Getting a sprinter on...
Well…maybe not quite yet! Although ‘sprinter’ itself (that very apt term along with its near cousin ‘sprummer’ coined awhile ago I believe by Professor Tim Entwistle, once director of Sydney, then Melbourne Botanic Gardens…and Kew Gardens before those) has not yet quite arrived here…some plants seem to think otherwise! Just look at the main crop broad beans…already pushing towards the topmost rod of the structure…one even touching it this morning (one leaf nudging to the north, its mate to the south - I may have to be the one to make the decision as to which way it should go!). How this makes my heart sing, and my tastebuds ring with anticipation…for once the fragile stems have soared through the third layer of rods with another six or so additional centimetres to ensure they are completely contained (having successfully made it through the first and second layers), they’re assured of remaining upright within the structure and safe from the wind (if not the beady-eyed birds who are, no doubt, salivating at the prospect of munching on those succulent broad bean tips just as much as me!).
Each day now, I check for escape artists…the shoots whose inclination is to roam free, and prod them gently back inside the structure to keep their hollow stems boxed-in. Next time you hear from me on the broad bean score…I should be pinching out the first tip or two - standing with my eyes closed in the afternoon sun, delighting in the first broad bean taste of the season. As a few more reach through the rungs, I’ll bring them in to the kitchen to share - to wilt down gently in evoo, to top a risotto or omelette. Eventually the tip of each plant will be removed, which will cause more basal and side shoots, hence more of those black-blotched white flowers that perfume the sprinter air and ultimately…a crop of broad beans themselves.
Please oh please just let the birds stay away! I do so hate when I have to throw the nets over - as I’ve had to do with the peas and the oranges in the last couple of weeks. Nets simply stifle plant health and growth…they spoil all the fun.
For more biophotonic (light-filled) produce (see last week’s post ref. Farmacy of Light!) it’s hard not to go past the Kohl Rabi…sitting plump now: I can’t decide whether to pull these first sown (we’ve already consumed a number) or to leave them for their visual beauty. Having successionally sown quite a number of these beauties - some are dotted around the guild beds, while there’s another row too, still coming on, down the back; I’m a bit tempted to leave these large ones to develop their cloudy bloom and use them as a focal point for a tantalising event late next month, that’s bubbling away in the wings…
Radicchio are plumping up beautifully now too - their bitter leaves a boon to our digestive system, their glorious colour and veining a true feast for the eyes. These too…I have my eye on for a work-table centrepiece and eating…there’s nothing like an edible tablescape at a cooking workshop! I always plant a good number of radicchio in the autumn - so there are plenty to keep us going in the kitchen here through winter and spring, as well as enough for extra curricular activity!
Remember last week I mentioned the jasmine was already in bud? I can’t help but check each time I go by to see if one might even have opened. If so, that would indeed herald a very early start to sprinter. It’s a long time since there’s been jasmine on my birthday (next week!) - though I recall taking armloads at just that time, back to the city in those first early years here - when we could do no more than picnic and scratch our heads over what on earth we had done in taking on such a project as Glenmore. Back then, there was one sprawling hump of a vine growing over the old dunnies, which were one of the first scrappy features we removed. I vowed when we did so, to plant another elsewhere, and so we’ve never skipped a year without common Jasmine (Jasminum officinale or Jasminum polyanthum) growing here somewhere.
Look as I may though, not one bud has yet unfurled - as confused at the weather no doubt as me. Yesterday, after a morning meeting by the fire in the Dairy, that I set, then wondered if I should even bother to put a match to it (given the sun pouring in through the windows and I even ditched the socks I had on), but was so grateful ten minutes later to have it ablaze with generous warmth and the atmosphere it lent; I later settled in at the verandah table - a full bright afternoon sun glowing in a blue sky, with even my gardening hat on to cut the glare as I worked away at a large sheet of paper with pencil and ruler, playing with plans in the warming sun. What joy, to not be at a screen - with no prompts from a co-pilot (how I wish I could turn that thing off on that particular engine I use - thank goodness it is not built-in to this platform!), or an auto-correct changing the very words I choose to write, only to discover, horror of horrors, that a most non-sensical sentence has been sent to a recipient at the other end. Is this driving you bonkers too? Pencil, paper, ruler…not even glasses to pick up fine detail were required in natural light; though this sublime predicament lasted for all of quarter of an hour before a chill breeze delivered spots of rain, quickly followed by a heavy shower that sent me scurrying inside to take a match to the kitchen fire! I spent the rest of the afternoon with the same three props at the kitchen table, at one stage giving in to the temptation to make myself a cup of hot chocolate and also searching for my specs! No wonder the jasmine can’t make up its mind…
Do you recall the seed potatoes that arrived already ‘chitted’? I really must check the ones that I thought not so advanced and so put down in the cellar to keep ‘til my usual habit of sowing in August - hopefully they haven’t all turned up their toes. But I did plant out all the ‘King Edwards’ that had the most advanced ‘chitting’ of the order and goodness they’re looking healthy. They are defying my notion of potato seasonality, though it remains to be seen just how this will pan out…it’s what’s going on under the soil that counts. I like having new potatoes at the beginning of summer…but at this rate it will be the beginning of spring, which annoying as it is, may also play beautifully into this upcoming workshop - the planning of which has taken up so much of my thought process and time this week - in a good way…a very good and intoxicating kind of way!
While we’re down the back and looking at autumn-sown, winter-growing crops…this is where the garlic is at. Sown on Anzac Day - still after all these years, no matter how precise I aim to be as I go, when I finish the sowing I wonder if I sowed the cloves with regular spacing and in straight rows…or if when my efforts emerge they will look as if planted by a drunken sailor? As it is…this year’s multitude are looking quite satisfactory…phew!
Do you recall too…that I’d pruned the row of Damask Kazanlak roses back quite hard in mid autumn (very late given it should have been mid-summer) and there was barely a leaf in sight? Now I’m concerned they’re befuddled and keen to flower - when they should display their bounty in October - the time for rosewater distillation! I wonder if you too, have seen images pop up here and there in the last week or so, of the great annual rose harvest in Bulgaria? It’s something I’ve wanted to attend for years…and promise myself that one of these days…
While those spring-flowering Damasks are somewhat befuddled, the repeat flowering Rugosas are anything but - some of them displaying a fine show of rose hips, though never enough at any one particular time, for me to make an attempt at rose hip jelly. In years gone by I’ve saved and dried the hips from R.canina, the Dog Rose (much smaller hips used by apothecaries) for tea; but the idea of making jelly is still on the ‘maybe one day’ list.
On Tuesday afternoon, following a deliberately desk-focussed Monday, I decided to take a gardening break and sowed this year’s tomato seeds into punnets (I was hoping to begin on Tuesday morning, but once again desk-work beckoned!). The punnets are on the heat mat now, down in the potting shed and covered with a heavily folded piece of hessian to ensure they’re in the dark. I don’t imagine there will be any sign of germination for at least a week, though I must take a peek over the weekend, as sometimes they can surprise, and if they get long and leggy in the dark, there’s no going back and one must begin again, which would be such a waste of time, given I’ve tried to be well on time this time!
What a very domestic / garden post this one is! As a little aside…along the lines of ‘once you see a yellow car’…embroidery seems to have been the recurring feature of my week! It has in fact, been something of an ongoing theme that began a few weeks ago with some intensity, during a conversation with one of our guests - prompting a slew of backtracking through images by way of explanation - fun! It’s a subject that always makes me smile…quickens my pulse. Anyway…subsequently the event I’ve been working on this week and referred to a couple of times above, has given reason to bring the topic to life in more ways than one - and all will be revealed next week - I feel almost breathless with excitement at the thought of it! But event planning aside; when I randomly selected a podcast to listen to one evening this week, whilst ironing the linen napkins from the last event…what do you suppose was the repetitively referred to skill throughout? Embroidery! It just happened to be the next in line on the hitherto un-listened to episodes of Judy Stewart’s Unpaused podcast, with the founder of Selvedge Magazine, Polly Leonard. Whilst I don’t receive the hard copies of that magazine, I have long subscribed to the newsletter - as I think anyone with more than a passing interest in textiles does. As Polly says in the podcast, “if you don’t know the meaning of the word Selvedge, this magazine probably isn’t for you”. As you know…I’ve long been inclined to collect selvedge edges (career habit) - in case I dream up something to do with them later! So I was delighted when I saw Polly’s name pop up on the podcast list and the conversation made for amusing listening as I pushed the iron back and forth across the napkins, especially as I already had visions of embroidery dancing in my head. And then…completely out of the blue, I received a delightful but short email yesterday morning from someone I met earlier in the year; and whilst I recall we enjoyed such a lovely and wide-ranging conversation about all manner of things at the time…I don’t recall the word embroidery being mentioned once. Yet what did I discover in my inbox? “Mickey I thought you might enjoy seeing this…I went to an exhibition this week (etc etc) and found this embroidered pattern of a labyrinth - image attached…it made me think of you”! I mean really????
As it is, I’ve yet to make my way into the cupboard to see what I might find, to support the prop situation for this upcoming event - it’s a sweet temptation I’m saving up for a dull moment. I’ve been salivating instead over all the ingredients our guest cook is going to prepare and the threads and patterns our guest teacher of embroidery is going to bring to inspire and to tempt! You haven’t heard the last of this!
Wishing everyone a toasty weekend ahead.
Warmest wishes as ever,
Mickey x
Eating from the garden: Pumpkin, broccoli, celeriac, kale, fennel bulbs, peas, kohl rabi, leek, bok choy, tomato, warrigal greens, coloured chard, chicory, lettuce, red elk, celery, Jerusalem artichoke. Pomegranate, rhubarb, orange, lemon, mandarin. Coriander, lovage, mint, chives, parsley, rosemary, sage, thyme, oregano. Nasturtium, calendula and borage flowers, fennel fronds
Going / gone: beans, aubergine, zucchini, tomatoes, lovage
Seed saving: Bean
Sowing: tomato seeds (if I was going to grow from seed, I’d also sow capsicums and aubergines now…but I tend to plant seedlings of these instead). I did toss the contents of an old packet of radishes in - direct to the soil…we’ll see what happens
Planting: I popped some non-hearting lettuce seedlings in at the weekend, as well as some beetroot seedlings - which usually is a no-no for me - I prefer to grow beetroot from seed but…the ones I sowed awhile ago are being slow (though all of a sudden they’ve reached the four-leaf stage in just the last days - they must have seen me planting out competitors!) but in the name of this upcoming workshop…even if I can’t produce globes by then, the leaves will be something…as will the dill seedlings I popped in nearby - I find dill so very temperamental here - whether seed or seedling; I know it’s in the timing and some years have grown it well - fingers crossed these ones might work because they’re part of the plan…
Ornamental garden notes:
Picking for the house: a single rose here, a single rose there…if they want to flower, I’m not going to stop them! A lovely bunch of French dentata lavender - first one of the season. Whilst it isn’t my favourite lavender…the job it does in the spots it occupies here would not be the same without it - and my favourite variety simply wouldn’t work where this one does
Perfumes and aromas: osmanthus fragrans and lonicera fragrantassima mentioned last week are the pair of the day…
Pruning and other: the bulrushes in the front courtyard pond went this week - cut down to their very base; the tansy is all down to its quick, the last of the perovskia is down too. I’ve decided to hold back on the remnants of gnarly fennel in consideration of that workshop now slated for the end of next month - for fear of denuding the kitchen garden when I really do want to see vibrant, feathery foliage.
Hi Mickey, Nickie and Leo here again. Thank you for replying to our comments. We are both very keen gardeners, of all plants. Leo loves to read out the seed packets and assist me in our big garden outside in Central Vic where we grapple with extremes of heat and frost! We'd love for you to record your substack or the pod again, both are great. I (Nickie) especially love your tales of garden to table and sharing the abundance and joy of the seasonal garden. The garden is my happy place and I try to share this love with our three kids. Gardening is the best!
Hi Mickey, Nickie here. Leo's mum. Leo and I loved listening to your podcast, Leo especially liked your voice! We are both keen gardeners. We hoped that you might produce more episodes of your old podcast, and I told Leo that you now have a substack and that you may read it out. Sadly though, it's not your voice on the audio! Oh well, I still enjoy your substack. Many thanks for all the great content. Nickie (and Leo)