Spuds we like!

At last, fellow potato enthusiasts, a proper spud-focused blog post! 

Following what can only be described as monsoon conditions yesterday, today we managed to lift the second bed of 'Kestrel' second early taters.  As ever, we have an excellent crop.  With the exception of the 'asteroid' I'm holding in the picture below left, they are clean, largely undamaged, regular kidney-shaped tubers of a good size, with a few large enough to set aside for baking. 

I'm sure they will be better than either of the maincrop cultivars, as usual.  I lifted one root of 'Cara' and although these are also nice regular potatoes (with pink eyes rather than the purple ones the 'Kestrels' have), three of the ten had been slug damaged and invaded by millipedes, so I have some misgivings about what to expect from the remainder of the bed.  With such an unpredictable climate, there is something to be said for sticking to the variety I know likes our site, copes well with our pests with minimal protection and cooks well.  I'll lift some 'Sarpo Mira' and 'Pink Fir Apple' shortly, and it will be interesting to see how they have fared this year - both are usually reliable and the PFAs usually both tasty and amusing, so should make next season's team too.  

I did get new potatoes in time for my birthday (mid June) this year, thanks to a warm spring and a cloche.  I grew 'Foremost' again on account of their excellent taste and slightly better slug-resistence than 'Rocket', my previous first choice of first early.  Although I might try a different cultivar for comparison next year, I'll definitely be growing 'Foremost' again. 

I could do with tying up less of the allotment and garden with spuds next spring, unless we're long-distance boating again and need to grow something that thrives on neglect, so there may be fewer trials.  Certainly one experimental crop was a complete failure.  I planted some 'Salad Blue' in the garden (a variety I had never grown before), alongside a row of 'Highland Burgundy Red' (usually reliable, but a little slug-prone).  I got a decent crop of reds - but took fewer blues out than I put in!  Of course it's always tricky finding dark-skinned taters as they tend to match the soil rather well, but clods of Talke Pits earth are fairly angular while taters are rounded, and even after repeated digging and turning over, there were no more than a handful to be found.

I'd like to have space for more squashes - these are 'Sunshine' and 'Harrier', cut today - and to erect a proper cage around the brassicas as the calabrese and cabbages are looking seriously lacy!  It would also be good to grow the runner beans over several frames started at different times to give a better succession of crops; we have lots of delicious tender beans (despite the near front last night) and more on the way, but the frame is a tangled mass of tendrils and finding ripe beans among the greenery is more of a challenge than it should be.

 But all-in-all, the allotment and garden haven't done too badly this year, considering they have been left to their own devices for months on end.  And as for the fruit harvest - that deserves a post of its own, so watch this space.

Southern and Severn summer gardens

We've just got home from catching up with our family and friends in Hampshire and Sussex.  Returning to North Staffordshire in the drizzle of an unseasonably cold August night, I was delighted to find a hedgehog hiding just inside the front gate, hopefully hoovering up the slugs.  I'm glad now that I didn't bring the slug pellets home from the allotment and give the front garden a dose before we went away, though whether our prickly pal will return and do a good enough job that I can manage without them when we get to next spring and bulb time remains to be seen.

Our garden isn't doing too badly (in fact I owe it a blogsworth of praise for how well it coped with serious neglect while we were away on the narrowboat), but this post looks at a couple of gardens we discovered on our travels.

The first is the Human Nature garden in Horsham Park, a clever space which includes an amphitheatre performance area, medicinal flower, herb and vegetable beds, educational information boards and a fun sculpture of a shepherd and his flock.  

 

Usually open to the public and free to access, it can also be hired for private events and, as we discovered, makes a great venue for children's parties as the gentle slope of the amphitheatre area is safe for games and rolling and the wooden sheep don't object to be ridden on by small people.

It is a very good example of what can be done to make gardens fun for children and young people while still being tranquil spaces for grown-ups.

We came across our other garden 'find' quite by chance while searching for an evening meal.  Stopping at the Hundred House on the road from Bridgnorth to Telford a little too early for dinner (having decided to get well away from the M6 after some grim traffic news), we were invited to take a stroll in the gardens while we waited.  There was, we were told, a herb garden and a flower garden on opposite sides of a little path marked 'Lovers Walk'.  Drinks in hand, we set off to explore.

The 'herb garden' is actually a far more diverse productive garden with a great variety of apple cultivars grown as standard trees, pillars and step-overs, raised beds full of salad leaves and squashes, pergolas of runner beans and ornamental gourds, though the huge hornet hanging around the fruit trees was an unwelcome addition to this particular little paradise.

On the other side of the house was a deliciously eccentric, romantic garden full of ferny, mossy corners, reclaimed statues and elegant formal planting, all created on what had once been a bare stretch of lawn by the former owner of the inn, Sylvia Philips (sadly now deceased). 

All manner of quirky little compositions made from odds and ends of salvaged masonry hide in nooks and glades, overgrown in an artistically managed fashion.  Had it not been getting rather late and quite cool, and close to dinner time, we could have spent hours out there, even though it isn't a huge site.

The gate made from horseshoes is a particularly clever little feature.

After a scrumptious dinner, had it not been a work day in the morning it would have been very tempting to stop the night in one of the inn's pretty guest rooms, but we've promised ourselves a proper break exploring the Ironbridge Gorge and Wrekin area, so there may very well be a September visit to this fascinating garden.  I bet the autumn leaf colours are glorious.

Hopefully the hornet will have buzzed off by then!