VEGGIES

Too much horse muck tends to make root veggies such as carrots and parsnips fork.

This week, I start to investigate the tangled mess of rotting leaves; brown stalks and overrun green stuff that was last year’s vegetable garden. I am very much an early season gardener when it comes to the veggies. I love all the preparation. Clearing away the old dead matter, pulling out as many roots as I can, removing stones, sowing, planting and weeding. However, after I have harvested the last of the string beans and before the purple sprouting broccoli comes into its own, I tend to forget about the vegetable patch, concentrating more on general maintenance, hedge clipping, the last grass cut and clearing leaves off the drive.

Last year the veggie patch was started from scratch as we had moved into a different house. Shrubs had been ruthlessly pruned and grass overturned to find some earth. Old horse manure was gathered and seeds were sown. The new garden was celebrated by throwing down a variety of vegetables that I don’t usually grow, parsnips, cabbage etc as well as our old favourites such as courgettes, kale, sugar snaps and runner beans.

SIXERS
So as I delve into unruly remains of what had last spring been a neat and pristine bed, I feel a bit like an archaeologist as I delve into the undergrowth. I start to pull away the old creeping buttercup with the help of John and Mary’s hoe, pull out some slimy cabbages, which have received the kiss of death from the frost, and what is this? Ooh, it’s beetroot. I pull them up wondering if they are well past their sell by date. In the past I have harvested beetroot around Halloween. I have boiled them up whole and then eat them out of the pan, letting the juice dribble down my chin in the most disgusting manner, pretending to the kids that I am a vampire eating a heart. Anyway the kids are a wee bit older and the veggie patch is a wee bit further away from the front door and I had forgotten all about the beetroot. I pull them all up, they are on average about the size of sixers –you know those big marbles that were the pride and joy of the collection. I pull up all that I can find. Some are tiny, (I hadn’t thinned them either) and a couple are a good size. Hmmm, I bring them into the house and cut off the tops and give them a good clean. They look all right but I am not convinced. I leave them in a pan of water while I go and pick the kids up from school.

On my return I look in the pan. Maggots are crawling out of them. I don’t think we will be having those for dinner. Into the compost and back outside then to get on with the job. The broad leaved weeds do not get composted but thrown into the undergrowth, if you are limited for space they could go into dustbin liner bags and left for a year.

PARSNIPS
I move onto the next bed. Wait a minute, I recognise those leaves hiding underneath the vegetation. I go and collect the spade and start to dig. Oh yes, result - parsnips. (I have had this problem in the past with root veggies –out of sight, out of mind). I dig them all up and have a wee look. I wouldn’t exactly call them prize specimens. They are more like the deformed veg that used to get sent in to the TV programme ‘That’s Life.’ But still, they look fine, perfectly edible bar the odd rust spot -parsnip soup for dinner tonight.

OUT OF MY MIND
One of the things I like about this stage of preparing for next year is that my mind starts to plan for the season. As I look at the higgledy piggledy planting from last year I start to formulate new decisions.

Give plants more space, plant, less variety, more of what we actually like and eat. I won’t bother with carrots and onions, they are cheap in the shops. (I am not a big fan of thinning and onions need too much space, which we don’t have a lot of). More kale and purple sprouting broccoli and this year I will make more of a concerted effort against the damaging cabbage butterfly. More courgettes and string beans and I won’t bother with the French beans (the kids don’t like them so much and they don’t seem to be so prolific as the runners). Definitely more herbs. We had to buy parsley in this year for the Christmas stuffing –first time I can remember having to do that. I did plant some last year in a pot but after the second leaves came through nothing much happened, I think the soil mix was wrong as I got most of it from the woods.

I go and have a look at the pot. They are still there, tiny little leaves hugging the earth. It could be the soil, I muse. The decision is made. The pot is emptied and the strong roots are teased apart (that is where all the growth obviously went). In you go. They are put in neat little rows with plenty of room to grow into the newly prepared ground. First planting of the year. It is almost like spring!