Blogger Curse strikes this time!

A big "waaaaaaaah!" to Blogger for the technical confusion over the last few days, apologies to those who have left comments which have gone astray. I guess I should be thankful that my courgette post came back to life eventually!

Is that Wordpress I see on the horizon????

Courgette Curse strikes again

Regular readers will know that courgettes are unfeasibly popular here in the Kitchen. Back in the day when I was struggling to grow what I could in my tiny garden they were a blessing as they give a generous crop in return for the smallest corner of ground. Having a glut was a novelty and I embraced the challenge with gusto - courgette cake, roasted courgette, courgette soup, courgette pickle, courgette jam, I love them all.

Therefore the great courgette tragedy of 2009, when I lost my slender green friends to mosaic virus, was a bitter blow. It's not just the loss of a popular vegetable but the ignominy of being unable to grow something universally acknowledged as a 'beginners' plant which is derided rather than celebrated for it's fecundity. Truth be told, I think it's the latter point that drives me on in my quest to conquer the courgette more than anything else.

2010 got off to a shaky start. I finally got my long awaited allotment (hoorah!) so the problem of being unable to use my mosaic virus infested garden was solved. I planted 4 courgette plants (2 green and 2 stripy) but I underestimated how exposed the allotment site was and all 4 plants went into shock after the cosiness of my back garden. I bit my nails for a week or two before they got a grip and started to actually grow.

It's true we had a glut after our holiday when the courgettes had been left to their own devices and a handful grew to monster proportions but the actual number of fruit was surprisingly low. The stripy variety in particular seemed to have quite a low yield, although I do wonder if this had something to do with their early shock.

Which brings us up to date. This year I have 2 allotments so space is far from an issue and I went to town! I sowed yellow courgettes, round courgettes and patty pan squash plus a friend kindly gave me a couple of crook neck squash seedlings. So courgettes all round then?

Hmmm, not so sure. I planted 2 yellow and 2 round on the allotment, only for us to have a frost a mere 2 days later, 1 of each type (plus a cucumber) was felled and the remaining plants have that familiar stunned look about them. Luckily my crook neck and patty pan squash were still at home and my sheltered garden escaped the frost so I'll plant a few more of those to step into the beach.

However, note to self for 2012 - don't plant the courgettes out til mid-May, it's just not worth the heartache!

Sweet(corn) Nothings

Let's talk sweetcorn. Am I just rubbish at growing it or is it a somewhat testy diva of a vegetable that swoons when the conditions are anything less than perfect?

Last year I started the seeds off at home, outside in small pots. I reasoned that they'd grow already accustomed to the ambient conditions and I wouldn't have to bother hardening them off. This meant that they were outside during the late frost we had at the end of April last year, still tucked up under the potting compost in my sheltered, relatively frost free garden though, so not catastrophic. However, I do wonder whether this may have stunted them in later life.

I found that, at every stage of the growing process, I seemed to lose a proportion of the plants/ears of corn. About half of the seeds actually germinated and their progress was slooooooow, about 3 weeks from sowing to green shoots. Of the germinated seeds probably one third failed to thrive and didn't produce any corn. Of the plants that actually grew, about half produced decent corn and the other half produced weird nearly naked cobs. I think in the end we only had 6 or 8 decent decent cobs of corn from 20 plants.

This year I decided to buy a bigger cold frame so that I had the room to start off all my seeds under cover and get a head start. The sweetcorn has germinated within days but still, half the seeds have failed (in stark contrast to everything else which, other than the disappointing Mr Stripy tomatoes, has a success rate of almost 100%). I can also see huge disparities in size between the plants, a few are large, vigorous and obviously healthy (as seen in the photo, mid sprinkler session this afternoon) but a handful are rather runty. The pattern of last year seems to be repeating itself already.

So - what's your experience? Is my allotment fundamentally unsuited to sweetcorn, or is this fairly typical? I'd love to hear your stories and tips.

Please let it rain soon!

The current dry weather conditions are playing havoc with our plans at Bressingham (the old allotment) In February I couldn't dig because the soil is so clay-y I couldn't stand up straight on it, pushing on a spade merely propelled me backwards through the slip. I missed the nanosecond when the weather dried up and the soil was in peak digging condition and, minutes later, it had dried out and set so rock hard that even jumping two footed onto the spade won't drive it into the ground.

My plan was to dig up the grassed area where the kids play, give them horsetail corner for playing instead, and transfer the strawberries to the rather more fecund original play area. Adam complained that digging up the turf in the compacted, played on soil, was heavy going so we put Roundup down thinking dead grass would be easier to grub up than living. By the time the Roundup had worked, the soil had set rock hard so we decided to wait for rain before we continued digging.

We waited, and waited and waited .......

8 weeks later we've only had one small shower of rain. The play area is still only half dug, the strawberries are snug in their original home and are now flowering determinedly, the broad bean seeds have died and the purple sprouting broccoli is running to seed and needs digging up but everything is locked into the concrete soil.

By contrast, the soil at the new allotment on Louie's Lane is a joy. It's like fine sand, free draining and easily heaped over the potatoes (the Ulster Sceptre are doing fine), seed drills are drawn in the blink of an eye (rather than seeds slipping down between huge cobbles) but walking over it is hard on the calves (my legs, there are no baby cows there) but other than that it's allotmenteering heaven.

The 2011 season is beginning in earnest now as my seedlings are slowly emerging from their coldframe home and being planted out in the big wide world of the allotment. The next few weeks will be hard work as I mollycoddle them into life but once they've got a toehold I should find out if my split site strategy will work and I actually have the resources to manage 2 allotments - oh and not forgetting the Diss Community Farm pig rearing project!

AB Seedy

Had to get that pun in somewhere as I'm so proud of it! It's my suggestion for the name of the seed growing 'club' that a couple of friends and I have formed. The idea being we would co-ordinate our planting (eg, I do courgettes, Anna does lettuce), grow a few extra seedlings and then do a vegetal runaround, swapping excess plants. Of course this makes my germination rates uncomfortably public. In the past I would be quite sanguine about failures and just buy garden centre plants to fill any gaps. I really should have remembered that I did that with tomatoes for a couple of years on the run, last year was the first year I gave up and just went straight to the garden centre.

I think you've probably guessed where this is going already .....

Most of the seedlings are going well. I have a germination rate of over 50% for the sweetcorn which isn't too shabby. Borlotti beans more or less 100%, ditto courgettes, various squashes, chard, Cavelo Nero, calabrese etc etc

And my tomatoes? The ones which are supposed to be bounteous? Enough to share with friends? The value adding obscure varieties? Nada. Zip. Absolutely nothing. A handful of Tumbling Toms are struggling up but Mr Stripy are stubbornly staying soil bound.

In the meantime, I've taken my first delivery of leek seedlings from David. I had to share his seed tray idea in the photo above, I thought the cut off milk bottle was genius. Of course the size of the donation (the bottle in the photo, plus one more, plus a full conventional seed tray) causes me even more embaressment in having no tomatoes to give in return, let's just hope he likes courgettes ......

Purple Sprouting to Piggies.

Wow, I finally have an hour to myself (just mistyped that as 'my elf', but I've paid him no attention either) Life has suddenly become overwhelmingly busy as the Norfolk Kitchen empire expands. As you probably know I have 2 allotments for the first time this season. I keep telling myself it's not as daunting as it sounds as both plots are half the traditional size so, really, it's just one plot. That's not too bad is it? Really? It'll be all right won't it??

I took advantage of the glorious weather and visited the Bressingham allotment (the old one) yesterday. Sadly, I forgot my camera which means I couldn't capture the blossom on the fruit trees or the glorious, glowing, shimmering purple of the sprouting broccoli. I photographed it at home but it's just not the same as when it's bathed in sunlight. I'm uncommon pleased with the purple sprouting, I bought a few spare plants from a fellow allotmenteer for 20p, stuck them in the soil and ignored them til now and suddenly, unexpectedly, I have this gourmet treat (stir fried in olive oil with anchovies by the way)

When I'd finished swinging a matock while sweat dripped off my nose in an attempt to dig over the sun hardened clay of the ex-Cavolo Nero bed, I called at the new allotment to check out the rotavating a friend did for me. The soil is beautiful, as fine a tilth as sand. I surveyed my blistered hands and could've wept!

Added to the extra land I've taken on 3 extra chickens making a total of 5, plus I'm getting quite heavily involved in the Diss Community Farm Livestock project. The Community Farm is basically a co-operative of local people, we're hoping to rent some land, work on it ourselves, share the produce and have a few laughs along the way. It's a huge project to get off the ground and lots of people are working very hard on it. The hope is that the Farm will become a reality next year and in the meantime we're running a couple of small pilot projects to test our plans and procedures. The vegetable growing project I'm leaving alone (see above) but the Project Piggy is a different matter ....

A local landowner has agreed to lease us an area of woodland of about 2 acres for a peppercorn rent and a side of pork, our plan is to keep a few pigs and some nice fierce geese to keep them safe from marauding teenagers. If all goes well we can scale up for the farm proper.

We're holding a Family Cream Tea this Sunday, 10th April, at Roydon Village Hall at 3pm. Please come along if you'd like to find out a bit more about our project or get involved. And if you're very lucky, you may even get to sample a little Norfolk Kitchen jam (but not the courgette and ginger which was very firmly rejected!)

Xanthe's Mud Pie Kitchen

Ta-daaa! So here it is, Xanthe's Mud Pie kitchen. At the grand old age of 4, Xanthe is already an allotment veteran. We've reached the stage where miniature tool sets and packets of seeds have waned in the excitement stakes and every announcement of an allotment visit is met with loud howls of protest.

I've been avoiding this flashpoint by only visiting the allotment when Xanthe is at nursery but as demands on my precious child free time grow this is becoming impractical. The issue of keeping Xanthe amused and engaged feels even more important at the new allotment where our plots aren't fenced and the neighbours are the neat and tidy straight lines types who wouldn't fancy small feet tramping over the border.

I appealed for ideas on Twitter and Facebook and got some great suggestions including making scarecrows, flower pot mud castles (like sandcastles only muddier), flower pot stilts and cardboard tractors. All of which are fab ideas I have squirreled away for future use. The lovely Rachel, she of the transplaneted courgette, came up with the Rolls Royce solution: A Mud Pie Kitchen.

An hour in the charity shops of Diss produced a wooden wine rack which a dab of glue, 2 cheap hob covers and 2 big red buttons turned into a cooker. We added in a variety of charity shop utensils and the job was done. So far, it's proving to be a huge success. It's spent the last 48 hrs sitting in the living room, waiting for today's allotment trip, where it has already facilitated Xanthe's hamster stew ("pretend we're cats cooking hamsters!")

We took it to the plot today where Xanthe put it through it's muddy paces. For the first time in this family's allotment career, Xanthe was so absorbed in her mud and weeds cookery it took all my powers of persuasion to get her to leave and Willow's in a sulk because she hasn't seen the kitchen in situ yet. My ears are ringing to a new and unfamiliar refrain "But Muuuuum, when are we going to the allotment? I haven't been for aaaaages!"