The year of the home-grown potato
What with daffodils and crocuses appearing in the garden, I guess it’ll soon be time to decide what to grow this year.
Last year Phyllis was quite upset that I forgot to grow potatoes, and my life was only saved by a few plants that appeared out of nowhere (or rather, I must have left a few tubers in the ground the year before).
So this year is to become the year of the home-grown potatoes.
However, which varieties should we grow?
It’d be nice to grow something that you don’t often see in shops, such as these Mayan potatoes.
Any recommendations?
Crab apple apple scab
When we bought our house two years ago, we started planting a lot of stuff and generally doing up the garden.
One of the first trees we planted was a crab apple of the cultivar John Downie, which we chose because it was said to be the best crab apple for making jellies.
Alas, it also turned out to be very susceptible to apple scab, and although we could to some extent control it with an antifungal spray, it was clearly spending all its strength fighting off the disease instead of producing apples, so I have now removed it.
I was surprised by its lack of root when I pulled it up – the poor thing clearly didn’t even have enough resources to send out roots!
Anyway, we now need a new crab apple tree, and preferable one that is as resistant to apple scab as possible.
I don’t think any fully resistant trees are available in the UK, so I’m thinking about either a Red Sentinel or a Pink Glow, or perhaps an Evereste.
Can anybody here recommend one?
Kæmpe hudfarvede stokroser
Sidste år købte jeg tre pakker stokrosefrø, blandede dem, såede dem i vindueskarmen og plantede dem ud.
Mange af dem er nu gået til, og andre er stadig ret små.
Men dem, jeg plantede ved siden af paradisæbletræet, gror, som blev de betalt for det!
Rækværket på billedet er lidt lavere end mig, så de er omkring 2 meter høje.
I dag åbnede den første blomst sig så.
Knopperne var lidt gullige, så vi havde egentlig forventet gule blomster, men de viste sig at være hudfarvede (eller ferskenfarvede, hvis man skal være venlig) men gul midte. Jeg véd godt, de ser lyserøde ud på billedet, men det er lidt misvisende.
Det bliver noget af et syn, når de alle står i fuldt flor!
Building a greenhouse
A year and a half ago, shortly after moving into our house in Newton Mearns, we decided to buy a lean-to greenhouse.
I found one on B&Q’s website at a reasonable price. I didn’t say anything about assembly, so I presumed it probably was reasonably easy.
It arrived at seven big bunches of aluminium sticks and three packets of toughened glass.
All I could do at the time was to check that all the packets looked unbroken.
The next time I had a weekend available, I started building it.
I knew I had to build some kind of foundation, but the instructions for that were too confusing without actually having a greenhouse frame to measure.
It took a long time – the instructions were hard to follow, but at least each bit of aluminium had a number engraved that were matched somewhere in the instructions, so it was just a case of persevering.
However, when I had almost completed the frame, I realised I couldn’t proceed without building the foundations, because some of the bits had to be screwed directly into the foundation or the wall.
It was a rainy day, however, and the foundation involved pouring concrete into holes in the ground, so I had to wait till the weather improved.
In the meantime, we had some very strong winds, and the frame started blowing apart.
To rescue it, I had to disassemble it into sections and wait for better weather.
Some months later, I finally got round to building the foundation and reassembling the frame, but by then it was too late to grow tomatoes and chilies, so I decided to put in the panes at some later date.
A few months ago, I then finally got round to putting in the panes together with Phyllis.
It was quite puzzling, however: Whereas the metal bits had been numbered, the glass was not, so we had to spread them all over the lawn, measure them and match them with a number in the instructions (I’ve scanned in the relevant page; note how the instructions on the left are for the illustrations on the previous page, just to confuse you).
Because it was a sunny day, that process burnt huge holes in our lawn, but what could we do?
Doing this, we discovered that two panes were missing completely (they had delivered 2 panes of size 10132 instead of 4). Not broken, just missing!
I therefore filled out the form to inform Halls. The form did say you were supposed to do that within 7 days of delivery, but how was I supposed to do that when the packets were intact? Should I have spread out all the panes onto the lawn for a year?
I got a phone call a few days later.
It turned out Halls had been taken over by another company, Eden (now called Eden Halls), and after a fairly long and pleading conversations, they agreed to send the missing bits free of charge.
They arrived yesterday, and the greenhouse is finally complete!
Next time I’ll either buy a polytunnel instead, or I’ll get somebody to assemble it for me.
Lancashire Lad peas
This year I had time to order seeds from the Heritage Seed Library.
I got various tomatoes and other stuff for the greenhouse, and then some peas called Lancashire Lad.
I didn’t know much about them, but they’re growing really well, much better than the peas we bought in B&Q.
And today they got their first flowers, and they’re beautiful (click on the photo for a better view).
I’m already looking forward to tasting the peas!
Open-arse
As I wrote recently, we’ve now planted a medlar tree.
The medlar (“mispel” in Danish) – which is edible only after it starts to rot – is not widely known these days, but it used to be popular.
In those days, it was colloquially known as an open-arse, however, as in Romeo and Juliet:
O Romeo, that she were, O that she wereAn open-arse and thou a poperin pear!
Phyllis seems to be insinuating that I shouldn’t mention our open-arse tree in front of the kids.
Doesn’t she appreciate Shakespeare?
An underwhelming quince tree
Some time ago, I ordered four fruit trees from Dobies of Devon: a medlar, a greengage, a damson and a quince.
The trees arrived yesterday, so I had to plant them hurriedly before the driving lesson because they arrived without any soil at all around their root, and I wasn’t sure how long they’d survive like that in the humid Scottish spring.
Three of the trees looked absolutely fine with lots of branches, but the quince is odd-looking.
It has nicely developed roots just like the other trees, but it has no branches at all – just look at the photo.
How did it come to look like this, and will it really grow branches on its own?
Winter again!
The weather has been getting warmer recently, and Scotland has been full of cherries, forsythias, ribes, daffodils, tulips and other flowers in full bloom.
This morning, however, the weather decided to revert to full winter mode: Lots of snow everywhere.
It’s very pretty, but not very good for the garden, I fear!
Latvian peas
Today I received my Heritage Seed Library membership card.
Unfortunately, it turns out I became a member a fortnight too late – orders for the six seed packets have to be sent during February, so I can’t order mine till next year. 
However, they sent me a complimentary packet of Latvian peas that I can try to grow this year.
It seems to be totally standard Latvian peas, but that’s of course something of a rarity in this country.
Seed library
I’ve just joined the Heritage Seed Library after reading about it in the Metro.
I will basically get some rare seeds every year in March, a big seed catalogue, and if I really get hooked, I can become a seed guardian!