Herbs

A couple of months ago I was writing on here about the unexpected snowfall that had arrived.

In that post I referred to my potted herbs collection as “looking particularly forlorn”

It turns out that statement was “particularly inadequate”!   With the exception of my rosemary and sage bushes, all the rest of my herb collection has been completely wiped out.  ~I’m still hoping that the rosemary and sage will survive and they are showing great promise.

So, today was spent recovering pots and sowing new seeds to recreate a new potted herb garden.

I have sown Thyme, Basil, Coriander,Parsley, Chives and Dill to add to the sage and rosemary.

Over in the vegetable garden there is also a bay tree which is also “looking particularly forlorn”

It’s been there for a couple of years and has struggled with poor soil and excessive heat.   I’m hoping that this last period of drought folloowed by extreme cold hasn’t finally finished it off.

I still have a couple more varieties of herbs to sow, but my day escaped from me today, so I’ll try and continue tomorrow.   I know I have chervil and maybe winter savoury amongst others.

Cotton wool??

My bedroom has a pair of French Windows hat exit directly out into the garden.  Most mornings, I leap out of bed and spring to the French windows and, throw them open to allow me access to the closed shutters, in order to both let in the morning sun, as well as to survey the latest changes in my garden.  Well, this may be a slight enhancement of reality,In fact, more often than not, I fall out of bed, stumble across the bedroom and try to focus enough to unlock the catches holding the windows closed!

This morning however, I looked out to find that overnight someone, or possibly something, had chosen to paint the whole of my garden white.  Dazzlingly white!

It was so bright it shocked my senses awake and I realised that there was about 6 inches (150mm) of snow lying on the floor.  The sun was up enough to be making the whole thing far too bright but, I resisted my urge to close the shutters again and return to a more sombre life, and picked up my camera.

Now, I know that to many of you 6” of snow is not even worth commenting on.  Indeed, before I came here I regularly coped with much greater levels of snow, including one year when I actually couldn’t get my car down our lane as the snow was so deep it had completely covered the bridge carrying the railway over the lane.

But since I moved here to France, snow has not been a big feature of my life.   Ignoring my winter holidays in New England, I’ve probably only seen snow on three of four days in the past seven years.  So, as you can imagine, 6 inches of the stuff is notable

The snow got me to thinking.

One of the things I try and do is keep a note of the temperatures and rainfall here.  I log a maximum and minimum temperature every day and I also log the rainfall each week.

On looking back, I see that exactly the same date, but last year, we had temperatures of 17 C (63F) high and –2 C (28F) low.  The snow had arrived following a day when the high reached a staggering  -3C (27F) and the low sagged down to –12C (10F).

I must say that my little collection of potted herbs, that live just outside the back door, are looking particularly forlorn.

Roll on Spring, it’s just around the corner I believe!

Seed Exchange List

The Seed Exchange is a network of people offering seed.  My own seed is now all saved by myself here in France.

Please come back and visit this page again soon, I intend to update it regularly as I establish what seeds I have available.

Anyone can ask for seeds by emailing me at kitchengardeninfrance@gmail.com .    If you have a blog then why not offer some of your own spare seed?    To find out more about the Seed Exchange Network, why not take at look at Patrick's comments on

Bifurcated Carrots

Please note.  This is only the second year I have offered seeds for exchange and I have tried to keep the seeds pure.

Seeds for 2011

Beans

• Black Turtle Beans  -  These are a pole bean. The seeds were saved by myself.
• Purple Podded Pole Bean.  These beans are beautiful.  They are a deep purple on the vine and change to green when cooked.  The pods are long and full.  Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010
• Borlotto Bean - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010
• Poletschka Bean - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010

Pumpkin, Courge and Melon etc

• Monsieur Gary's Charentais Melon. M. Gary is a local farmer here at the Kitchen Garden in France and for years he has grown his own sweet Charentais melon, saving the seeds from one year to the next.  I'm pleased to have grown a few of these myself and kept the seeds to offer here.
• Courgette d'Italie - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010
• Queensland Blue Pumpkin - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010
• Butternut Pumpkin - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010
• Bari Cucumber - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010

Tomatoes

• Ian's Red Cherry Tomato.  A delicious variety of cherry tomato which grows successfully here, giving truss after truss of delicious rich red cherry tomatoes.  These are seeds I've saved myself after several years acclimatising the plant to the climate here.

Capsicums

• Cath's Red Cornos Capsicum - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010
• Yellow Cornos Capsicum - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010

Cabbage and Lettuce

• Joy's Cos Lettuce - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010
• Lollo Rosso Batavia Lettuce - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010
• Reine des Glaces Batavia Lettuce - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010
• Red Cabbage - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010

Herbs

• Dill - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010
• Chives - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010

Email me if you would like any of the above seed.

Market Day

You may know that, for me, Saturday is market day.   Almost every Saturday, I go to my favourite village market in Villereal, in the Lot et Garonne departement of France.  It's a truly gorgeous market, which I love.

Well,, today is Tuesday, which is why I went to market this morning.   Things have conspired against my weekly visit to Villereal for the past couple of weeks and although I managed missing the first trip, when I then missed the second, I decided that I really needed to supplement the fruits of the garden with some local purchased produce.

I'm lucky, where I live here, right on the border of the Dordogne and Lot et Garonne departements, there is a different market on every single day of the week.  And they are all within a few minutes drive, the furthest away being only a 25 minute drive.  Tuesday, it's the role of Castillonnes, to host it's local market, and, as Castillonnes is just 5 kms away, it was to there I rushed this morning.

I wouldn't say I was a regular visitor to Castillonnes market but I do go fairly often as it is also where the nearest branch of my bank is found, and that branch is only open on market day!!!! And so I found myself wandering through the market, nodding to the various traders I know.    Rene and Sandrine were there from the permaculture farm at Lasspisottes.   The "leek" lady from Villereal, who I have often written about, was also there, with her bicycle propped against the wall behind her st.... well, it can hardly be called a stall, just a basket of delicious fresh produce picked that very morning.  Lauren, my long suffering green grocer at the market at Villereal, also has his stall in the main square at Castillonnes, and, indeed, it was to his stall that I first headed.

But as I arrived in the main square a rather nice seedling stall caught my eye.  I have seen this man here from time to time and his seedlings always look so good.  He sells a large variety of herbs, all potted up and costing just a few cents each.  There was mint, and basil, and coriander, and tarragon, and a host of other truly aromatic herbs lining a stall about 20ft (6metres) long.   All his herbs are sold in pots and he uses a thin plastic former to hold 12 pots.  I like the formers as they are great disposable seed trays, and I often use them if I have any.   Each "pot" is about the same size as an individual yogurt pot, which I also use extensively.

But then, right at the far end of the stall, something caught my eye.   There was a pile of those plastic formers but I noticed that in the top one each cell had a live snail in it.  I thought it was surprising to have that many snails on the plants he had brought to market, but wandered on my way.   I suddenly stopped and turned back as the realisation hit me...

He had snails in every one of that pile of formers.... He had them, quite simply, because they were just another produce of his garden that could be sold as food.

A Look Over the Bay

My long absence from the garden earlier this year, I was away from the New Year until the beginning of March, left me with several casualties.  Many of them were expected but some were quite surprising, succumbing to the particularly harsh winter that this part of France endured. One such casualty was my Bay tree. I planted this little tree during early summer in 2009 and had looked after it fairly well throughout the hot dry spell that followed. When the time came to leave for the UK, I was happy to think that with the colder wet weather of winter, the tree would fare ok on it's own. Imagine my sadness, when, after my return, I found the view opposite waiting for me.   The cold had been accompanied by a very harsh  dry spell, and without me tending it, it suffered from drought. In desperation, and somewhat without hope, I dripped water around the roots for a whole day and then left it to tend  for itself

Imagine my pleasure, the other day when a closer examination showed some new growth bursting forth.  I'll look after it better throughout this summer and hopefully, I won't be away for so long over the next winter. Well done, little bay tree

Rainy Day Sunday,

 

We have had a lot of rain here.  This seems to be in keeping with the entire world right now, but no, we have not had the 92mm that Kate in Adelaide is reporting... But still, 30 mm yesterday is a lot for South West France, and it has kept on raining all morning.

This has led me to do some much needed work inside.  After the usual round of chasing bits of paper I moved to my workshop and started to sort out a few things.

First, I had some herbs to sow into pots.  I have sown Sweet Basil, Sage, Dill and Sweet Marjoram.  I already have a pot of Basil but it is looking very sad so I decided to get ahead and sow a new lot.

I have also sown a pot of Aster this morning in the hope that the fragrant flowers would attract lots of insects.

I have a little bit of space at the end of my pumpkin bed so I also put a couple of  "Potimarron" seeds into pots.  This is a pumpkin, not the character in the French version of Bob the Builder, Bob le Bricoleur .

Then, I got onto sorting out seeds, basically looking at what I haven't sown which I should have and there were plenty.

First of all, an apology goes out to Miss Fuggles (A Blog Called Fuggles) who back in February very kindly let me have some seeds including some Poletschka beans.   I regret to say that they had been completely overlooked and did not feature at all in my list of sowings and proposed sowings published the other day.  However, that won't stop me growing them and they have very firmly been put in the box where I keep the seeds that I am sowing next....Just as soon as the garden is dry enough to get out there again....

Next into the box went the successional sowings.   I am absolutely hopeless at successional sowings.  This year I'm growing an 18 day radish and it will be ready before the second batch even leaves the packet!!!!  The same with salad stuff, I know I need to be sowing every couple of weeks but, somehow it just doesn't happen..  So radish and lettuce are in the box.

I really enjoyed my Red Cabbage over the winter and picked the last a couple of weeks ago.  I noticed that an April sowing will produce cabbage in November/December so I thought I'd give that a try, to supplement my usual Autumn sowing.  So red cabbage in the box!!!!

Already in the box were some Dwarf French Green Beans given to me by Sarah.   Sarah is a lovely lady who gardens not far from here in Charente-Maritime  I visited her a few months ago and am intending to get over to see her again soon.  She doesn't write a blog though, she has this idea that spending time in the garden, actually growing things is what counts!!!!

As you can see, there will be plenty to sow next week!!  The good news is that my cold frame is fairly empty, as is the heated shelf in the workshop where I germinate seeds, so I should be able to quietly get on with growing the lettuce, the pumpkins and the cabbage and then get the beans and radish in the ground just as soon as I can.

Actually, maybe I could call on Bob le Bricoleur's friend Potimarron to come and give me a hand.