Tag: rhubarb

Allotment, Allotment Gardening, best allotment, best in show, best plot, cold, Cool Weather, frost, gardeners, Gardening, Gooseberries, Hibernia, kale, long term average, Malahide Allotments, Parsnips, rhubarb, sharp frost, winter

Keeping Cold: a view to a chill…

Crisp, clean and crystal clear, and conjured from unobstructed air the first frost of this winter season greeted all worm catchers yesterday morning. Cool and bright and star-shiny sheer the winter’s first offering of season’s secret ministry glossed most low lying grassy areas and hardened exposed shallow pools. Though our met service had forecast frost, this was no sharp event and certainly no f# affair with much of the crystalline magic dissipating with the first rays of early sun. The cool air exposed all al fresco breaths in bamboozled bewilderment, and as though having seen it all before car windscreens glared with vague subfusc opalescence, awaiting intervention with kettle or pot to clear their view to the chill.

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Tweed swede and Tender & True all on a bed of fast fading rocket

Last winter’s first frost did not occur till quite late in the season; with November and December both recording above LTA (Long Term Average) temperatures the first frost of last winter did not settle till 5th January this year.  So,  we’ve had the first frost of last winter and the first frost of this winter ten months apart and in the same calendar year. This year it seems winter is settling in early: we’ve covered and cleared what we needed to, and we’ve started to harvest and use the autumn and winter stocks of swedes, parsnips and kale. We’ve greased the bolts and oiled the latches, and we’ve stacked and stored the planters and pots. And while still trafficable and feasible to do so we turned sod on that area where we had scattered wildflower seed last spring and summer in the hope that exposure to the harsher elements of the coming season may just tame its unwieldy clumped lumpiness. The constancy of Mrs Dirtdigger’s deadheading drill together with the relatively mild October weather meant we still had some blooms to brighten the monster’s visage on our recent visits, but, we thinks the creeping crystal carpet may have put an end to this.
Still, it’s good to feel this early seasonal chill, and ideally our wish would be that this first frost is but a precursor to a winter of some sustained wintry weather; maybe not too much though (mindful to be careful of what one wishes for), but, as most gardeners should have learned, the earthen canvas in which we cultivate our dream performs best after a period of vernalization: rhubarb stools and gooseberry bushes; blackcurrant, apples and pears all benefit from a measured stretch in Mother Nature’s chilling cabinet, and much the same can be said of the early spring bulbs and flowering perennials.

So, just as we here at monsterinthecorner prepare to cover and muffle and wrap our bodies up against the elements of the coming season, our hope would be that the monster itself stays quite cold. And safe in the knowledge that most gardens invariably survive the wintriest of storms, our wish is that our little plot keeps cold, and does not get too warm, for once tender shoots have been top-dressed and strawed, spring’s cheery show creeps best from chilled sod…
So, stay chilled, keep cold.

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All 2lb 2ozs of winter parsnip root
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Another pair of swell parsnips
#EURO2016, Allotment, Allotment Gardening, Come On You Boys In Green, Ireland's Win against Italy, Irish Football Team, Republic Of Ireland, The Green Army

A Monster Midsummer in Dublin and Lille…

Basil Gooseberries & Rhubarb
Basil Gooseberries & Rhubarb

Chelsea, Chatsworth and Malvern have come and gone, as has Bloom in the Park, and gone too are all those plans we had at the beginning of the month to make postings on all the aforementioned festivals and events. June arrived and on its tails came the air of summer with all its latent promise: warm bright days, summer festivals, ál fresco lunches in short-sleeves and daily blight warnings.
We’ve made busy on The Monster in the Corner, so much so we actually lost ourselves in the doing of things on the plot, and it is only now that we have all things bedded, supported, weeded and netted that we have the time to recap and sketch out the late summer and autumn plans and finally post them here.
All of the plot’s beds are flourishing: the gladiator parsnips are growing very well and now that we’re at mid-summers the Centurion and Stuttgarter onions are finally beginning to bulb but, as expected, about one in six has bolted. The Karmen reds, not surprisingly, are still lagging behind but all the summer bunching and salad onion are now ready for use. We’ve been pulling rhubarb stalks on each visit to the allotment and have jammed and jarred the first flush glut with some finely grated stem ginger. This store never lasts very long as it’s generally shared with extended family, friends and work colleagues, but the Victoria stools seem to be sprouting well enough yet and we should have ample for further desserts, crumbles and that second flush glut for more jam.
The shallot tips are beginning to colour down so these shall be rudely unearthed in the next fortnight or so. A great deal of effort the last 3 weeks has been spent battling the squirrels, blackbirds and magpies for ownership our rapidly ripening blackcurrants and gooseberries. We’ve always acknowledged foregoing nature’s share, but there’s only so much we’ll allow the wildlife to covet.
Having decided against a strawberry crop the last three summer seasons this year we planted up a small bed of 20 plants (a new variety called Malling Centenary) and we’ve had some of these. As with all first year crowns, the pickings were slim, but the berries themselves are of a very good size with that great taste of summer…
The early sown radishes, lettuces and rocket have gone over, so we’ve made more sowing for later in the summer, and the first beetroot sowing is just about ready for some baby-beet pickings. The Broad beans were well and truly walloped with black-fly, and on more than one occasion, this no doubt down to the warm and humid conditions which proliferates their spread, but that said we have fared better than the other plot holders across the walled garden whose potato crops have all been badly decimated with blight. The red Kale sown in May has now been planted into the open drills, as have the pumpkin and ornamental courgette plants, and as usual the herb and floral border which is one of the main focal points of the Monster in the Corner is once again in full bloom and generating the annual conversation piece with the passers-by.
We’ve decided to change the Monster’s ‘rude mechanical’ this year. Since first beginning work on the allotment our ‘play’ has been a large chestnut log with bug hotel and carved wooden plot number in situ. But given the effects of three wet and stormy winters it was looking a little forlorn. This year we’ve gone for a spilled-barrow effect; a living mechanical if you will, the Monster’s designation and number in living floral form. Originally conceived in red, white and blue– giving a nod to the EURO’s 2016 event in France- we’ve adapted a little at the last minute to facilitate incorporating another of the elements of the walled garden into the design, and with a little luck we should be putting the finishing touches to it over this coming weekend.

The Monster's Mechanical Spilled Barrow almost complete
The Monster’s Mechanical
Spilled Barrow almost complete
Almost Completed...
Almost Completed…

Madame dirtdigger is somewhat incapacitated at present, but there’s no slackening-off with this particular one armed weeder & feeder; still showing up for plot duty, still making the most of the weather, and reminding me that as of today the days are no longer stretching. Today, and for another day or so, the season’s daylight is fully taut. Midsummer’s mindfulness abounds, filled with birdsong dawns and those slow receding half-light dusks stretching almost to midnight; young starlings learning the principles of murmuration formation flying and beech nuts and hazel nuts now setting on the branches; cosmos, lilies and lupins beginning to open; sunflowers reaching into the broad light with basil and coriander pots scenting the plot and the outdoor courgettes showing signs of bloom…and to top it all off, great sporting nights like last night that will live long in the memory as the low lying fields of Athenry worm their way into the French psyche’s  association with the Green Army…COYBIG

The Green Army doing what they do best...
The Green Army doing what it does best…

 

Robbie's Italian Job
Robbie’s Italian Job
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Robbie Brady’s goal…
Allotment Gardening, Cool Weather, Gardening, Spring, Victoria Rhubarb

Cool on one hand, Cold on the other…

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Victoria Rhubarb With Gooseberry Bushes

Once again April has spluttered and stuttered its way from Fools Day to Mother Earth. For the 3rd year in succession the April weather in Ireland is being dominated by an anti-cyclonic blocking pattern steering in easterly winds and a continental air mass.
During months of high summer this would be welcome, but this early in spring it not only signals that drier air which is always welcome after the winter’s deluge, it also introduces weather patterns which steer air currents from the far eastern continental land mass, Scandinavia and Arctic regions meaning that it is also the harbinger of cooler than average air temperatures.
At least this year we get to say that April has been cool. Last year it was cold: the margin between 1 degree below average for time of year and 2½ degrees below average making all the difference between cool on one hand, and cold on the other. Spring and early summer last year was a disaster for most gardeners, eventually proving the coldest spring on record since records began. Nothing germinated, nothing flourished, and bud burst was 4-5 weeks late with almost all bloom stunted. This year things are moving; moving slowly, but moving nonetheless. Last year we had to sow and then re-sow parsnip seed 3 times before we hit green; whereas this year we’re out of bed on the first occasion. They may have taken their own sweet time in getting up, but at least the Gladiators are up in mid-April. Much the same with the bunching onions: last year’s seed were only beginning to show through by the end of May having been sown at end of March, this year they’re displaying crook necks after 3 weeks, which is about average. The Aquadulce are taking a stretch at last, and we will have to get the supports in place like yesterday before they start banging their heads on the clay, and the lettuce and rocket sown 3 weeks ago have finally put their feet down. Although still on the cool side we’ve put our beetroot (Solo) and radishes to bed, but we’ll leave the haricot and the peas a week or more yet.
The Victoria rhubarb is leafing up well at last and our plan is to have some this weekend; and once gardeners begin harvesting their rhubarb all seems good with the gardening world for another year.
Everything we’ve sown so far this year has germinated, but that is not to ignore the fact that the cool dry air has played its part in interrupting spring once again. The lack of Atlantic rain is also marked. For the third year in a row there has been a noticeable absence of those pulsating downpours we generally call April’s showers, and it seems the north easterlies are set to bring us right to the end of the month with this weekend’s forecast not faring much better.
With cooler than average and drier than average air a careful balance must be struck with watering newly established and germinating seed beds, for although the days are bright and dry, experience has taught us that most germinating seed can just about tolerate such naturally challenging conditions, but not with artificially dampened feet. One single day of intermittent April showers will develop your garden in a way that a whole month with a watering can never will, so easy with the hose while the easterly blows! We will see a welcome return to the prevailing south/south westerlies, and not a moment too soon I might add, but, the truth is that this year’s April showers will now most likely arrive sometime in May.