of bare soil, but it’s not an ideal system… it’s available for all sorts of seeds to colonise, it can get washed or blown away, and in my small growing space it seems like a waste of a resource.

If I leave this soil, it won't stay bare for long

If I leave this soil, it won’t stay bare for long

In fact, the only reason my soil is bare is because it poured with rain yesterday, so I was not encouraged to go and plant it up. I could seed it with a green manure, but I have other plans for it. I have some red onion sets (variety Electra) waiting to go in one end of it, plus several varieties of oriental vegetables to go in the other end. Earlier in the year I tried inter-planting onions and oriental greens, but the latter were too successful and swamped the onions… I will not make the same mistake again.

Given the presence of all this bare soil, I was interested to read this post on Australian almond orchards (I’ve only recently discovered the blog, and I really like it), in which the soil below the trees is kept completely bare, thus supporting no pollinators so that the farmers have to bring in bee hives to ensure pollination. The energy required to maintain this system must be huge, and makes no sense in terms of sustainable production.

The idea that keeping soil bare artificially over a long period of time is a good thing, seems very strange to me. Whilst in nature you do see bare soil, it is always only temporary, and something always comes along to colonise it pretty quickly. Even when a site is severely contaminated, some species can survive. My first job as an ecologist involved surveying old metal mines in mid-Wales. Many of the spoil heaps appeared quite bare from a distance but, close up, even the most toxic spoil (contaminated with lead, cadmium, arsenic, copper and other heavy metals) had a flora of lichens and even grasses (such as sheep’s fescue). And more than 20 years on, I return to some of the sites and they are supporting heathland, grassland and even trees.

The spoil heaps at Cwm Rheidol in 1982

The spoil heaps at Cwm Rheidol in 1982

The same spoil heaps 20 years later

The same spoil heaps 20 years later

Since, as Ian Malcolm says in Jurassic Park, “…life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories” I think I want to control what’s growing in my raised beds, so I’m off to plant those vegetables now!

4 Comments
by The Snail of Happiness on September 16, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in gardening and growing
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by The Snail of Happiness on September 16, 2013

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2013/09/16/life-finds-a-way/

The fruits of our labours

Here we are in September – according to Keats this is…

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
      Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
      For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Potato variety Valor... blight-free and delicious

Potato variety Valor… blight-free and delicious

And, we do tend to think of harvest at this time of year. Certainly we have some swelling gourds in our garden… well, winder squashes actually. We are enjoying an abundance of runner beans and still more courgettes, plus the other day Mr Snail-of-happiness harvested nearly 9kg of potatoes from a plot measuring less than a square metre (we can recommend this particular variety heartily, it’s called Valor). A rather busy summer meant that these particular potatoes were never earthed-up, so the abundance is especially welcome.

Pearl's blankie

Pearl’s blankie

Other projects have their yields too. I was pleased to finish my latest blankie in time to be able to give it to my friend when I saw her last week. Fingers crossed that the babe will arrive happy and healthy and that my work will be used for  years to come. Many folks confine their knitting and crochet to the cooler months of the year, but I love to make things all through the summer too… mind you those often are cooler months!

Winter vegetable seedlings will help to fill the 'hungry gaps'

Winter vegetable seedlings will help to fill the ‘hungry gaps’

But autumn is not just a time to rest on our laurels and enjoy the fruits of our labours – it’s also important to think about what we will be able to harvest later in the year and at the beginning of next year, when there is often little fresh food in the garden. I will be allowing some of my runner beans to go to seed so that I can dry the large butter bean-like seeds for use in soups and stews over the winter (I grow the variety The Czar specifically because they are good for this) and, of course, the squashes will keep for months, but I also want fresh vegetables. I’m happy, therefore, that my seed-sowing from a couple of weeks ago is also showing a yield… not that we will be harvesting these for a while.

It’s really important to remember the cycle of growing and harvesting, so that we don’t get carried away with current successes and forget to plant for the future.


		

		

			

									
Leave a comment

				
				by The Snail of Happiness on September 3, 2013  •  

				
				Permalink

							

						
Posted in craft, gardening and growing

			
			
Tagged , , , , , , , 

		

		

			
Posted by The Snail of Happiness on September 3, 2013

			
https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2013/09/03/the-fruits-of-our-labours/

		

	

	

	


	
	
	

		
Reaching for the sky
		

		
The Waste of Space design is bearing fruit (and vegetables).


Permaculture designs, as this is, often incorporate use of vertical as well as horizontal space (often referred to as ‘stacking’). With this in mind I planted yellow-podded mangetout in pots alongside the fence. In order to contain chickens, last year we attached wire mesh to the wooden fence slats and thus increased the height of the structure to about 2m, just the same height that the seed packet suggests these peas grow to.


And that is, indeed, what’s happening:


Making good use of vertical space
Making good use of vertical space


Resulting in an abundant harvest (these were picked just before the photograph above was taken):


Yellow-podded mangetout
Yellow-podded mangetout


I’ve also used an old strawberry planter to make use of vertical space for growing lettuce:


Multistorey lettuce
Multistorey lettuce


In addition, we have harvested a couple of kilos of potatoes from the dumpy bags, but the majority of the harvest from them is yet to come.


This whole area, which was previously unused, is contributing significantly to our food supply this year… onwards and upwards!

		

		

			

									
3 Comments

				
				by The Snail of Happiness on July 24, 2013  •  

				
				Permalink

							

						
Posted in gardening and growing

			
			
Tagged , , , , , , , 

		

		

			
Posted by The Snail of Happiness on July 24, 2013

			
https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2013/07/24/reaching-for-the-sky/

		

	

	

	


	
	

		
« Older Posts

		

	


	
		


							

			

			

			


	









	

		

	

	
	


			
		
		
	
						





	
	

		

			%d bloggers like this: