First Earlies

It's my favourite time of the gardening year.  My garden is its most colourful, the evenings are long and light (even if they are now getting shorter) and best of all, the First Early Potatoes are starting to be ready.

If you have been following this blog, you will know that I am a self-confessed spud geek and love my taters, experimenting with several new cultivars every year as well as growing my tried and tested Kestrel second earlies and the blight-buster main crop Sarpo Mira.  After years of growing my own, it's still a thrill lifting the first root and tasting the first of the year's crop.  When we lived further south, and at sea level, that was my birthday treat, but since moving 200 miles further north and six hundred feet up, I've had to do without home-grown new spuds on the big day.  I probably need to trial growing them in containers in the greenhouse, or experiment with quick-growing cultivars - Casablanca is supposed to mature in just sixty six days! 

There's extra excitement this year, as we have a Potato Show at Reaseheath on Saturday, and after a visit from the Judge, the tension is mounting.  Our challenge is to lift as much of our crop as we need to select four potatoes to show, and then to clean and prepare them for judging.  The aim is to select spuds which are of uniform size and shape, of a shape typical of the cultivar (round, oval, kidney-shaped etc), of a good size, clean of any spec of dirt and yet with the skin undamaged.  There are apparently a number of old gardeners' tricks to help with this, such as dabbing milk over the tubers the night before to give them a nice sheen, which doesn't count as cheating, though our judge claims to have a good nose for handcream or furniture polish employed to the same effect!

Harry lifting potatoes and Derek explaining what the judge is looking for.

As we drew lots for our taters, some people are in with a better chance than others.  Our guest judge claims that in all his many years of showing and judging, he had never know Rocket to pick up a first prize, for example, which is a shame as it's a tasty tater, if prone to slug attack.  Luckily, I'm not growing Rocket and Foremost have a good record of success on the show bench, though I've probably hindered my chances by conducting experiments with my college crop, watering only half of each row, and spacing the tubers 20cm apart in one and 30cm apart in the other.  Hardly a recipe for uniformity!

Vales Emerald looking good enough for the herbaceous border!

With less than a week to go, some plants are flowering profusely, others look far from mature, and only a few of us have done a trial lift to see what lies beneath.  I tested one root of 20cm, unwatered - theoretically the least cared-for - and got a good helping of lovely clean, smooth tubers, if rather small for the show bench, but with a week to go, I think it's looking good!

They certainly tasted good!

Midsummer Colour

Pink poppies, aquilegia and foxgloves in our front garden.

Well, it's been a quite a few posts since we last looked at the garden here at home.  We've been boating to London and back, sowing and planting at Reaseheath, trying to market self-published left-leaning legal thrillers and even visiting Buckingham Palace, so it's no surprise that I have to confess to neglecting the garden. 

Not tended for two months (apart from cutting the lawn)

And while my back has been turned, it's gone mad, but it's done so in a fabulously romantic 'Secret Garden' fashion, with the flowerbeds lush with early summer perennials, cascades of wisteria and clematis entwined with golden hop and honeysuckle smothering the pergolas, and drifts of geum and flag iris rising from the ferns around the ponds.  

Wisteria and golden hop: pale pink aquilegia

It's a similar story in the front garden.  Close scrutiny reveals an invasion of couch grass and the plumes of horsetail lurking between the cultivated plants, but the overall effect is a tapestry of colour, a rich meadow of aquilegia, alchemilla mollis, foxgloves and, somehow dodging the worst effects of some heavy showers, spectacular deep red/pink oriental poppies.  The funny thing is, I don't remember them being that colour, but they tone beautifully with the digitalis and the darker pink columbines, and contrast strikingly with the purple ones.

Front garden flowerbed from above, and close-up

There is a lone 'Turkenlouis' oriental poppy in vivid scarlet in front of the yew tree; that's going to have to move, but to where, I don't know, as all of the late spring/summer flowers, front and back, are quite soft shades.  I suppose I could try a 'Chelsea chop' on it, and try and get it to flower later, when there should be red/gold colours in that area from rudbekias and hellenniums, if the slugs haven't munched them all...

Evening sunshine on the 'meadow'

It is mildly concerning that what is effectively my trademark planting scheme, exported to a couple of clients' gardens, actually needs so little looking after, as it suggests I'm in danger of doing myself out of a job!  In practice, this luxuriant growth is going to need a good clear-out before too long.  The alchemilla is, as usual, in danger of stealing the show, but I have a likely home for some of it in one of my project gardens and a generous gift of some acanthus to find space for too.

 Meanwhile in the veg plots, much digging and clearing was needed to remove excessive amounts of creeping buttercup and self-heal, and the leeks had passed their prime, though I may leave them to flower for the bees.  Much of the area is currently a shrub nursery as we missed the time for planting squashes while we were on the boat, but all being well we'll get some 'greens' in for the autumn and winter and may even try some late sown peas and beans in case we get a warm autumn.

As for midsummer, it's actually sounding quite stormy outdoors tonight, so there will be no sitting on the patio with a glass of wine enjoying the light evening and bright full moon, and watching out for the bats.  Perhaps another evening...





Honours even!

Outside the Palace!

You know that the Stoke-on-Trent air or water has well and truly got into your system when, as well as checking the backstamps of crockery wherever you are, you start checking the provenance of the 'water closets'.  I was pretty certain that one I visited last Friday was the twin of a venerable exhibit at the fabulous 'Flushed with Pride' exhibition within the Gladstone Pottery Museum, but having been obliged to check my camera into security before venturing so far, I can only provide a verbal description of the circular bowls, wooden box seats and pull-up handles of the Victorian contraptions still in use within Buckingham Palace.

In case you were wondering, I didn't secure a new gardening commission while in London on the narrowboat.  I found myself pondering the plumbing in Buck House because Himself was awarded an MBE in the 2013 New Years Honours List for 'Service to Rail in Kidsgrove' (in summary, writing and campaigning and lobbying indefatigably until the very poor services from our local station were transformed to add hourly direct trains to and from Manchester and London Euston to the dismal Crewe-Derby stopper that had previously been our only link).

Travelling in style!

Since the award was for Public Transport campaigning, it seemed only right to use one of the services Jon and his co-campaigners had secured to get to London, namely the cost-effective London Midland service, and on Investiture Day itself, to make our way across London by public transport too. We were tempted to walk, but having spent the day before exploring Regents Park and London Zoo, and with no clear idea of how long we would be on our feet for the Investiture, we opted for the bus.

On arrival at the gates, the security procedures to enter seemed low-key compared to, say, boarding a typical flight, though doubtless that was due to everything being well-rehearsed, and had I attempted to take the pitchfork in with me, I'm sure it would have been politely but firmly removed from my grasp.

Once within the gates we were literally ushered from place to place courteously but purposefully by various quite elderly gentlemen in all manner of ceremonial garb, under the scrutiny of cavalrymen in plumed helmets with drawn swords.  While those to be honoured were ushered away, as guests we were escorted to seating in the ballroom, passing the originals of numerous royal portraits usually only seen by us peasants if reproduced on the cover of historic biographies.

Somehow, the Honeysett party were allocated comfy bench seats beneath the minstrel's gallery, giving us an excellent view far enough away from guards to peruse the list of receipients and pick out those we'd heard of (Olympic cyclist Laura Trott and Paralympic equestrian Sophie Christiansen), while decoding from their 'services to...' citation what we suspected some of those being honoured had actually done.  Lots of civil servants, a decent helping of teachers, plenty of military personel and definitely a few 'spooks', we concluded.  And we guessed correctly which of the women we had noticed previously were the ones honoured for 'services to fashion'.

Jon recreates his investiture with a Covent Garden street performer

 We'd found out the night before that it wouldn't be the Queen handing out the medals, as the news reported she was off to open the new BBC studios; in the event, Prince Charles got the gig, preceded by a posse of Yeoman of the Guard (aka Beefeaters - more archaic costumes) and entering the room flanked by a bodyguard of gurkhas.

Those to be honoured were brought across the rear of the ballroom, in front of where we sat, in lines of about fifteen at a time.  As luck would have it, the diminuative JH found himself marching along between a remarkably tall young chap being honoured for 'services to rowing', and another lanky lad having 'services to athletics' recognised.  Jon looked so little by comparison that we half-expected to hear his award announced as being for 'Services to Middle Earth'!

Once all the awards had been bestowed and HRH had left the building, there was much waiting around for official photographs, and the chance to retrieve our own cameras and 'phones and take a few of our own - outdoors.  But at no stage were there refreshments for the guests, and even the recipients had received simply a glass of water or apple juice.  Personally, I think the royals are chancing it with this policy, bearing in mind the trouble that the remark 'let them eat cake' allegedly caused across the Channel.  'Let them eat cake' sounds to me like a much better policy than 'Let them eat nothing at all' and you might have thought that with HRH in charge, at least a few boxes of Duchy Originals bickies might have appeared, but nothing doing.

Luckily, Jon's daughter's father-in-law is of infinitely more generous spirit, and having arranged to meet the Palace party after the event in Covent Garden, promptly produced not one but two bottles of champagne and glasses (well, plastic beakers - but nice ones) and our little party stood outside the Apple Store celebrating in style, with the exception of baby grandson who looked miffed to be left out.  I glanced around slightly nervously, but there didn't seem to be any by-law notices prohibiting drinking in the street.  An arrest at this stage would really have spoilt the whole day...

Men in Black - protecting the capital from the scum of the Universe...

A leisurely late lunch followed, the restaurant providing more sparkling alcohol and a kick-ass liqueur 'on the house', then we saw the family off from Victoria and meandered back to the bus stop and thus to our hotel, spending the evening mooching about 'Fitzrovia' and the following morning checking out the latest additions to the London skyline from the vantage point of Tate Modern.

And then, to wrap up a more than slightly surreal visit to the Capital, just outside Euston as we were about to cross the road for our return train, we were passed by the London Naked Bike Ride participants, some of whom were taking the title of this event very literally.  Yes, there are photos, but not on this blog!