Good crops, bad crops

Of course everyone who has ever watched a detective show on TV knows about "good cop bad cop", where one detective is nasty to the suspect (ie, the bad cop) while the other one (the good cop) offers the "perp" a drink and a kind word, in the hope that the suspect spills the beans to the nice detective before the bad one gets seriously upset and starts turning off the tape recorder and throwing chairs around the interview room.

What's this got to do with growing vegetables, you ask? Well, I suspect my vegetables are trying to work me over. My potatoes are my bad cop, my spinach is the nice guy. I think they want me to grow fewer potatoes and more spinach, but my mind doesn't work that way. I like eating both of them, so I am going to continue growing both of them, despite my dud crop of spuds trying to play the bad crop.

What do I mean by "dud crop of spuds?" Well, this is all of them. Not even one colander full. I was rather hoping for a few kilograms, and all I ended up with is far too many one-inch tiddler mini spuds and only a dozen or so "proper-sized" Kind Edward potatoes. Here's what happened ...

Back in mid-October, the potato plants started to do their usual thing of looking ugly. That's OK, potato crops do that. The foliage is meant to slowly die off while, underground, countless dozens of little spudettes turn into enormous great big spuds.

A month later, by mid-November, the plants looked like they'd done their dash, and so I harvested the lot ...

... and couldn't even fill one lousy colander. It's not as if this is my first go at growing spuds. I've done it a few times before, sometimes growing them in the ground and other times in bags. And I grew them this time using the same methods as before. Of course I could turn around and blame my seed potato supplier, but that would be churlish (however, I have resolved not to order from that same supplier next year, just as a precaution). Never fear though, this potato-loving boy will be back next season, hoping for a better result.

Meanwhile, in the very same patch of ground, and right next door to the dud spuds, my long-lasting crop of perpetual spinach had reached peak abundance, so I harvested the lot before our forecast scorching hot 41°C Friday hits us.

Ever the experimenter, several months ago I spotted a red-stemmed variety of perpetual spinach in amongst the more regular green types at the local nursery, so I have given that a try. Perpetual spinach isn't English spinach, and it isn't silver beet, and it isn't ruby chard. It's a close relative of all these, but it has the lovely quality of simply lasting a long time in the ground.

When the leaves are young and small we pick them as colourful little extras in a leafy green salad. Later on, once the number of leaves gets ahead of us and they mature into bigger leaves, we've been picking several at a time for cooking as a spinach side dish. (My favourite is to simply stir-fry it, along with currants (or sultanas) and pine nuts.)

The flavour is closer to English spinach than the more pungent silver beet/chard, but the main benefit of this is the way it lasts and lasts through all the winter months and spring. Once summer's heat comes along it's a goner, bolting to seed, but I've given up growing short-lived English spinach and rely instead on this. I'm not sure of its botanical name, but it's sold in nurseries around here as perpetual spinach, so give it a try once the worst of summer has passed.

And so, even if my vegie patch wants me to grow more spinach, I'm not taking the bait. Next year I will spud-up again, and there'll be trouble if there ain't a bumper crop!



   

The changeover season

Every move you make here in Sydney at the moment, you sweat. It's sticky. On these uncomfortably humid, end-of-summer days, the weather forecasters endlessly repeat their "chance of a shower" chant each morning, and that means it's very warm and humid, mostly sunny all day, then in the late afternoon there's rain or, if we're lucky, a storm as well.

While it's not my favourite time I year (the humidity knocks me around more and more as I get older), I do enjoy this season because it's time for the changeover from the spring/summer crops, to the autumn/winter plantings in the vegie patch. Rip out the old crops, plant new ones. That's what I call fun.

So the garden looks like a mulch farm at the moment, with not much to show for all the effort, but I do like digging soil. That's one of the best bits about gardening. Digging over soil. I also enjoy adding a bit of dolomite lime to sweeten the soil's pH, then working in some cow manure and compost to give the worms and all the other soil-borne critters a treat. At the end of it all, smooth over and level the rich dark soil, stand back and admire your work... 

The digging takes some time, the planting seems to be over in minutes. I've been a bit lazy this time round. Instead of conscientiously raising everything from seed I went down to the garden centre and bought some punnets of seedlings. I've sown seeds, too, but only here and there. Here's how things are going, in the Changeover Season of autumn 2014.

Wild rocket in front, lettuce (raised from seed)
behind. The wild rocket is the serrated-leaf kind
seen most commonly in shops. It's a perennial
plant that should last some time here. It's a much
better bet as a garden plant than the ultra-fast
growing annual type of rocket. Mind you, baby
annual rocket (with the rounded leaves) is still
my favourite rocket to eat, but it's so much work
to sow, re-sow, re-sow, re-sow. Eventually I
tire of the effort, and give it a rest. At least
with this wild rocket you get an easier supply.

Here's the mulch farm. There are spinach seedlings in the
centre, spring onions as well, perpetual spinach on the left.
The perpetual spinach will crop well until spring and is one
of my favourite leafy greens. The English spinach is much
shorter-lived, but it is so nice in Japanese cuisine. The big
leafy greens on the left are more chicory plants, and they are
another excellent leafy green that we turn into Greek-style
horta, boiled greens dressed with olive oil and lemon juice.

There is such a thing as too many Thai limes. They're falling
off the tree now. It's a wonderful choice if you're wondering
which citrus to grow in a pot. It reaches a bit over 1m tall
and wide and seems quite hardy, too. Just brushing past the
leaves or the fruit is such a fragrant thing to do.

Huge, green and unproductive. I've tried watering in some
sulphate of potash to stimulate flower production on our
18-month-old passionfruit vine. No luck. Plan B is do nothing
at all. Pretend it's not there. It's a bit hard to do when it
is so huge, so it's now my 'elephant in the room' plant.  

At least the lemon tree is flowering its head
off. It smells lovely in the still morning air,
and hopefully the recent rains and the big
dose of chicken poo I gave it will restore it to
health and happiness.

Have you ever anxiously watched a plant, hoping
it would flower in time for the big Sunday lunch
that you've invited some friends to? Well, our
Tibouchina 'Jules' is letting us down. It has
18 hours left to burst into purple glory by midday
tomorrow. Otherwise it's just another green blob
in our very green blob of a garden. Healthy, yes.
In flower, not yet. 

As for the things I can't show you, I have sown more seeds of collard greens, as these big cabbage-family leafy greens were such a success over spring and early summer. They're meant to be even better in the cooler months, so here's hoping that's true. And I have also sown a few rows of seeds of the love-in-a-mist (Nigella) seeds I collected in midsummer, following the end of its spring flowering. 

The first of the collard green seeds are already up, after only five days in the soil. The Nigella seeds are on a more leisurely schedule. They'll appear in a couple of weeks, and the flowers won't do their thing for at least another six or seven months. I can wait. It's one of the very nice things about growing plants from seed. They offer the chance to share in a full life-cycle, especially if you harvest the seeds at the end of it all. I like that idea.