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Thursday 01 November 2012
Winter Vegetables to the Fore
Thursday began November with yet another cool and cloudy day with temperatures below average for the start of the month.
We made our first visit to the plot for just over a week as we'd run out of fresh vegetables and Sue had some wallflowers and tulips to plant. I thought it was about time to try some of our Autumn King carrots. As I lifted them out of the soil, these looked like good carrots. The ground remains very wet and the carrots needed a wash to reveal their true conditions. No carrot fly and no slug damage so just the flavour test remains.
Whilst in testing mode I lifted the first of this year's parsnips, Gladiator, and they too after a quick wash looked to have produced some decent sized roots for winter. The cauliflowers are probably the last of this year's crop although I left a couple of small plants in the ground to see if they will eventually grow to produce a head. The cabbages too are the first of our autumn variety Kilaton. Our summer crop of Golden Acre are now finished.
To finish off my experimental visit I lifted a couple of our celeriac roots. It's stretching the imagination a little to call them roots. They look as though they need potting on for next year. A complete failure again so I'll have to try something different and see if I can do better next year.
Friday 02 November 2012
Turned Out Cold and Wet on the North Yorkshire Moors
We headed off for the North Yorkshire Moors as the forecast was for a decent day with some sunny spells. As we turned off the main road between Pickering and Whitby there were excellent views over the town and out over the sea.
This was around lunch time and although it was cold it was a beautiful sunny day. It didn’t last much longer as the clouds rolled in and the sun did a disappearing act. By the time we reached the same vantage point a couple of hours later the view looked like this.
Difficult now to distinguish between sea and sky as the rain set in.
We also had one of those SAT NAV moments. We were exploring the Esk Valley and I was expecting some narrow roads but this “ford” was a little bit too deep to risk.
Judging by the depth marker the water was around 2 feet deep somewhere around the middle of the river which was running pretty swiftly. To be fair an earlier road sign had warned of a deep ford ahead but who takes notice of every road sign. Better safe than sorry it just meant reversing back up the road to turn round.
Saturday and Sunday 03/04 November 2012
Carrot test results
Saturday morning was the first time my thermometer had fallen below 0°C this autumn.
It was only just below as it fell to -
From a growing perspective all the varieties have performed well producing good size carrots. Protection from seed sowing until September with environmesh has been extremely effect at keeping the dreaded carrot fly at bay and so far all the roots have been unaffected. One of my main concerns was that using weed control fabric would provide a breeding ground for slugs and snails resulting in lots of damaged roots. This doesn’t seem to have happened and considering all the rain this summer, conditions must have been ideal for hose pesky molluscs. There has been a little slug damage mostly to the Early Nantes roots, the remaining varieties that have been lifted damage free so far.
As for taste the only disappointing variety has been Flakkee with not such an intense carroty flavour as the other three varieties. I will probably grow four varieties again next year introducing another variety to replace Flakkee.
The last time we visited the plot I dug up some Autumn King carrots. I’ve now lifted some of all four varieties that we’ve grown this year. Regular followers will be aware that after a complete crop failure in 2011 we tried everything we could this year to produce a decent crop of carrots which we consider an essential part of our winter root vegetables. There’s information here about the methods used to grow our four different varieties this year.
Monday and Tuesday 05/06 November 2012
Cold then Wet
Monday was a cold sunny day and it tempted us into the garden to do a little bit of planting and some tidying up. The weather changed during Monday night as rain moved in to make Tuesday a wet and windy day but much milder.
It gave me chance to pot up our new apple tree Baya Marissa. Sue has more about this apple tree on her blog here. The plan is it will spend the worst of winter in the greenhouse before being moved outside once the weather improves in early spring. The plan at the moment is that it will be moved into a larger pot and grow along side our other “pot” fruit at home rather than be planted in the plot.
I’m undecided as the whether it should go into a bigger conventional type of pot or be planted into a large air pot like our new cherry tree. I’ve got all winter to make up my mind.
