Getting ready for paving

‘Potato Pete’ was a cartoon character from the WW2 era, whose job was to persuade people to fill up on homegrown potatoes rather than bread made from imported wheat. Potatoes made it into all kinds of recipes during the war, replacing some of the fat in pastry and even turning into dessert. The Ministry of Food published the Potato Pete Recipe Book, which you can read online.

This summer, we will be focusing on the main garden. The aim is to have the structure in place by the end of the year, so I can spending next year gardening rather than building the garden. It’s not that it hasn’t been an interesting experience, and I’m loving watching the design unfold and become the garden we want, but I’ve spent far more of the year wanting to garden than I will spend actually gardening!

The arrival of some ulluco (Ulluco tuberosus) tubers from Incredible Vegetables left me pondering how best to store them until it’s time to plant them out (after the risk of frost has passed, in spring). Given that I also have mashua and oca tubers kicking around the kitchen, and that everyone will soon be receiving seed potatoes (if they haven’t already), then I thought it might be nice to have a general round-up of how to store tubers for planting. A lot of the advice will be relevant to all kinds of tubers, but each species is likely to have its own quirks. If you have advice, details for new species, or queries, then leave them in the comments – I can update this post later.

One of the new things I am trying to grow this year is agretti, Salsola soda. It’s a big hit with chefs, but still new on the UK food scene and virtually untried in British gardens.

Seed trays, modules and pots

How does a kitchen gardener choose what to grow? It’s about balancing quite a complex set of variables, which include the space and time available, the local climate and soil, the gardener’s skill level and what they like to eat. That last one is, itself, quite a complicated topic as culture plays a significant role. There are many thousands of edible plants on the planet; most people only eat a small number and grow fewer still.

There are many ways you can keep your slug population under control without resorting to toxic slug pellets:

At this time of year, many outdoor growers are winding down their plots. It’s time to clear away tender plants before the first frost, gather in the last of the harvest and make sure the hardy brassicas that can survive the winter weather are protected against marauding pigeons.

It’s a couple of days until the next stop on my virtual book tour, so it’s time to take off the pith helmet and put my feet up with a cup of tea and a biscuit. In a recent interview, I respond to a question I was asked about my favourite biscuit – which has to be Snickerdoodles. You can’t buy them, you have to make them, and they have nothing whatsoever to do with Snickers chocolate bars, or peanuts in general. They are a divine, spiced* biscuit (cookie) that’s very moreish and goes very nicely with a good cuppa.

A couple of weeks ago my mother asked me if I was putting the garden to bed for the winter. It’s a common gardening phrase, and yet I have very little understanding of what it means. It implies the garden is going to be hibernating all winter, which isn’t true for a well-designed ornamental garden, and certainly isn’t true for a kitchen garden. Perhaps it means the gardener is going to be hibernating all winter, and the garden needs to be prepared for a long, untended stint? It can’t be about getting the kitchen garden ready for winter, I have been doing that all year.

I haven’t been well this summer. An unbearable situation at work went on for far too long, and pretty much brought me to my knees. I can’t remember ever having felt so exhausted, literally dragging myself out of bed every morning. Ryan was a big help in the garden, and is the only reason we have made as much progress as we have. We’re stalled at the moment, waiting for the sheds to be delivered, but the plants in the finished half are all doing very well.

All being well, the contractor will arrive to start paving the garden on Thursday. It has been a long time coming, and it’s only the first stage in getting the garden ready to be planted. Once the paving is complete then we still need to build raised beds and fill them, which will probably involve a bit of levelling here and there. When we investigated the cost of building the E-shaped raised beds in the original plan, we found that they would be considerably more than we wanted to spend. Ryan has come up with a cheaper alternative, which should look just as good, and even gives me more planting space! He has created a 3D render, printed it out and stuck it to the patio doors to give me something to look at: