Episode #21: Doing the timewarp again
23-31 December - Broad bean bonanza, a splendid cabbage and wrapping up the year.
It is the last day of 2024, this the last post of the year. Twenty-one posts isn’t quite half a year’s worth, but allotment time moves strangely. In spring and summer the plot is in a furious rush to grow everything, weeds everywhere, all the produce ripe all at once; but now we’re in the slow horse, short day time of winter, when plot time doesn’t seem to move at all.
What has crept quietly over these weeks is the number of you here, subscribers and regular readers of Plants and Practice. Thank you for being so supportive and reading along for the ride with this starting-out writer.
I hadn’t expected to find so many like-minded and similarly-interested folk here on Substack: the growers, the gardeners who cook, cooks who garden, garden designers, flower lovers, plant nurturers, permaculturalists, plus artists, music fans and slow readers. Joining Substack has been like opening a door and finding a gathering of my very favourite people in the room on the other side. It’s nice here. I’m hoping it stays like this and doesn’t become a rank sewer, like so much of social media elsewhere.
This episode is part plot update, part review of, or reflection on, the year before 2025 kicks in. See you on that other side next week.
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This week’s Plot Shot
The plot has been an almost uniform grey for weeks. I’ve found the last pink rose, one solitary orange marigold, but I had given up on there being anything new to share here. However, as usual, plants have other ideas, and the first snowdrops of the new year are up.
I can see three distinct clumps of snowdrops pushing through the grass. We planted a few different varieties several years ago, including some ‘Puschkina’ Russian snowdrops, but have gradually lost track of which ones are where over time. Plus the clumps move slightly each year as the bulbs self-seed.
Plot work in progress
Elsewhere on the plot, it has been time to liberate the broad bean seedlings from the greenhouse, where they’ve grown lanky, like teenagers. I’ll wait for them to get their roots down, then pinch them out.
I’ve speed-weeded two rotation beds and tied the broad beans up against the cane frames we used for climbing French beans and sweet peas last summer. There’s a self-seeded artichoke in one (free to good home, as long as someone comes and digs it out - anyone?), and a mass of viola seedlings in the other. The violas were mostly too small for me to transplant, so they’ll have to wait.
I’ve sown multiple varieties of broad bean this year, including two red flowered types (‘Karmazyn’ and ‘Crimson Flowered’, both from Plants of Distinction). The red are new to me, so I’ll be keen to see how they grow compared to the usual whites. Of course, I’ve grown *way too many* seedlings, but at least I have some spares in case of these breaking in the wind or being pulled up by magpies.
Harvesting now
We’ve nothing to harvest this week, given our utter failure on the brassica front for 2024, so the total produce tally for the year is now set1. I’m going to restart the weekly count from January to give a full tally across 2025. Time to start planning my seed sowing to keep the produce coming and not have so many gap weeks in the harvest next year. I can feel a spreadsheet coming on.
However, I did spot this beautiful blue-green winter cabbage, ready to harvest on one of the gang’s plots, which is keeping one of the gang’s produce tally ticking over. This beauty is surely a triumph, given the difficulties of this last growing season.
Not being especially into the whole Christmas celebrations, I once made new year cards for friends with a photo of a cabbage on the front and a thumbnail of a single broad bean seedling on the inside. It felt right for new year greetings - new growth and all that stuff. This cabbage would be a contender for a card, for sure.
Making and eating
At home, the making, preserving and baking dial has nudged forward after the festive pause. The shiny green and red chillis featured in last week’s Episode #20 have been blitzed into jars of Palestinian shatta, one green and one red.
Shatta doesn’t need a recipe - its more of a method. Blitz 250g of fresh chillis with 3tbsp of apple cider vinegar, 1tbsp lemon juice and 1tbsp salt. Pack into sterilised airtight jars, with a topping of olive oil to keep the chillis submerged. Keeps for about six months in the fridge. Great as a dip for bread, as hot sauce for pretty much anything. The degree of heat will depend on the chillis. Just don’t mistake the green one for mint sauce.
E17 Local Hero
My Local Hero this week is a cake, or probably husband Clive as the maker of our traditional festive cake, for which we buy a fresh pineapple at this time each year. This is the most beautiful cake he makes. It has rose petals!
Community of Practice
The site has been almost deserted this last week, as most of the allotment community are either away somewhere sunny for the winter break or laid low with any combination of the lurgies currently doing the rounds. I’ve kept going with small jobs, until the cold and the wet have driven me back home.
What I’ve held onto is that it’s better to doing something, rather than nothing. Prune one rose. Fix one thing. Practice. Here’s my one thing from yesterday - a run-down bug hotel given a lick of paint on the sides and a shiny new metal roof, courtesy of a recycled foil tray from some Waitrose smashed potatoes in lemon and herb dressing.
Now *all* this needs is a top-up with pieces of old bamboo cane (plenty of those lying around to cut to size) and a piece of chicken wire wrapped tightly over the front to stop the magpies pulling the cane pieces out, then this bug hotel will be up to five star luxury standards. I’ve done one job, added another two to the list. Hmm.
Weekly Fox News
My efforts to sort out the standard of accommodation for beneficial insects were supervised by two members of the fox family, Nellie and her beau Leo. Here’s Leo looking doubtful about the purple paint and my bodged use of recycled tin foil.
Until next year, and next time.
Ang
Total for Week 21, null points, making the total produce tally for the seventeen weeks of 2024, from Episodes 5 to 21, £204.09, based on current supermarket or local farmers’ market prices. Weekly average £12 per week. There’s a target to better for 2025.
Thanks Ang for this year's substacks. I love the format and I've enjoyed every post. Please keep up the Rocky Horror throughout 2025.