>Sweet, sweet Dumplings

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Sweet Dumpling is a squash, a member of the same family as Marrows and Pumpkins but is a much smaller, more manageable sized fruit. It’s size is one of the reasons why I will be trying it out this season alongside my usual Butternut squash and courgettes. I’ve been growing pumpkins for a number of years but in reality, unless you pinch out and grow on a large number of fruits, they are inclined to grow to massive fruits. Impressive but few in number and not entirely practical for the kitchen!
Sweet Dumpling claim to be croppable at a more useful size, 1 fruit per person and therefore quicker to cook with less waste. I have no clue to the flavour, but most squash I have grown and eaten tend to have a mild but distinct flavour. The mildest being Marrows which,like all cucurbit, lose flavour if grown too large. Many people claim Marrow to be watery but that tends to be partly due to choosing an over size fruit and cooking it unimaginatively. Butternut is a great flavour, making a wonderful soup as well as a good side vegetable or a very different chip!
I have already sown a half dozen seeds in a seed bed at the plot as the pack directions say you can from March onwards but I am also sowing some in a partitioned tray on the windowsill at home to be safe. If both come up, then I will have a succession of plants! I have no idea how many fruits to expect from each plant so I will try for maybe three plants, then a following two planted out later. That way, I have back up if I have failures and also plenty to share with friends if success overwhelms!
The earlier sowings of Tomato and Sweet Pepper have been pricked out into individual plugs , still under cover of the mini house, and are doing well. The supermarket Butternut are in three inch diameter pots now and romping away outdoors day and night. If the weather holds well for the weekend, I will risk a couple of plants at the plot. I have erected a makeshift pyramid of discarded garden trellis which I will be growing several climbing crops up, but the one I am most anticipating is trying one of the squashes as a climber. They naturally throw out tendrils and can strangle any unfortunate stems that they cross when grown horizontally. I have seen the large ‘Jack O’Lantern’ type pumpkins grown on a pergola before so my little Dumplings or Butternuts shouldn’t present any problems. I am using strong fencing trellis rather than the fold up thin stuff so weight isn’t an issue.
Back on the plot, the Iceberg lettuce ‘Saladin’ has germinated very well and very quickly, having been sown last week. People claim Radish is a great starter for children due to the speed of germination but I’d put these lettuce seeds ahead in a race!

>Make mine a ’99

>It’s been a glorious week, the spring sun has been warming the soil,the rain has stayed away and the wind hasn’t been so bad either.
Oh, just for the record, I’ve been on holiday this week, using up the last few days of my entitlement before the end of the financial year. Not that I’m gloating or anything. No, really.
So I’ve been spending a few hours a day at the plot, with the exception of Thursday due to other commitments. I’ve sowed, weeded,watered and hoed. I’ve dug ,forked, sawn and hammered.
Into this mix, add several coffees, several hours of radio broadcasts and a few good chats and you can see my time hasn’t been wasted!
Today, I sowed a few rows of catch crops and things that would need transplanting, like Spring Cabbage Greyhound and Cauliflower All Year Round. I have been guilty in the past of avoiding growing anything that needs a long growing season but , after too many springs with nothing in the ground until June, I am in for the long haul this time. I still have some Cauli’s and Purple Sprouting in the soil from last year and I am due to sow the seed for next year’s Sprouting Broccoli tomorrow. It still seems a huge waste of resources to utilise all that soil for such a duration in order to have just the one crop. I like to get my money’s worth out of the soil, cropping and resowing and catch cropping in between so one crop over a period of 10-14 months really hurts. The benefit is ,of course, the fact that you can harvest something for your kitchen in each of the twelve months, even if it may only be Kale or Turnips some weeks.
The past few days have been very summer like , with even a regular return of the season sound of the off key, wobbling wail of the Ice Cream Van heard in some streets. If anyone is buying, I’ll have a ’99 with raspberry sauce please. I’m sure , if the balmy weather lasts to the next weekend, we will soon be smelling the burnt offerings of the early BBQ grills too, but the simple fact is, it is spring and we can still experience a frost right up to the end of May. This of course plays into the hands of the doom merchants, who will bemoan the fact that ‘Summer is over now’ as soon as the grey skies return, however briefly.
Onwards and upwards.
My list of seeds sown this last week includes, the cauli and spring cabbage as mentioned,plus a couple of rows of Turnip ‘Snowball’, Iceberg lettuce ‘Saladin’,Parsley ‘Plain Leaf’ and more onion sets, Sturon variety. The French bean seeds saved from last year’s Blue Lake crop have been in the soil since January and have shown no sign of life so I will be making some sowings in pots at home for planting out later as replacements. The early onion and shallot sets have all shown new growth as have the early peas ‘Feltham Early’ , but the later broad beans are lying dormant still. I have to decide whether or not to try again or to stick with the early rows that are about 4″high and very healthy. I’d prefer a succession rather than an early but unique treat. It may be down to pots in the mini greenhouse with those too.
On the subject of the mini greenhouse, I have been utilising it to rear my sweetcorn, tomatoes,sweet peppers, leeks and butternut squash. I started them all in segmented trays on the sunniest windowsill and started moving them out into the greenhouse during the day, once the seedlings were up and well established. I have since potted on my squash plants and now leave them outside all day and night, although the trays still remain in the mini house. They have been outside for three nights now and show no sign of suffering.
I found a packet of Sweet Dumpling squash seed during a shopping trip this week so have sown half a dozen seeds on the plot directly in the soil and will match them with the same in pots in the mini house at home. I’ve always wanted to try this type of small squash in the past so grabbed the packet on sight and rushed for the tills. I find myself searching through seed racks in more and more supermarkets and DIY stores now than ever before and this can only reflect the rise in the number of people turning to home grown foods.
I cant help but feel, partly due to my involvement in the local business world, that the economic situation is going to get much worse before we see any improvement and that the price of foods, fresh foods, will become more difficult to afford. This may, hopefully, lead to more choosing to turn to the soil and produce their own food for the table rather than buying in. Any thing we can produce that will reduce the outgoing costs of raising and feeding a family must be encouraged. There will be many bills that can only be met by conventional means, such as mortgage and heating , but food bills can be curbed and not at the cost of quality but to the benefit of it.
All that remains to be seen is where these people will tend those crops, whether our well fed council will eventually find plots for those who want them, or not as it appears so far.
My hope is they will, my fear, and to be honest firm belief, is that they will find excuses not to.

>Progress at windowsill level.

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It’s all guns firing on the windowsill nursery right now.Squash seedlings at first true leaf stage so can be potted on. Toms are also at true leaf but can stay where they are for longer as they are much smaller and will survive happily for a little longer. Leek seedlings are at the crook stage, where the top of the seedling is bent over like the top of a safety pin. I thin they get potted on now too, so they can grow on and avoid crowding. Sweet peppers are like the toms, ok for a while. Sweetcorn doesn’t have a true leaf stage as it is, like all grass family members, a monocot plant. his means it produces one leaf on alternative sides, from the stem rather than a balanced pair of leaves as the biocots do. Take a look at any grass or corn type plant, and you’ll see.

The corn may need potting on eventually but I can wait for that a while longer, the urgent one is the squash, due to it’s size relative to the seed tray. It doesn’t take long to fill it’s space with roots. I sowed my seeds in compartmental trays this time, sets of six per half tray. Meaning I can separate them all easily later, like when I pot on the squash!

Today was a glorious spring day so I spent it on the plot planting new potatoes. Variety Rocket. I put them in the bed that I covered in compost from the old dalek bin last week. Drew out a trench with a dutch hoe and loosened up the soil so I could plant about 12″ down. Covered the newly placed seed spuds with some straw and then a layer of soil. As the new shoots come through, I will draw down some of the soil I removed to make the trench.

The broad beans are doing well, sown in the autumn and now about four inches high and stocky.

The carrots are showing some some possible signs of activity already, just a week after sowing.Had a very good chat with my good neighbour Len, about technology and rugby.Strimmed around a few of the beds with the battery powered rechargeable I use. Prefer to use rechargeable rather than petrol as I think it’s just better for the environment. Misguided or just totally lost it may be but I have my preferences.

Then onto the first real crop of the year, the purple sprouting broccoli. Cropped a big handful today and it look great, can’t wait to taste it in one of the wife’s stir fries.

On a sour note, I collected a couple of old tyres to use as a forcing jar extension for my rhubarb, as many others on my site are doing, when an old jobsworth in a boiler suit decided to inform me that ‘we are going to ban them completely’ on all sites. This was due to the problems encountered with one hardened trouble maker who had amassed a collection and had refused to remove them from her plot.Yes, her plot. The very hardened adversary was a disabled pensioner. Rather than tackle this feisty foe, the brave members of the committee has decided they will enforce a blanket ban on recycling old rubber car tyres. Oddly, I feel recycling anything for use on a plot is part and parcel of allotmenteering. My old grandfather used to find a use for almost everything and would fashion containers out of the most unassuming things. My own father made garden planters out of used tyres turned inside out. I had originally had a plan to use more tyres to make something my Australian friend had told me about, Tyre Swans.Tyres and similar things are the life blood of allotments, or should be, along with old window frames as cold frames, floorboards for edging beds and net curtains protecting crops from butterflies.

OK, maybe we are due for a change and the committee should do something with the money they make from subs but how about doing something positive and helpful rather than laying down rules?

>Just a quickie.

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I’m popping a quick message in to help support a local green issues event.

It’s always worth giving these things a chance, you never know when you might learn something to your advantage.

Meanwhile, back at home, my windowsill seed trays have started sprouting tomato,leek,pepper,sweetcorn and squash seedlings.

Seed potatoes have been set in egg cartons to chit and I am researching vermiculture!

>The second cutting

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It’s here!

The new lawn mower has arrived! Well, I say arrived, I went and collected it,along with my mother in law who bought it for me, from the local Homebase. It’s a four wheeled beast, all in plastic green and black, with height adjustment and a collection box. I know it’s not a mighty shiny red Mountfield or some such prestigious marque but it is a fine machine and it does the job pretty well.

It was a bit of a welcome jigsaw puzzle to make but not as bad as some flat pack furniture I’ve known!

It did a good,not too noisy job of cutting down the front lawn, which, as you will know, has been uncut for a few weeks now.

I found myself with all the enthusiasm of a car fan driving his newest purchase. I must have been in the watery winter sun too long! So I’ve posted the obligatory pictures, one Top Gear shot included.

In the garden itself, other than ranting about my neighbours disgusting landfill site of a plot, I have been busy with a spring tidy up. I’ve cleared the space around the Bamboo and stripped the lower leaves. This gives it a better appearance and ,along with thinning out some straggling shoots, allows for more clean air to circulate around the new growth and keep disease at bay. It may seem odd to savage a good plant like this but remember, in the wild, the native animals would be doing this.

The rambling rose is shooting now after I pruned it before the frosts, the Hebes are starting to flower, although they never seem to stop flowering in my garden. The bulbs are poking their tips through the dark soil as if they are miners reaching for the sun after a winter below ground.

Indoors, I sowed some seeds for an early start in sectioned trays of number 2 John Innes compost. Tomatoes,Leeks,Sweet Peppers and Sweet Corn. I also sowed some seeds from a fresh Butternut squash my wife had made soup from. She dried the seed in a paper towel, placed in a warm place then I sowed them like any packet seed. Much to my surprise, they germinated like weeds within three days on the windowsill under a cloche cover.

On the plot, where I like to spend most of my gardening time, I have finished another couple of raised beds, stacked up more stable manure for rotting down and spread some of last years compost on one of the beds. I collected my seed potatoes from the Trading Hut on site and will start the earlies off chitting soon.

I picked up some onion sets over the winter and planted them and some shallots out last month. I can see signs of growth on them already, despite the snow.

Today, I sowed early peas, a second sowing of broad beans and two rows of carrots. I filled half a row with the remaining mooli seeds from last year. I won’t need a great amount of them. Hot radishes the size and shape of large main crop carrots go along way!

I sowed one of my favourite looking veg too, Spinach Beet.

It looks like a large rhubarb leaf, is related to the beetroot family and can be cooked like spinach without shrinking, or the stems can be eaten like cooked celery. When very young, the leaves are added to salad leaf mixes.

Lunchtime came too soon today and I left in a rush but I will be trying to make use of every minute of day light from now on.