Allotment crops in February

There’s not an awful lot going on around the allotments right now. Some people still have Brussels sprouts and kale, on 201 we have a tiny amount of kale but all our Brussels have been harvested. We have also just finished up our parsnips although there are a couple of celeriac still in the ground, I don’t know if they will be any good or not.

We’ve started off our tomatoes too, or at least our beef tomatoes, in a heated propagator at home. We didn’t grow beef tomatoes last year, and I missed them. Now we have a greenhouse I can feel a bit more confident about getting really big tomatoes to ripen, which they just haven’t the past three years, in the open.

The bad news is, it’s snowed again. Nothing has actually settled, but the ground is frozen, which is rather depressing. However, poking through the solid earth I found that the rhubarb, which is indestructible, is on its way. So we’ll at least have broad beans and rhubarb this year …

Labels: allotment-kale, allotment-rhubarb, allotment-tomatoes

Seed Saving on Allotments

This is the first year we’re trying to save our own seed. And I’ll be honest – so far, we’ve been totally rubbish at it!

What we were going to save:

Peas
Broad beans
Runner beans
French beans
Borlotti beans
Rocket
Tomatoes

What we’ve actually managed to harvest seed from so far:

Runner beans
Rocket
Tomatoes

The runner beans are gorgeous as they dry and the rocket went to seed so fast that we only got two meals from it, so there was no problem harvesting seed from that crop! The tomato seed has already been tucked away in envelopes for next year – we are very happy with our greenhouse tomato crop which is still harvesting well.

The broad beans were a total seed-harvest fail. On 235 we planned to harvest, but the pods we were leaving got picked (that’s the risk of co-working) and on 201 the crop, which wasn’t overwintered, was destroyed by blackfly, so there was barely enough of a crop to eat a meal from, let alone leave to set pods for harvesting.

French beans – we’ve left some pods to get big – we’ll see if we are actually organised enough to do the harvesting bit in a week or so.

Borlotti beans – we’re leaving these to dry on the vine, so some will just be used for food and others for sowing next year … that’s the theory anyway!

Labels: allotment-beans, allotment-broad-beans, allotment-crops, allotment-harvest, allotment-seed-saving, allotment-tomatoes

Allotment tomatoes and how to use them

We are brimming over with tomatoes, although to be honest, they are not – strictly speaking – allotment tomatoes because our greenhouse is not at the allotment, it’s tucked into the bottom of the garden at home. This is the first year we’ve grown tomatoes (or anything else) in a greenhouse and we’re very impressed with the results. All these were grown from seed we saved ourselves. The black tomato came from an allotment neighbour, and the fruit it produces are relatively small in size but firm and meaty and perfect for cooking with.

We really like tomato clafoutis, which we first had in France – a clafoutis is something like a Yorkshire pudding and something like a soft batter pudding, in that it’s crispy and brown on top, but soft and melting underneath.

Tomato Clafoutis

2 eggs
25 grams plain flour
150 milk (or milk and cream if you’re feeling luxurious)
10 to 12 ripe firm tomatoes cut in half
1 teaspoon olive oil
75 grams firm cheese, like feta or parmesan or sheep’s milk cheese, cubed

Pre-heat the oven to 350F/180C/gas mark 4 and while it’s heating, whisk the flour into the eggs and then add some seasoning and the milk, in small amounts, whisking continually to keep it smooth and creamy. Set aside.

Put the tomatoes cut side up, in an oiled ovenproof dish. Season with salt and pepper and put in the oven for ten minutes.

Take the dish out of the oven, put the bits of cheese in the gaps between the tomatoes and pour the batter over the top. Cook near the top of the oven for 30 to 35 minutes.

Great hot or cold, we like it best with new potatoes and a beetroot salad so everything is seasonal!

And my mother, who knows more about allotments and cooking than I ever will, rang to tell me that she boils small new potatoes (golf ball sized ones) rolls them in melted butter and freezes them in bags. They don't taste quite like fresh new potatoes, she says, but they still taste absolutely great. So that's what I'm doing next ...

Labels: allotment-gluts, allotment-recipes, allotment-tomatoes

Allotment Learning Curve – what we won’t do next year

When everything is so busy, and the thistles are growing faster than almost anything else on the plot, even though we thought we’d pulled every last one of them up in November, and when, if you stand still, the bindweed actually grabs your ankles and tries to climb up your leg, it can be difficult to stop and take stock.

But we did.

We sat down and looked at what we’d grown and decided what we need more of, and less of, in 2010.

• First, asparagus peas. Like The Cottage Smallholder we have decided that these are a swizz! The companies that market these as a vegetable should be prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act (or whatever) as I don’t think even a hungry goat would enjoy them. They are fabulously pretty, and we’ve decided to use up the many seeds we have left as a ground cover crop for any bare soil we have next year – they should work like any other legume and if we cut the tops off to compost, their ground covering behaviour which keeps down weeds, plus the pretty flowers (and the roots left in the soil to convey nitrogen) mean we won’t have entirely wasted our money on them. But we will never, ever eat them again. Vile.

• Second, we won’t grow outdoor tomatoes. Ours have developed blossom end rot through uneven watering – not because we watered unevenly but because deluges of rain, followed by a couple of sweltering days, then more rain made it impossible to give them a regular watering regime. Also, blight is on the next allotment but one to ours, so I reckon they will have it by the end of the week – greenhouse tomatoes only for us next year.

• Third, more peas please! We have some kilos of peas in the freezer, but we could easily have doubled our planting – we do love our peas and there’s never a day when I look at peas and think that I can’t bother with them!

• Fourth, spuds. I think we need more varieties with later croppers to take us through the year. This suggests we need to do more research on the keeping properties of various maincrop potato varieties – we have been very happy with our potatoes this year, apart from the ones grown in tyres which were rubbishy.

And by that point, the bindweed had reached our knees and we had to start moving again or become a permanent fixture on the plot. But the picture is our French bean harvest for the day – excellent! And if you think that’s an odd shadow looming over them, it’s Rebus, the Cairn Terrier, who is very fond of raw French beans and will ‘guard’ the trug all day for a single bean as his reward.

Labels: allotment-beans, allotment-peas, allotment-potatoes, allotment-tomatoes, allotment-weeds

Tomatoes and tomato blight

The current hot weather and last night’s storm have left us expecting to see Phytophthora infestans when we get up to the allotment. It’s the fungus which causes both tomato and potato blight and in both cases the warning signs are the same, brown marks on the leaves which spread quickly and then the tomato fruit will begin to brown and rot away. Underground, if it attacks the potatoes, they too will begin to rot and the blight can spread from one plant to another with astonishing speed.

The fungus is carried by wind and rain and takes a real hold during Mill’s periods which are times of warmth and dampness. It takes around three or sometimes four days of warm and wettish weather to allow the fungus to proliferate, so the first rule to obey during warm times is to water when necessary only and not to spray water on the leaves of tomato or potato plants – water the roots only.

There’s no organic treatment for this kind of blight, so we’ve been having a low level debate about whether to try to prevent/control it or not. We lost all our tomatoes on 235 last year to tomato blight.

To try and treat it, you have to destroy infected plants in their entirety – ripping them out and removing them from the site, preferably burning them to destroy the fungal spores which will otherwise lurk in the soil for years. You can also try to preserve your tomatoes by spraying them with a copper treatment (which is not organic) BEFORE the blight appears. This means that 24 hours into what might become a Mills Period you have to spray … and that’s what we’re debating, because you can always hope that dry weather will slow the progress of the fungus and that by planting with good spacings and removing and destroying any parts of the plant that have blight, you can save your crop – but only if the weather cooperates!

We haven’t reached a decision yet – remain organic and possibly lose our tomatoes or spray with copper and lose my organic principles? Watch this space!

Labels: allotment-potato-blight, allotment-potatoes, allotment-tomato-blight, allotment-tomatoes

Tomato Blight

I spoke too soon when I told anonymous that we didn't have tomato blight. When we saw Duncan yesterday, he said he thought the tomatoes had got blight – sure enough when we got to the plot today, every tomato plant was dark, with blotches on the leaves and the stems, and the fruit had light brown bruise-type marks too. When I got into the tomato bed itself, I saw that many of the fruit had fallen and were greenish-brown. Now I knew they were probably planted too close together and I knew that we hadn't been taking out side-shoots as often as we should have done because we've been busy - so guilt hit me like a large shovel landing in my midriff.

So most of today was spent cutting through the stems of tomato plants and folding deep brown wilted leaves into bin bags. Then I had to gather up all the fallen fruit and bag them too, and finally dig up the stumps. I felt like a failure, a tomato murderer, an allotment monster.

Then I saw Sue – with a punnet of the most glorious tomatoes of all shapes and sizes and colours and she told me that her allotment had got tomato blight too. And that was terrible news and I was very sorry for her, but there was a tiny ray of happiness deep in my heart, because if as good a tomato gardener as Sue could get blight, then perhaps it wasn’t entirely my fault and I wasn’t a tomato murderer or allotment monster after all!

Labels: allotment-tomato-blight, allotment-tomatoes

Growing Tomatoes and Using Gluts

I can’t get enough tomatoes. I grow them at home, and now we’re planting out some generously donated seedlings on the allotment too. There is no such thing as a tomato glut as far as I’m concerned!

These are the ways I deal with ‘too many tomatoes’:

Freezing – using a big pasta pot and water at a rolling boil, I cut a small cross in the non-blossom end of each fruit, drop a dozen into the water and scoop them out as soon as the cuts begin to curl back. I drop in another dozen while I’m shucking the skins from the first lot wearing thick rubber gloves and by the time I’ve done one dozen, the next are ready to come out. Chuck them all in a big bowl and when you’ve removed all the skins, chop them roughly by hand – instant chopped tomatoes! Just bag them and freeze them.

Drying – using washed, ripe and firm tomatoes. Half or quarter plum-type tomatoes and cut cherry tomatoes in half or leave really small ones whole. Slice other types 1/2- to 1/4-inch thick, depending on your preference. A kilo yields only a couple of ounces of dried tomatoes! Oven-drying takes 6 to 12 hours, depending on the moisture content of the fruit. It's important to remove as much moisture as possible without allowing the fruits to dry completely, because the lower the moisture content, the longer the tomatoes can be stored safely. Dried fruits should be leathery and pliable but not either sticky or burnt or desiccated. Preheat the oven to 140° to 145°F and place the tomatoes with their skin side against plastic-mesh screen (if you only have metal, line it with greaseproof or it will taint the tomato taste), or on a baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper or a flexible baking mat. Prop the oven door open slightly to allow the moist, hot air to escape. Check the tomatoes regularly, and rotate the baking sheet if necessary. Stored in airtight bags they keep until the first of the next year’s fresh tomatoes.

Next time - tomato problems!

Labels: allotment-crops, allotment-glut, allotment-tomatoes

Allotment spuds and tomatoes

Why mention potatoes and tomatoes in the same sentence? Because they are related! Yes, both are part of the nightshade (solanaceae) family, although you’d never know it to look at their fruits – the potato flower does give some hint of the relationship though.

Not only is it still fine to plant maincrop potatoes (traditionally the cut-off date has been considered to be the middle of April) but if your soil hasn’t warmed up, you may actually get a better crop from putting them in a bit later, as cold soil will check the development of early crops. If you did get them in the ground early and if you planted early potato varieties, don’t forget that you still need to protect the emerging plants from any frosts that might still be on the horizon, as potatoes can be severely damaged by a late frost. The easiest way to do this will small potato plants is to draw a little soil from the edges of the bed over the whole plant it will shove its way through in a few days without any difficulty – larger plants will need a cloche or horticultural fleece cover for the frost-threatening nights, but don’t leave it on in the day. Leave 15 inches between each potato for these later crops, using a generous amount of well rotted garden compost to cover the entire length of the trench before raking the soil back over.

You should also wow tomato seeds about now because they need a little heat to germinate, you can keep them in a heated greenhouse, or on a windowsill or in a bottom heated propagator. Water the compost well, scatter the fine seed over the top and cover thinly with vermiculite or sand. When two sets of 'true' leaves appear, pot them on. Plant them slightly deeper than before so that the baby leaves (scientifically termed the cotyledens) are just sitting on the surface. Keep them on a warm windowsill and turn them every day.

Potato courtesy of baronsquirrel

Labels: allotment-potatoes, allotment-tomatoes