Potato and Beans

Yesterday's rain has passed over so this morning I was able to get back outside gardening.

My vegetable plot is about 25m (28 yds)square and is divided up into individual beds.  The final plan is for 30 beds, but, at present, I have only created 21 of them.   I add another bed as and when I need it.  All the beds are about 7.5m x 1.2m  (25ft x 4 ft).  The ground is clay, sitting on chalk, which is beautiful for growing grapes...   Maybe that's why there are far more vineyards than arable farms around here, and that is even taking into account the EU controls on wine production.

One of the crops I'm planning for 2011 is potatoes.    I'm in the middle of selecting some potatoes and chitting them.  I have about 40 at present and will try to get about 100 on the go.

I grow potatoes because they are so good for the soil.  At least, everyone tells me they are.  I can't make my mind up.  Certainly, the soil in the bed is much better after I've grown potatoes.  But I'm not sure how much of the improvement simply reflects the work put in to grow them.  After all, you turn the bed over, dig deep trenches for the tubers, then earth up as the plants grow and finally ddig again to harvest the potatoes.  I wonder what a bed of, say lettuce, would end up like if I put that much effort into it??

Be that as it may, it's a great crop because of all that and the heavy top growth does a good job of smothering weeds as well.  So, this year, I'm turning over two of my beds to grow potatoes.    All my beds are separated by a path wide enough to mow, so, in this case, I'm also incorporating the path giving me a bed of about 3m x 7.5m  Plenty for 6 rows of about 16 tubers.   Once I've turned the whole bed I'll plant the potatoes about 100mm (4") deep by scooping out the soil, sprinkling a bit of fertiliser in the bottom them carefully placing the chitted potatoes in the hole before back filling.  Each hole is about 500mm (20") along the line.

Last Autumn I planted some broad beans and was happy to find a bed of strong healthy plants when I looked this morning.   Last year I lost most of my Broad Beans because of several late frosts so, with this in mind, I decided to protect the young plants.  I have some metal tubes about 15mm diametre which I casn join together and a box full of plastic couplers.  It's an old garden gazebo frame I scrounged when the material was no longer any use.   I've assembled a rectangle which sits about 300mm (12") above the ground and secured some old net curtains to it with clothes pegs.  I really like net curtains for this job.  They do a great job of keeping the frost out whilst letting the rain in.  Plastic hoop tinnels keep both the frost and the rain out and garden fleece is both expensive and not very durable.  My net curtains lived their first life screening a window and for a few years now, have lived a second life protecting my plants.  Fixing them with pegs also works well.  If it gets very stormy then the pegs give and the net flaps a bit but neither the frame nor the nets get torn apart.

This afternoon I'm going back outside in the hope of turning over more of that potato bed, if I can dig my shoes out the pile of clay they are encased in.

In the Garden, at last

I spent today in the garden.

For a whole host of reasons, this was the first day I've been able to spend gardening for several months.  The main reasons were weather and health.  My health took a bit of a dive back in September and by the time I came out from underneath it, winter had very firmly set in.

This winter here in south west France has been both cold and wet.   My own measure of how wet it has been is by looking at how dry the roads remain....  Normally, here, the roads dry out every day, but this winter, they have remained wet for days and indeed, weeks on end.

But back to my day in the garden......

One of the last things I did before collapsing in a heap last autumn was to take some cuttings.

The Forsythia cuttings are looking healthy enough and I'm hoping to get enough shrubs to make a short hedge to give some wind break to parts of the vegetable garden.

Some of the seedlings that have been overwintering are happily existing in the  unheated cold frame.

One of the jobs I did today was to chit some potatoes.

I start my potatoes about 8 weeks before I'm intending to plant them in early April.   An elderly gardener I knew many years ago always told me to plant potatoes on Good Friday.  Of course, Good Friday is always at the same point of the moon cycle so I guess this was his version of moon planting.   At the time I lived in Wales, in the UK, and now that I have moved to the warmer climate of south west France, I still follow the advice but have moved the planting date 28 days ahead.....so I intend to plant my potatoes on 25th March.   I should be setting out the potatoes next Friday, but today is ok!!!!

Chitting potatoes is a method of promoting strong growth of shoots before planting.    I set the potatoes in egg boxes with the eyes uppermost and place them on a shelf by a window in my unheated workshop.  The window actually faces south, which is not ideal, but it is what I have.  North facing(away from the sun) would be ideal. Remember I'm in the northern hemisphere so if you live down under, your ideal window will be south facing.

I will leave these potatoes in the window for a week or two and then inspect them, removing some sprouts to leave just the 4 or 5 strongest ones.   You need to cut out the shoot and dig a bit of a hole to get the eye out so that it doesn't simply shoot again later.

Some people argue that this is a waste of effort but I believe that by choosing the strongest shoots and also, considering the position of them, you can give the plant the best chance to produce a nice healthy crop of potatoes.

As for the rest of my day.... well, pruning a large old linden tree took me a lot of time.  I only got as far as cutting out all the shoots coming up from around the base of the tree.... but there's always tomorrow.   I'm thinking of pollarding it.  It looks like it was done a few years ago, but that must have been before I came here six years ago.

2011

After a long hard winter I am, at last, thinking about creeping back into the garden again

Winter here has seen low temperatures of minus 10C (14F) and snow on the ground for a few days.

After the long hot simmer of last year I was very disappointed and struggled to get through... but now, I'm back and looking forward to what the new year of 2011 will bring.

I found a few potatoes shooting in my vegetable box yesterday, so I have started 2011 with half a dozen potato tubers chitting in  my workshop.   I also have few things which are just starting out life in the cold frame, although I'm not entuirely sure they will survive.

However, cuttings I took from some shrubs in the autumn seem to be doing ok and I'm hoping they will take.   I might even have got a bamboo to take at last... but my history on that plant is not great.

Let me wish everyone a great 2011 and hope you'll join me as I wander along my gardening road.

Garden Layout

After all the work in getting the new beds ready I thought I'd give you a list of what is actually growing in them and also, what is just around the corner...

 

So here is what is actually growing, today, in the garden (in the Ground)...or things waiting to be planted (And almost ready to go in the ground)

 

Bed Number	In the Ground	And almost ready to go in the ground:
Bed 1	Spunta Potatoes Oak Leaf Lettuce
Bed 2	Courgettes Dog Beans (Patrick) Dwarf French Yellow Bean (Sarah)	Bari Cucumber (Kate)
Bed 3	Borlotto Beans Wisley Magic Runner Bean Purple Runner Bean (Sarah) Black Turtle Beans (Kate/Toni)
Bed 4	Spunta Potatoes Binjt Potatoes Lollo Rosso Lettuce
Bed 5	Verte Grande Asparagus  Argenteuil Selection Asparagus
Bed 6	Queensland Blue Pumpkin (Marie-Sylvie)  Butternut squash (André)
Bed 7	Ananas Tomato (chaiselongue) Geant Tomato (Gabriel) Coeur de Boeuf Tomato (Marie-Sylvie)	Purple Ukraine Tomato (Miss Fuggle) Veeroma Tomato (Miss Fuggle) Golden Sunrise Tomato
Bed 8	Glasking Perpetual Rhubarb (Val) White Lisbon Spring Onions Lillia Red Salad Onion Jaune Paille des Vertus Onion Globe Artichoke
Bed 9		Melon Medley Charentais Melon (M.Gary)
Bed 10 (a)	Ian’s Red Cherry Tomato	Yellow Cornos Capsicum (Kate) Kaibi Round Pepper (Miss Fuggle)
Bed 11	Bok Choy	Red Radicchio Cavolo Nero (Kate) Cabbage Broccoli
Bed 12	Douce Provence Peas  Dwarf French Green Beans (Sarah)	Yakon (Patrick)
Bed 13 (a,c,e)	Longue d’Espagne Hazelnuts  Salad Leaves Radish (18 day) Radicchio
Bed 14 - 24	These beds are not yet Constructed
Bed 25	Groeseillier a Grappe Juniper Red Currant Raspberries (André)
Bed 26	Zeva Raspberries Magnific Delbard Raspberries September Raspberries Fall Gold Raspberries
Bed 27	Bay Evergreen Shrub (Still to identify) Deciduous Shrub (Still to Identify) Hyssop	Thyme
Bed 28	Cotoneaster Lacteus Deciduous Shrub (Still to Identify)	Wild Flower Mix
Bed 29	Cotoneaster Lacteus Kerria Japonica Pleniflora Lagerstroemia Rouge	Wild Flower Mix
Bed 30	Evergreen Shrub (Still to identify) Deciduous Shrub (Still to Identify)	Wild Flower Mix
SALAD GARDEN	Oak Leaf Lettuce Joy’s Cos Lettuce Radicchio Radish Broad Beans Garlic(Patrick)      Burgundy Creole      Cuban Purple Creole       Tuscan Ail Blanc de Lomagne Salad Onions Spring Onions Leeks Fennel Marais des Bois Strawberry Gariguette Strawberry	Batavia Lettuce Wild Alpine Strawberry
HERB GARDEN	Basil Chervil Chives Coriander Flat Leaf Parsley Garden Cress Garden Mint Peppermint Sage

 

The Salad Garden seems a bit strange now but it was originally the vegetable garden and it will become more salad oriented as we harvest the existing crops.

The layout for the new garden originally allowed 12 beds for expansion...but I have already pressed one into service to grow Hazelnuts (Bed 13) so there is space for just 11 more.

and here is a sketch plan of the new garden

Boeuf Cherhomme

	We have had a couple of family guests staying with us here in the south west of France over the past two weeks and whilst they were here we decided to throw a small party to allow our friends and neighbours to meet them. As the weather had turned cool I decided to serve a hot dish amongst our party fare and after much discussion in the kitchen I was designated the task of making a dish I particularly like. In our household we refer to this dish as Instant Moussaka..... but I have to admit, I decided that I really couldn't call it that now I am writing it up on the blog.....
	You see, Moussaka is traditionally made with minced (ground) lamb but I make this dish with beef..... and traditionally, Moussaka has aubergine as a constituent part but I omit the aubergine...and of course, traditionally, Moussaka has a Béchamel sauce topping.... I use potato....  So, as you can see it's not really Moussaka.... We had quite a long discussion about this and eventually agreed that we would adopt a name which obliquely referred to it's origins... so in the future it will be known as:
	Boeuf Cherhomme I took1kg (2lbs) minced (ground) beef and sauteed it in olive oil with a large onion and a couple of cloves of garlic, adding into the mix, some herbs de Provence, Italian herbs and of course, a glass or two of red wine.    Once the mix had cooked well I added tomatoes.   I used a tin of tomatoes as, at the moment, I don't have any of my own.
THIS IS THE PICTURE OF THE FINISHED DISH WHICH I FORGOT TO TAKE	Once this had all cooked down nicely, I covered the bottom of  a large dish with a layer of pre-boiled potato and then spooned half the mixture over them.  I then added further layers of potato, meat and a top layer of potato and cooked the whole dish in the oven for about 20 minutes. After sprinkling cheese over the top I grilled the beef and then served immediately....
	We also made a marinated sweet and sour carrots dish that I love and which was enjoyed by our guests.
	All this cooking activity for the whole day meant we didn't really have time to prepare our own meals so about mid afternoon, we all stopped for afternoon tea in the British tradition.....  I had a French pastry - a "Religeuse" or Coffee Nun, a very tempting piece of choux pastry stuffed full with coffee cream and then topped with coffee icing.  It certainly made the cup of tea taste better..........

Some new potatoes

 

	Back on 13th March, I planted a row of potatoes, they had been chitting since the 3rd February in the workshop behind glass.  I had actually used about 10 small potatoes that had started shooting in the vegetable basket Today, we dug them up!!
The first two out of the ground made promises that the rest of the crop couldn't deliver.  I was a little disappointed at the crop of just over 2 kgs (about 5 lbs.) but the real benefit was the huge improvement to the soil in the bed.
I guess, for a few potatoes that were destined for the compost heap, 5lbs of nice looking new potatoes and a lot of good soil isn't too bad a deal. We're going to eat the first ones at a dinner on Tuesday night, I'll tell you what they are like!!!

Thanks for the help!

Recently, I was given my first heirloom bean seeds which I have sown in a new small bed immediately behind my "potager" beds. When I planned my veg garden I was unaware that these seeds would be given to me so I didn’t allow any room for them . However, I was very happy to pull out a small shrub and thereby release another small bed for vegetables. I had intended to show a photo of the seedlings today but alas, they are too small to photograph. They are being protected by cut down soda bottles which is a system I like to use.

Elsewhere in the garden, things are starting to happen. My potatoes are well established now and this week needed to be hoed up.

As I was growing them in a new bed, I decided to simply add a couple of bags of compost and raise the bed level a little further.



You may remember that due to a lack of familiarity with the French language I inadvertently bought red cabbage plants instead of white – (they actually call them apple cabbages here in France!). Well, as you can see the cabbages are doing well.





I have also bought tomato plants which are in position growing in pots against a south facing wall. I have three varieties, Marmande - a local beef tomato variety, cerise rouge, literally red cherry and golden sunrise, a yellow cherry tomato. The photo is of the Golden Sunrise Tomato which I have raised from seed!!!! They are still quite small but I remain hopeful


Back in March I bought a dozen strawberry plants, 6 of a variety called Marais du Bois and 6 of another French variety called Gariguette. They are now establishing themselves nicely. I bought some Gariguette strawberries on the market last Saturday and they were wonderfully tasty and oh, so juicy


During the past month or so I have received a lot of help getting my seed sowing attempts sorted out after several false starts.

I think this batch of salad leaves will actually be successful. (Sorry about the quality of the photo - I’m still doing battle with digital cameras, as well as seeds!)

The picture shows 16 of 24 cells. The 8 that are missing are Batavia lettuce which have already been potted on, the next 8 are wild chicory which I'm trying for the first time and the last 8 are lollo rosso lettuce.

I’d like to thank Patrick – over at Bifurcated Carrots for his invaluable help in diagnosing where I was going wrong and for continuing to offer encouragement when things looked very bleak.



Thank you Patrick

So, as you can see I have made a bit of progress since I started back in January. I feel a bit like the tomato I wrote about some months ago Who'd be a Tomato: I got on and did the job and now I deserve a pat on the back! Of course my tomato didn't get a pat on the back!! I'm hoping my pat on the back will come in the form of some superb mediteranean weather to help all these little upstarts grow into magnificent specimens. I'm not holding my breath though - we had almost 50mm (2 inches) of rainfall last week!!!!