I’d say we’ve been fairly productive since my last post. It’s funny how things germinate and grow at such different rates. Must find out why that is. Sunflowers are the speediest things ever, they germinated within days. Courgettes are also pretty eager. Squash, not so much – we had an aubergine situation again where we thought they were never going to make it; and then one, then two, now three of them are poking their heads through, one has leaves, so we’re ok.
Aubergine progress is still slow. Our best guy looks like this (below). Don’t get me wrong, it’s very pretty. Just sloooowwwwww.
And our potatoes now look like this (below). Earthing-up is tricky when you don’t have a lot of space. You can’t really tell from the picture, but that’s a fairly sizeable mound. The main reasons for earthing-up are to prevent greening (when the tubers are exposed to sunlight and turn green and poisonous) and to increase yield. I’m not sure we’ll be able to earth up much more than we have, but I think that’s ok.
In other news, I bought this book in a bookshop in Falmouth.
I think I was inspired by seeing all the wild garlic and leeks all over the place on the coastal paths. A chef friend who was down from Glasgow last weekend said he saw wild leeks down the road here in Deptford – I’m going to have to investigate.
Falmouth is beautiful, and we took a trip to two very different but equally inspiring gardens (it’s a stretch to call one a garden, really).
This is the greenhouse at Potager Garden. We went and had a lovely vegetarian lunch, and wandered round looking at the plants and chickens. It was the start of April, so I’m sure it will look even nicer than this now.
Then we went to Trebah, which was of course fantastic. Again, early April so lots of things were cut back and just coming into bloom, but it was beautiful all the same. I took lots of photos, but having seen many much more beautiful ones in a book we did on the gardens of Cornwall, I’m not going to bother posting it here. Highlights: Bamboo as thick as your arm. Much thicker than mine.
I’ve just potted on some of the courgettes, and now I’m going to go and eat some fish and chips in the last of the sunlight.
Dirty hoe 