Sunday, 7 August 2011

Cauliflowers

It's been a wet weekend, with rain most of Sunday, and a couple of showers on Saturday.

This did not deter. Yesterday, we started by pruning the flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum) which is next to the path down to the kitchen garden. It's been neglected for some time, so we took out a lot of old wood, and reshaped it; hopefully it will reward us next year.

We also lifted the second-early potatoes (Nicola and Juliette), yielding about 40kg of tubers (about 1kg/plant). I'm a bit disappointed by the yield, which isn't any better than the first-earlies. That said, we do appear to have lost a relatively high number to mice. I'll weigh them more precisely when they're cleaned and ready to store.

In more exciting news, we found that two cauliflowers were ready. There are a further three that are getting close. We ate half of one on Saturday, and blanched-and-froze the other half. The pictured cauli remains in the fridge, for dinner on Monday.

Cauliflower 'All Year Round' (© Ian (2011))

On Sunday, we spent some time planning for the next round of planting: the overwintering onions and garlic will be on their way before long, and we've added seeds for some turnips ('Golden Ball'), overwintering spring onions ('White Lisbon Winter Hardy'), and spring cabbages ('Frostie F1'). This lead to us making a planting plan for next spring, which I'll digitize in time, so now we have a good idea of what we'll sow next year (and where) and, accordingly, what the fertilization needs will be this autumn.

A big seed order in October/November will be the result, as we'll obviously need more onions sets, seed potatoes, and new seeds for a number of other things (parsnips, leeks, mangetout, and beetroot are definites).

For now, I shall just revel in the beauty of my first cauliflower. It's the first time we've had them work.

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