Kohl rabi

19. APRIL

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I am a forever optimist so I decided it is time to plant out  my kohl rabi seedlings. They were getting bigger and as I had them outside they were tough already to survive on the allotment. I prepared the bed for them, it is one of the two I covered with the netting stretched over the plastic hoops. There were carrots and beetroot here last year so I swapped it, carrots and beetroot will go to the other one. I wanted to put some of my new chaff fertiliser around them but it was so windy it made the job impossible.

I also checked the greenhouses and watered everything, the tomatoes, peppers and aubergines are looking good. Some have the chaff around them, Next time I’ll finish putting it around the rest of them.

25. FEBRUARY

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I have a new work plan – it is quite obvious that I need a break between days of intensive work on the farm. Sometimes the weather will force me and at other times the body will tell me. I have to learn to listen.

Today is an easy day, watering my seedlings in the propagator and in the small cells, those are tomatoes and a few kohl rabi. I wanted to grow quite a lot of tomatoes, I’ve got great plans on how to use them but I have a feeling I’ll have quite a lot of them. Never mind, I’m sure I’ll find a home for all of them. From experience I know that I can grow them outside as well, not all of them will need to be in a greenhouse.

I have planted a lot of cloves of my garlic and they rooted very well. I’m just waiting till March and then they’ll be transplanted on the farm.

These are my old potatoes, I’m using them to grow my potatoes this year. Last year wasn’t great so I  hope we’ll have a bit more in the autumn. I’d like to grow some in pots, start them earlier in the greenhouse and then put them out later.

Even though I had organised all my seeds and decided that I don’t need any more, I couldn’t resist and gave in, and bought a few packets. This story repeats every year – I’ve got enough seeds to plant a farm – full.

CUCUMBERS AND COURGETTES

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My courgettes always did well on the allotment but I am adding cucumbers to the list this year. I have a couple of plants in each greenhouse and they are producing very well. I like munching on a sliced cucumber but there are limits to what I can manage….

and I decided to find something else. After searching I discovered a recipe for ‘quick pickled cucumber‘ and just tried it. Just delicious!

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The next huge harvest are courgettes, every year is the same. I thought I’d like to try something else and after another search found a recipe for fermenting vegetables. I mistakenly thought it to be very complicated. Not this recipe! I will have to be patient, follow the instructions very carefully and try it later. Watch this space.

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I had just enough of the following vegetables: courgettes, dwarf beans, Borloto beans, kohl rabi, courgettes and a small green chili pepper.

 

WEEDS

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We had a little drop of rain last night, just enough to soften the surface of the soil. It didn’t penetrate deep at all but was just enough to make the weeding a bit easier. Today was the turn of the brassica cage. I have a number of purple sprouting broccoli, kohlrabi, red cabbages and curly kale there and a lot of weeds. Amazing that they grew so well as  May was extremely dry. It was a job for the whole morning.

A few hours and a stiff back later it looked much better.

It is a pity I can’t make any use of the bucket of weeds…

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And after all the work I sprinkled a good amount of my feeding mix – fish, blood and bone and chicken manure pellets all around the plants. As I am writing this the long-awaited rain came so it should all soak in. Another net cage to weed tomorrow, and another the day after…..

IN FULL SWING

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It is harvest time!

As it is so hot these days I started going to the allotment quite early in the morning. The plan is that I will either water the most needy plants with the hose or, on alternate days, feed the ‘special cases’ either with the seaweed extract, comfrey tea or the liquid from my wormery.

It was the turn of the comfrey tea. My, does it stink!! And the smell seems to linger close to the ground, so when I was bending down, I got a good whiff of it. Never mind, the squashes love it!

I managed to pick another large box of strawberries, pulled out a lovely bunch of carrots and a few nice beetroot.

yesterday was a day to thin out the gooseberries…..

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…and I was pleased I had this lovely lot.

Got them home and in no time made a very tasty gooseberry and mint jelly. Goes a treat with cold meat, cheese or a quiche.

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As I was picking the gooseberry I also noticed that the currants are almost ready. That’s the beauty of having the fruit bushes in the net cage – I can take my time picking them, not like in the past where it was a competition between me and the birds. Guess who lost??

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Another benefit of net cages is the ease of growing brassicas. It was the same story in the past – try to stop the birds nibbling the leaves of the young plants so there was hardly anything left. I thought they wouldn’t like kohl rabi. I was wrong. So now the kohl rabi grows in the net cage and nothing gets at it and I can enjoy the fruits of my labour.

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ONE PERSON’S RUBBISH

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…is another woman’s treasure.

The guy who left recently not only dismantled his little shed and left it in a pile to be burned but also discarded two large halves of an old trampoline base – he was used to have it on the ground covered with netting to grow cabbages under. To harvest them or to do any weeding he had to crawl on his hands and knees.

Well, I got these two halves and attached metal uprights – from my store of old bits of another trampoline. As these are smaller they fitted well together and the result is..

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…another net tunnel. You can’t have enough of these!

There will be space to grow cauliflowers and all kinds of cabbages and kohlrabi.

Place your orders now!

PLANTING OUT

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I took a gamble and started planting out some of my seedlings. Yestarday was a lovely day so after lunch I took most of my brassica seedlings over to the allotment and planted them out in the recently rejuvenated polytunnel – now a beautiful net tunnel. All in all there are 50 of them there – a mix of kohl rabi, purple kale, cavolo nero and cauliflower.

Even though it is only a net tunnel it feels slightly warmer inside, the mesh is so fine that it seems to stop the worst of the wind. Let us hope for the best.

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I think they’ll be fine.

Next I had to get some of my courgette plants out, they were getting a bit too big. I decided to put them in one of the raised beds where I constructed a support for them. The plants are lowere down so the wind doesn’t affect them.

After that it was just time to have a look how everything is doing – the broad beens are doing very well, I pinched the tops and hopefully this will stop the blackfly invasion.004

The iceberg lettuce, the chinese cabbage and the Daubenton kale are all fine in the first net tunnel. Especially the kale – I bought just one plant and managed to get a number of cuttings, all rooted well and growing – this reduces the need to grow ordinary kale seedlings. This kale is very tasty and I’ve been picking it even during the winter.

IN THE GREENHOUSE

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things are starting to grow. I’ve been very good this year and didn’t sow things too soon (as I was used to do, year after year, and everything got very ‘leggy’).

The sunflowers are doing well, got high hopes for my chances in the ‘Johnson competition’.

The same can be said for my selection of different courgettes and squashes. The pumpkins are coming up too, there should be a decent harvest to make more delicious chutneys.

Tomatoes will be just the outdoor types, I’ll grow them in some of my net tunnels. This way they will get a bit of protection from the wind, and with a bit of luck, I shall avoid the dreaded blight. I’ve got a selection of brassicas – cabbages, kale, cauliflowers and kohl rabi. They will all go in the rest of the net cages, somewhere I didn’t grow this kind last year. This way I’ll be able to rotate between the cages, rather then moving any of them. I think I have got enough cages to be able to do that quite well.

BESPOKE CAGES

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It was well worth waiting for!

A couple of years ago one of the plot holders made a fantastic brassica cage – he’s a carpenter so it was just pefect. He used hard wood and made a this cage in such a way that it could be taken apart and moved.

Simon inherited this cage, took it apart and moved it on his plot. This year, however, he didn’t want to use it any more and offered it to me. I tried not to snatch it too fast, didn’t want to seem too greedy. I always wanted a cage like this, but mine will stay put! I’ve got enough structures to be able to rotate my crops between the cages.

Thanks to good weather today and Simon’s hard work, I have an amazing brassica cage! I won’t be growing cabbages in it this year though, I had some kale in this place last year. No problem, I’ll put outdoor tomatoes and sweet peppers there.

This done, I continued on my other plot. I had a cage there for the past two years but wasn’t happy with the construction and the position of it. It was very easy to take it apart – I remembered how I made it and this was just the reverse process!

The net was carefuly saved, the wood too so it was easy to measure the area and start building.

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It is a bit bigger than the old one and as I didn’t grow any brassicas on this plot, I shall put a lot of kohl rabis there.

This is the end of building for this year, perhaps I will rebuild one more old cage in the autumn.

Now just to cover the frame of the old polytunnel with some netting and all is ready. For that I need another one of my helpers.