Tomatoes

Today, I planted out the last of my tomato plants.  I've cut back quite a lot this year and am growing just 31 plants. The ongoing drought is making me a bit nervous of having too much stuff in the ground that needs lots of water and also, the ground has had so little moisture that it is baked pretty hard making planting anything quite a challenge.

This year I have planted 2 Ananas, 4 Marmande, 6 Veeroma, 8 Moneymaker and 9 Ian's Red Cherry.  These have all been raised from seed saved last year.   I had some excitement with my seeds over the winter and lost most of the Ananas seeds  and all my Golden Sunrise seeds to a passing mouse.

This year I'm also growing 2 Cobra for the first time.   This variety was recommended to me by the seedling man at Villereal market.  His produce is raised very close to here and his seedlings have always done well for me.  I chatted to him about different varieties of tomato some weeks ago and he persuaded me to buy two of his Cobra.  He claims they are quite an early tomato.   Looking at the photo taken today, the fruit is certainly far in advance of any other tomato plant in my garden.   As I said, I've never grown Cobra before so I'm waiting to see how it turns out.  I like the seedling man. He sets up his small stall well off the main market where he can park his van and simply gets out whatever you want.  He has a small table which looks very unprepossessing but I know his van to be a veritable Tardis, with far more coming out than it could possibly hold. Tjhe other thing is that he shares this bit of road with just one other trader.  This trader doesn't even have a table, preferring to simply open the back doors of his van and allow you to peer in.  If you want to buy then he will happily pull out the crates for you to select whichever live animal you have chosen.  Yes, that's all he sells, live animals, chickens and pigs mainly, but often a goose or some ducks.

The drought continues unabated with no rainfall at all recorded by me for the past 12 days but the garden is fairing with mixed success.   I had two olive trees that had been in the ground about 2 years.  They are planted adjacent to one another...  one is fairly happy with the drought and occasional drop of water I throw at it but the other seems to have dies, although I'm still watering it from time to time as it seems to be holding onto it's greenness.   I had a great crop of cherries but they came and went much faster than usual this year.  I guess that also is an effect of the drought.   My walnut tress are laden with fruit.  I've nowhere near finished eating the walnuts I collected last year yet and looking at the trees this should be another good year for walnuts   Elsewhere, I have some of the best roses I have seen since I moved here about 7 years ago and a pot of Iris has flowered for the first time since we arrived.  To be honest, I inherited the pot when we moved here and always meant to dig out the bulbs and do something with it.... but the best of intentions and all that,... but this year I needed to move the pot so I put it out in the sunlight a bit more, mainly to remind me that I needed to deal with it and, hey presto, beautiful Yellow Japanese Irises arrived.

First fruits

For the past couple of years, here in south west France, we have not had very good fruit crops.  Late frosts have descended on the region and prevented lots and lots of fruit from setting.

I'm pleased to say that this year, it's looking like once again it's going to be a bumper year in my orchard.

A walk around it today revealed that there were masses of fruit hanging on the apple, pear, plum, cherry and walnut trees.  Even my new little peach tree, which was planted just at the start of last year, is helping out with a dozen or so peaches.

As I walked around I had to duck below branches being dragged low from the sheer weight of fruit they were carrying.... and most of that fruit is not yet fully grown!

The branches of the big old cherry tree were almost touching the floor, laden with fruit just waiting for a few drops of the promised rain to swell up to magnificence.   I was even able to pick my first cherry of the year, which was delicious.... but there were only two or three ready.  but in the next day or two, more will arrive.    Tiny apples, pears and plums are quite evident on the trees as well, although, I must admit, I have difficulty telling the difference between plum and cherry at this time of year.   I know the plum has shorter and fatter leaves and the cherry has more rounded fruit, but when I was walking I really had to study them to know which was which.  I ended up making  chart and identifying the trees and their positions on it!

I took photos for you but they are not very good, with the trees blending quite superbly into the green of the grass!!!   I have posted the best two, my apple tree, and the tiny new peach tree.   I counted at least a dozen peaches so I am now hoping that they will survive and grow and that later this summer, I will get to eat, for the first time, home grown peaches.

A Wander in the Orchard

	Last year the fruit harvest of my orchard was bad. When I say bad, that is probably an understatement... FIG There was a late frost, a very late, very hard frost and I, along with almost everybody else in the vicinity, lost ALL my fruit
	With this in my mind, and aware that it was now July and we had not suffered a late bad frost again this year, I decided to go and take a look how things were WALNUT panning out. It looks like it's going to be a bumper crop for some of the orchard standards.
	The Walnut trees are all laden with healthy looking fruit and I am looking forward to the usual battle I LEMON wage with my red squirrel, where, every time a walnut cascades to the floor, Squirrel and I run to see who can bag it first.  Sadly Squirrel usually wins. The top picture is of the fig tree.  I have a few
	figs.  I'm pleased because the fig tree is in the middle of a kind of restoration project and I did not expect any fruit at all.   PLUM The lemon tree grows in a pot as it gets too cold in mid winter for it.   I was delighted to note a tiny fruit on it the other day as I wandered.
	The fruits on the pear tree look the healthiest they have looked in the five years we have been here. PEAR Maybe, the new tree I planted earlier this year has provided some extra stimulus and I'll get some usable fruit once again.
	Apples are one of my favourite orchard fruit and for many years, as a youngster living in England, I believed that orchards only grew apples. APPLE Now, out of thirty trees in the orchard I only have 4 apple trees.  but my favourite is showing a very heavy crop again this year.  I inherited most of the fruit trees
	when I moved here and I really must put some effort into identifying the various varieties. MIRABELLE And finally my mirabelle.  I only have the one tree producing this delicious small yellow plum.  It is a rather late ripening variety and in my garden, it is usually ready to harvest in late August.

 

As well as the above , my orchard has cherry, peach and nectarine trees.    The cherries fruited well, and we ate substantial amounts before succumbing to the glut and freezing bagfuls.  The peach is new this year and is establishing itself but the current drought is not helping it.  I think the drought has also taken it's toll on the nectarine....a new tree last year but, I fear, neglected through oversight as my attention focused on all the new vegetable beds.   I shall give it some tlc and see if it recovers.

Of course, I have other fruit in the garden, grapes, melons, rhubarb, hazelnut, raspberry and redcurrant to name a few. but many of them are new and all are suffering from a lack of water.   Don't they know this part of the world is called   AQUA taine......

Hazelnuts

We spent the weekend preparing our next bed in the new vegetable garden.  This time the prepared bed was planted with three hazelnut bushes which we bought on Friday.

We visited a small nursery, not far from here and were delighted that they had bare rooted hazelnut bushes at a reasonable price.   We decided to buy three as we were advised to plant them about 2m (6'6") apart.

We also bought a dozen lettuce seedlings which looked superb and were so much further advanced than our own ones, grown from seed.  The lettuce seedlings were being sold in packs of 6 growing in the squares from the 1" size soil blocker.  In another part of the nursery there were hundreds and hundreds of these blocks with all manner of seedlings growing in them, with not a plastic pot in sight!!!

The new vegetable garden is on a slight slope and this bed is the farthest down the slope that we will be working this year and it was interesting to note how much better the soil was as we moved down the hill.  I say better, but please don't think that I mean good!!!  It was still a heavy clay in need of a lot of amendment....   just not quite as heavy as the top beds we had made already.

On Sunday we opened up three large holes and planted the three bushes in good compost.

Hazelnuts are the first nut trees we have planted here, but a neighbour tells me that he has a hedge of hazelnuts which is growing quite happily.   Of course, we do have three large walnut trees.

lunch at the old porch

I went out to lunch the other day, to a lovely restaurant not far from here called the Old Porch.

I've been there just once before, a couple of months ago,  when a friend and his wife rang me to invite me to join them.

We were welcomed into a lovely dining room of an old hotel with about 20 tables set out.   Only 2 or 3 tables were occupied though, when we arrived at about 12.15.

We took a table near the door to the kitchen and were rewarded with some very pleasant cooking aromas as we started to study the menu.

Once we were all seated, our waitress arrived with a basket of lovely bread and a carafe of red wine and I realised that wine must be included in the price.....which the menu quickly confirmed...

As we discussed the menu a few more people drifted in and the room began to take on a convivial atmosphere with the buzz of people enjoying themselves.

The first course was a vegetable soup.  Home made from fresh vegetables and thickened by pureeing the vegetables and adding creme fraiche.   It was delicious and the large tureen that was left on the table for us to help ourselves from meant that those with a mind to, could have a second bowlful.....The assorted breads in the basket went wonderfully well when dipped into the soup and four very clean bowls went back to the kitchen at the end of that course.

Next we were served with a platter of crudités and some cold meats, 2 or three different hams.   The traditional French crudités were freshly prepared and included grated carrot, grated celeriac, cherry tomatoes, grated beetroot and just a little sweetcorn with each vegetable prepared in an appropriate, light dressing. The wealth of tastes was amazing and we all sat and happily chatted and munched our way through it.  During this course I looked around the restaurant and realised that every table was now full and, in fact, the waitresses were just adding an extra table to accommodate two more people waiting.  Again the various breads were nice to eat with the different dressings and the basket needed refilling before we had even got to the main course......

For that course we had been able to choose from a selection of dishes and around the table we selected the whole range.  I had cous-cous and others had confit de canard, roast chicken or steak.  Now I know some of my readers will be astounded that I didn't choose the canard (duck) as it was offered...but I'm only really writing this to show that I do occasionally eat something else!!!!!

Confit de canard is a speciality of the Perigord region and is also one of my favourite dishes.  Duck is preserved in it's own fat and then gently warmed until all the duck fat has dripped away and you are left with the most tender and tasty duck imaginable..like I said, I do love confit de canard....

The cous-cous came as two separate dishes, a bowlful of just cous-cous, beautifully cooked, loose and light and a separate bowl of a broth containing chicken and pork and a some large chunks of vegetables. I didn't finish all the grains but no vegetables or meat went back to the kitchen!!

Next there was a choice of cheese or dessert and I chose cheese....Another marvelous dish with four great regional cheeses served with just a few walnuts.  Walnuts grow around here, I have three trees in my own garden, and they are used a lot as a simple accompaniment....  I'm told the creme brulee was also delicious.

Coffee wasn't included in the set meal price so we paid the extra and enjoyed a cup of rich, thick, dark, espresso to finish off the meal.

We were also the last table to finish... after eating a truly memorable meal which had cost us just €11.50 ($14.50)($AU22.35) with an extra €1.00 for the coffee.

Thank you to the Vieux Porche for making a Wednesday lunchtime so very enjoyable.

I'm on vacation and may not be able to post for a few days...depending on whether I find Internet access or not....

Foire aux Potirons

Today was Issigeac's annual Pumpkin Festival....

 Issigeac is a very beautiful Medieval village dating back to the time of the hundred years wars, when much of the present village was built but actually going back even further than that to the Gallo-Roman era and is very popular with tourists and locals alike.

What I really like about these special food festivals is that they bring out lots of people and because of that lots and lots of traders turn out as well.  The local apple grower was there today with his array of apples all grown within a few miles of here.  The florist was selling locally grown Chrysanthemums and the basket man was there with his woven selection.

The regular Oyster man was there selling his oysters raised in the Marennes-Oleron basin,  just a couple of hours drive north of here and the walnuts are the famous Franquette, (Noix du Perigord).  Of course, no Pumpkin Festival would be complete without the garlic man....

Actually, all these pictures were taken rather late in the day.  When I first arrived I was unable to get any photos because there were simply too many people....but too many people to take photos gave a great buzz to the festival and I enjoyed my few hours there.   There are more PHOTOS here

September's here

September has brought with it an autumn feel to South West France.... It's 9:30 pm and I'm sitting at my laptop writing this wearing a sweater for the first time for several months.  Overnight temperatures dropped to 9 C (49F) last night, the first time we have seen temperatures in single figures since April.

In my garden, the horse chestnut tree is always the first thing to announce the impending arrival of autumn as it starts to drop it's leaves quite early.    Today there is hardy a leaf left on it...

So it's time to start to think about what to grow over autumn and winter and as this is my first year I'm a bit stuck where to start.

I already have some Chinese Cabbages growing which look like they are going to recover from the caterpillar attack.  Also the red cabbages which have been in since the spring are looking nice and will be ready to harvest soon.

I'm going to try and grow some broccoli and some fennel.   Fennel is a wonderful herb which is native to the Mediterranean region although can now be found all around the globe.  I have become a convert to it since moving here to France.   In the last week, I have sown seed for both fennel and broccoli, although, I am still very new to growing food and my success with seeds is not brilliant, but I will persevere.  The fennel has peeped through the surface with a spindly little shoot which I believe is normal...  I have half a dozen broccoli, from a  sowing a couple of weeks ago and I have just sown a few more...

I also recently put some peppermint in which is just beginning to show and hopefully will be a nice addition to my mint pot.   In the herb pots, the mint is doing extremely well, the basil is also doing well now after a couple of false starts and the flat leaf parsley that was sown back in July is now developing well

I have a volunteer pumpkin whose vine has grown to about 8m (26ft).  It is in a 2.4m (8ft) bed and I am winding it up and down the bed trying to contain it.  I didn't know whether it was pumpkin or melon or quite what, but on Kitchen Garden day, one of our guests assured me it was pumpkin and as he is a commercial pumpkin grower, I guessed I should listen....

I am also in the process of deciding about extending the garden.  This year I have had a lot of successes but have really had too many varieties with not enough of any one thing.    I'm thinking of doubling the size of the plot, as I don't want to overwhelm myself and I am also going to grow next year's tomatoes in the ground rather than in pots, so that will need some more space...

I still have to make a decision on lifting, splitting and moving my rhubarb as well...  At the moment it is in a rose bed.. but is producing nice rhubarb and I hear stories of people losing the whole lot once they try and move them....The other problem is that the space I had earmarked for it has now been taken over by Strawberries....

I also picked up the first walnut today....so before long, the annual race between me and the squirrels will start in earnest..

I think it's a good thing that I have got the swimming pool construction out of the way now as it seems I'm going to be busy in the garden for a while........

Another Saturday at Villereal

As many of you know I go to the market at Villereal every Saturday. 

It's funny what goes through your mind as you wander round a beautiful market and today was no exception.

Last night I was reading round the world in blogs and I arrived in Adelaide, South Australia at the Central Market.  Kate's Friday visit to the market has become a regular piece on the Hills and Plains Seedsavers Blog and I enjoy to read it each week.   This week , there was a paragraph about the preparations for her 50th birthday party amongst the wonderful words describing life in Central Market.

No doubt, partly as a result of reading that last night and partly from seeing a huge birthday cake in a patisserie, I suddenly found myself thinking that at the same time I was wandering around my Market, over on the other side of the world, Kate and her family and friends were having a party to celebrate her birthday.  So Kate, by the time you read this, your party will be over,.    I hope you had great fun....and thanks for a great blog.

July and August are the busiest months in the markets in this part of France as the incoming tourists swell the numbers of shoppers dramatically.  The queues in the fruit and vegetable stalls which I frequent grow as fast as the  local produce on the stalls increases.

This week, I saw local producers selling strawberries, apples, melons, tomatoes, plums, prunes, walnuts, homemade jams and walnut oil.  This farmer only sells melons, and this week, only one variety of melon.... Charentais a popular French variety which does well in this area.  We were discussing a dish where you cut the melon in half and scoop out all the seeds. Then you fill the recess with our local sweet dessert wine.  I've never known what this dish was called so I refer to it as gwm (great winey melon).  It's wonderful.

In my own garden, I've had quite a lot of produce lately.

We had some friends for dinner the other evening and served tomatoes, salad leaves, a few beans and potatoes all from the garden...I accompanied these with some poultry and home made bread to make a delicious meal.

The poultry guy at Villereal is there every Saturday, whatever the weather, all year round.  I don't think I've ever known him have a holiday.  He always has far more customers waiting than he has chickens ready....and just look at those quail on the bottom spit.... Talking about gwm in that last paragraph, makes me think this guy should be called pwm - poultry with meaning!!!

Today was the same, except that this week, the queue was particularly  long.  In the photo above,the queue for chickens starts with the girl in the foreground, goes almost to the opticians and then comes back to the guy in the white tee shirt.  As soon as I took the photo another couple joined the queue...

We've had a few strawberries from the garden, but they haven't made it to the kitchen, usually getting eaten before they leave the garden.   Again, this is a picture of the produce of the strawberry lady.   This week she had only one variety of strawberry on offer (Marais des bois) but they looked, and I'm sure tasted, delicious.

I almost missed the prune man who was tucked away this  week in a corner.  By the time I got to him he had almost sold out.   Prunes, which are actually dried plums, are another speciality from this part of France... Pruneax d'Agen are sought out all over Europe, Agen being a town just a few miles south of here. This farmer just sells plums and prunes with a few odds and ends from his vegetable garden.   His prunes always look delicious.

There was one lady I had not seen before selling tomatoes.  She had two varieties, the huge Coeur de Boeuf and a black tomato whose name I'm afraid I don't know.  She sells all her produce at one price.  What I particularly liked was that the tomatoes had been grown for taste.  They weren't pretty, but she had almost sold out when I finally came across her, and I suspect they tasted wonderful. 

Another new lady was just selling some home made produce.  She had a selection of jams and jellies, a few walnuts and some gorgeous looking walnut oil.  I bought a jar of the jam and will be trying it out soon, probably for breakfast tomorrow. 

There were many other stalls at the market this week, wine producers, fishmongers, fruit orchards, flower sellers, nurserymen, book sellers, clothing retailers, jewellery makers, artists, foie gras producers, bakers, butchers and candlestick makers etc and there was a buzz of activity that really only happens in July and August...

Do I prefer the market at this time of year?   There are certainly far more stalls with many, many more customers about, on the other hand, it's hard to park, hard to get a seat for coffee, hard to get served and none of the sellers have quite as much time for a chat, which for me, is a big part of the experience.  I know that tourism is a huge part of the economy in this part of the world and provides a great deal of what I enjoy whilst living here.... but for me, the markets in May, June, September and October still have plenty of things to make them interesting but don't have the crush of people making them hard to enjoy.

I took this picture of some urns just because I thought the colours made an interesting subject and to remind myself of the diversity of products available.

Villereal market is not a farmers market....  It is a general village market, similar to those that happen up and down the length and breadth of France.  It happens to be in an area where some really good farmers and producers bring their produce to sell.

 

So, next time you're in south west France come to Villereal and just bwm (browse with me)

The Predator becomes friendly helping hand.

True life has an uncanny way of following fiction or I suppose the fact is that fiction is really a reflection on true life.

Some months ago I wrote about the life of a tomato Who’d be a tomato. In that story I talked about the predator becoming the helping hand.

As I knew it would, true life has emulated what I wrote and now, I find myself lavishing loving attention on the seven tomato plants that have been allowed to survive thus far.

The three on the left are Marmande, a local variety of big tasty beef tomatoes, then there are 2 golden sunrise and two cerise rouge – simply red cherry!

The Marmande are a big brute of a tomato and as you can see, they are set to become the playground bully on this bit of my domain.

I decided to grow the tomatoes in pots this year as I had filled up the beds I prepared and previously, in the UK, my father in law always grew tomatoes in pots in the greenhouse.

The lack of room in my beds also prompted me to grow my carrots in a container. On a couple of the gardening social networks to which I belong, there has been a great deal of discussion about container growing, and my friend ilex over at:

Homesteading in a Condo

has been an inspiration to me. The other fact I learnt, only recently, is that the carrot root fly can only fly below 20 inches (500mm) above the ground, so, by putting my carrots in this container and raising it up on a shelf the pot is higher than root fly can get!!!!

I’ll tell you in a few weeks whether it worked or not!

Elsewhere things are growing well and I’m feeding most of the French population of snails, slugs and rabbits. Just occasionally, I even manage to pick something for myself.

Rabbits ate the basil and I’m not sure it is going to recover. I thought it might but it has been transferred to the ICU and the prognosis is not good.

In the orchard there is a sad face on the fruitless cherry trees and the plums are also looking short of fruit. I have plenty of apples though and some walnuts are beginning to form. It does look however, that this year will bear a poor orchard crop for us, with no cherries, no pears and no plums. It’s too early to say about the figs, but the tree has been disturbed as this was the first year of pruning after many years of neglect.