November planting

I had an hour on the plot yesterday. The weather has turned a little arctic, mainly in the East of England where I was last night. There was some snow and everything. It was brighter here in the West.

I removed the peas and canes from Bed 7 (a silly idea of mine to sow peas so late) to tidy it up and watered the raised beds which are now covered with glass. I then forked over enough ground to plant some garlic (2 rows - about 20 cloves - of Fokhagyma) in Bed 5 next to the parsnips, where the carrots have been recently removed, and the 10 plants of perpetual spinach (that were still waiting in pots on the patio at home) in Bed 4 nestled up to the globe artichokes. I covered the perpetual spinach with a mesh tunnel cloche.





While planting, I was being assisted by a robin (see piccies below).





Today, while it was still light, I planned to pot up some of the horseradish roots from last weekend's harvest. I hope they didn't dry out too much - I kinda forgot about them in the week. I did get around to it but it was raining by this time. Now, I am going to retreat to the kitchen, as it gets dark outside, to process the remaining roots for the Winter storage in jars.

Hot, hot, hot

No, not the weather. It was quite wet today but the rain kept off after noon, providing an opportunity for a bit of a potter. The soil was too wet for digging though. Earlier in the day, it struck me that November is a good time to dig up horseradish roots so I thought I'd have a go at that. There seems to be two main clumps of it - one next to the shed and one next to Bed 8 (somewhere down there anyway). The one near the shed could get a little awkward if it gets much larger so I started with that (see the piccie below).



As shown, there was a little sapling in amongst the roots. I assume it is a plum tree. I decided to dig that out and replant it. For now, it is in a pot (see below) - I'll decide what to do with it another weekend.



Below is a photo of the plot taken from where the sapling is and looking up towards the road.



Before leaving the plot, I picked some apples and some salad and spinach leaves for the week ahead - adding to the heaps of big fat roots of horseradish.

When I got home, I stewed the apples ready for the freezer to make a pie or crumble some other time. The salad has been washed and stored. Now, for the horseradish... I have washed, peeled and whizzed up one of the roots. According to information on the WWW, I added some white wine vinegar to it (enough to make a paste). This should store ok for a few weeks.

Now the smug bit. I roasted some beef and some potatoes, parsnips and carrots from the allotment. I then mixed some creme fraiche with a bit of the horseradish (about 1 part horseradish to 2 parts creme fraiche, I think) and served that with the beef and veg. The WWW is right - you really don't taste the vinegar very much. Yum in my tum.

At the root of it...with extra photos for Andy

No time for gardening yesterday but got chance for a brief visit today. It rained a lot overnight and it was forecast to rain from 1500 onwards today. As it turned out, there were showers from 1300 onwards.

I was planning to do a little bit of digging in Bed 9 to lift some of the main crop potatoes that I'd left there. I was expecting the ground to be a little too wet but actually it wasn't too bad. Hopefully, it hasn't led to too much damage to the soil structure. Lifting the grass that has been trying to take over was quite easy. I lifted a few carrier bags of muddy spuds. They were mainly on the small side as all the others have been this year. That will teach me for planting them so shallow. I really don't think I have lifted them all so will need to dug over that bed again when it is drier.

I was about to leave when I thought I'd check out the carrots underneath the mesh cloche next to the parsnips (Bed 5 I think). I hadn't looked at them for ages and as I haven't had much luck with carrots, I wasn't expecting anything. A good opportunity to clear them out and use the cloche elsewhere. Lo and behold, there were actually some carrots there (see below).







None of the carrots were huge but there are plenty of useful looking ones. My first decent crop of carrots! I think it was down to the cloche which kept the carrot fly off.

But the excitement (for me) doesn't end there. While I was pulling out the carrots, I spied a couple of parsnip tops amongst their leaves which are now starting to collapse (see piccie below).



Although I was planning to save them for Christmas, I just couldn't resist digging them up for a closer look. Some interesting shapes (see piccie below) but they look very edible. My foot is there to give an idea of size. They are not small. Not bad considering the number of stones in the ground. Mmmmm, roast parsnips...



Before leaving the plot, I took two cabbages to complete the week's harvest. Bring on the cooking!

Rooting around

I was away for most of the weekend so only managed an hour on the plot before it got dark today.

I dug up the last (hopefully - bound to have left some volunteers somewhere) second early potatoes next to the leeks. The leeks look to have perked up significantly after last week - not many signs of rust on quick inspection.

The foliage of the Jerusalem artichokes appeared to have some frost damage in places (not a surprise) so it seemed appropriate to cut it down. I read somewhere that the cut foliage can be laid down over the ground to protect the artichokes from frost. Before doing that, I stuck some bamboo canes into the ground to mark where the plants are so that I can dig in the right place in a few weeks time when the stems may have disappeared completely. I put the canes in a few inches back from the stems so that the cut foliage could be laid directly over the plants (see piccie below).



Finally, I placed window panes over the raised beds to warm them up.

Next week I should have a few hours to spend on the plot. I really need to sort out Beds 8 and 9, by digging up the last main crop spuds and disposing of the courgette and sweetcorn plants which have finished now. I may have a bonfire on Bed 9 once that is cleared. Very seasonal...