One of my favourite harvests isn’t actually from my allotment’s plot at all. It’s from the the hedges that surround the site, from the garden and from chatting up the people who sell me my Christmas tree (lovely folks at Kidbrooke Homebase – a jolly, friendly bunch to whom I return again and again for customer…
Category: Events of 2016
Christmas at Kew
Thought I’d take a little time out from my giant autumn roundup to visit the Royal Botanic gardens at Kew for their annual Christmas Festival of lights… It’s a combination of imaginative lighting through the trees, illuminating the elegant garden buildings and strange installations. This year is curious because many leaves on deciduous trees are…
Giant Autumn Roundup: Garlic
An interesting year, 2016. The cloves I planted back in September 2015 were from my own harvest and did very well indeed. They grew strongly and I got an excellent crop. I also, as an experiment, grew some that had sprouted late in the spring, which grew into large single bulbs, since they did not…
Figs on a Roll
What’s more Mediterranean than the rich, sensuous lushness of figs? If the splendid renaissance quality of the quince smacks of 15th Century Rome, the fig conjures earlier images of the Eternal City. Of aqueducts and villas, bath houses and arenas, senators and emperors and, yes, I’m afraid for me, at least, of evil Livia in I Claudius. For…
Pumpkin Review
After last year’s successful batch of Crown Prince, which kept me in pumpkins through to May, I thought I’d branch out a little. I may have been a tad overkeen… Of course I stuck with Crown Prince. It is probably the best pumpkin I’ve tasted and it’s not a ridiculous size. It makes fantastic soups…
Quincetastic
Quinces reek of the Renaissance. They conjure dreams of splendid feasts in a 15th Century Florence palazzo, or Dutch Old Master still lives, complete with dead pheasants and a jug of hock. I bought a little quince tree fourteen years ago when I first moved into my present home. At the time old fruit trees, such as…
And the Winner Is…
It’s come to that time of year when I work out which of the – gosh – nine varieties of tomato I tried this year are worth growing again and which – if any – is the winner of best in show. First out of the box is Sweet & Neat, a teeny, compact bush with…
Tumbling Bruschetta, Batman!
After the dreary recognition that 70% of my tomatoes had been lost to blight I found myself looking for plus points. Yay! Good, old fashioned, bog-standard Tumbling Tom has come to the rescue. So far none of the window boxes I planted up with Tumbling Tom have succumbed and they’re producing in profusion. To be…
Event: Red Gooseberries
I have an excuse for not knowing the variety of these delightfully sweet goosegogs. Not a very good excuse, but an excuse. Okay, so I’d stopped off at a garden centre on my way to visit pals (aww, c’mon, we’ve all done it…) where I spied an angry young gooseberry plant, all gangly spines and…
Event: Field Rhubarb
The way I bang on about forced rhubarb you’d think I couldn’t be bothered with its grown up sister, field rhubarb. And to be honest for years I couldn’t. I was brought up with sour, school rhubarb, tough and green, served up in a stodgy glub drowned in lumpy custard. But tastes change and as…
Event: Whitecurrants
I’m a firm believer whitecurrants are an essential on an event allotment. They’re hard to find in the shops and if you do they’re hideously expensive. It’s hardly surprising; mature bushes take up a fair footprint and they tie up the ground for the entire year, yet crop only once, but these little flavour-bombs are…
Event: Peas, straight from the pod
I have no idea how anyone grows enough peas to be able to take them home. My allotment neighbour, Les, even has enough to freeze but me – well although I’d never be without my pea patch, frankly they never make it off the plot… This year I’m using up the last of my Ambassador…
The Event Gardener 