tucking up for winter

• By Alison
• 14 October, 2009
• Comments Off on tucking up for winter

Now that I’ve discovered I am ill, I need to milk this condition to the fullest until friday at least (which is probably the point at which the doctor points out that I just need to stop eating bolognaise for the rest of my life so quit whining.)

So instead of working today, I indulged my inner child, and played in the dirt.

Or put it in another flavour, I went down to the allotment and spent a contented two hours digging and planting. 

I’ve managed to dig over and plant the green manure for hungarian rye and winter tares in two rows. There are two more to be cleared – one will have field beans in it, and the other I am not sure yet. I’ve missed my chance to plant crimson clover, but I didn’t have any empty rows back in August. And since it was the bean row this year, there is little point planting field beans. I need to work out what to do with it quickly though, as unless there is a sudden burst of forgotten summer stuck in the pipes it will soon be cold dim November and nothing is likely to want to grow.

Having dug and planted, I tucked my new seedy babies in with some perforated cloche plastic. That was to stop birds from eating the broadcast seeds. cue photo…

Plus while I was there I constructed a nifty little grow tent for my courgettes, which look like they want to grow. “It’s a bit late, fellas.” I said to them. Glancing around quickly to see if I’d been caught chatting with my veg. Fortunately not. I was considering whether I should cover over the last few rows of late carrots. I might see what I can construct when I go back down.

I’ve still got to take down the runner bean frame, which is leaning like a crazy drunk, and still full of beans. They are no longer edible, although that status is debatable even when ripe. I grew them because I love the flowers, but as they ripened I left them to sit on the vine as I really don’t fancy them. We had plenty of tender green beans, both dwarf and climbing. Why ruin a perfectly good meal with a runner bean?

Now that they’ve dried and shrivelled, I’ve harvested them, and fallen in love with them all over again. Aren’t the seeds gorgeous? You know what that means. I am going to end up planting them all over again just because they look pretty!

I’ve collected all the french bean seeds too, but stupid me didn’t divide them up. They all look the same, whether they are blue lake or corona d’oro (climbing) or tender green (dwarf). I am hoping that when I plant them in the conservatory they get to a point where I can tell them apart before I plant them out. I don’t mind the climbing ones all mixed together, but I do need to put the dwarfs somewhere else. (We welcome you to munchinkin land, la la la la…)

Next year I’ve got to grow “purple queen”, a purple variety. Sadly the purple is lost in cooking (just like purple sprouting broc) but I am sure they’ll look beautiful on the vine. And there is an Italian bean that Jamie oliver was raving about the other night that I want to grow. Those ones are red and white and looked divine. All that lovely colour disappears when cooked. How silly of nature.