Jerusalem Artichokes, brassicas and parsnips

These are our ‘overflow’ parsnips – we didn’t have enough space to plant all the parsnips we wanted, so we stuck in a row along the front of our runner beans, knowing that the soil wasn’t ideal (nor was the position, the leaves went over the path and got walked on a lot, and they were a nuisance to step over to get to the beans – most of the bean pods we failed to harvest were low growing ones we couldn’t find amongst the parsnip leaves) and they have come up rather forked but we’re still happy with them, as we haven’t even begun to harvest the ‘real’ parsnips in their properly prepared bed. Hope they are a bit straighter!

Steve Godley emailed thus: I have a block of brassicas containing brussels sprouts, cabbages, cauliflowers and curly kale. It is netted with ½” mesh netting against the pigeons but everything is covered with whitefly. At home in the garden I watch the bluetits and their friends searching through the treetops for similar insects I have just set some 2” wire mesh on two sides of the enclosure in the hope that smaller birds (bluetits and the like) will get in and feast on the whitefly. Has anyone already tried this? Or is there another way to get rid of whitefly?

Well, the only remedy I’ve found for whitefly is soapy water sprayed on at regular intervals. I know that all the gardening books say that whitefly does little or no harm to a plant, but a proper infestation will definitely stop the brassica growing properly, and it is horrible to have to wash thousands of flies (and eggs) off the convoluted leaves of something like curly kale. What we need is a good frost to kill the little blighters off, but no sign of that so far.

Jerusalem artichokes – the jury is still out, but the jury foreperson (me) is inclining towards a ‘guilty’ verdict. They definitely to induce wind, which is rather embarrassing if you spend all day with the public, as Himself does, but also, we weren’t thrilled by the flavour. I cooked three or four in a beef casserole and the results were truly flatulent. We’ll try twice more and if we don’t like them any better the third time, we will not be eating them again!

Labels: allotment-brassicas, allotment-jerusalem-artichokes, allotment-parsnips, allotment-whitefly

Allotment crops for November – Jerusalem Artichokes

Well, they aren’t artichokes, and they don’t come from Jerusalem. That’s a corruption of Girasol, apparently, which means they are part of the sunflower family, and if you’ve grown them, the flowers are a bit of a give-away on that subject, looking just like half-starved sunflowers as they do.

So … we have a healthy crop of Jerusalems from the tubers we were given almost exactly a year ago. The photo shows the haul from just one plant and we have eleven. Which means that if we don’t like them, we’ll have to find somebody to give them away to.

They are a great crop for the new allotment-holder, with a few caveats and reservations. They grow tall and fast, providing a bit of a windbreak or blocking off a bit of unsightly plot from public view and they aren’t too fussy about soil conditions. The caveats are that they need staking in most regions as they are easily blown about, and they can be invasive if you don’t get every tuber out of the ground when you dig them up. The reservations? Only one: they are wind-inducing!

From what I’ve read, the wind-creating properties drop the more you eat them, as the body adjusts to them, which means, I suppose gales followed in a few weeks by calm. They are also a bit fiddly to prepare as they are both knobbly and prone to discolour so you have to put them straight into acidulated water as you peel them. Given our harvest, I’m simply cutting off the knobbliest bits and discarding them. We’re having them for dinner tonight so watch this space …

Labels: allotment-crops, allotment-jerusalem-artichokes

Rain starts play

It’s not often that rain brings on activity – most of the time we huddle up under duvets and watch old films, but if you’re an allotment holder, this week’s heavy rain will have been a blessing.

Our clayish soil is like terracotta – once it gets dry you can’t get a fork into it. Where we’ve already double dug, and especially where the spuds have been, it’s fine, you can turn it even when it’s bone dry, but the undug part of the allotment, where it’s full of grass and perennial weeds, is literally impenetrable. Our Jerusalem artichokes finally flowered and they do a good job of breaking up the soil too, but they are getting attacked by thistles.

So this rain will help. I shall dig up the old strawberry bed this week, and put all the old plants out to compost. Then the new strawberry plants will go in a raised bed that’s already prepared. But we’ve given into circumstance and will have the top quarter of the plot, that we never got to this year, strimmed and then rotovated. I’ll cover it with weed suppressing membrane and plant through it in the spring – courgettes and squashes will do fine there and planting through the membrane means we can get some value out of the ground while still keeping the weeds underground and under cover so that they weaken. I know it’s the fool’s option to rotovate, but with half the plot still to dig by hand, I know I’m just not going to get to the wasteland unless I give in and go for mechanised assistance.

Good news is that the Swedes Len gave me as seedlings are putting on a fine show in the raised bed that had lettuce in all summer. They are planted through membrane too, and as I can’t remember a year when we ate more than nine Swedes, I reckon this will take us through the winter comfortably.

Labels: allotment-jerusalem-artichokes, allotment-rain, allotment-rotovating, allotment-soil, allotment-swedes