Chris Palmer
In the autumn of my life, I have concluded that there are certain immutable laws that I have to live with…
Whenever I wash up, when I am certain I have finished and I empty the washing-up bowl, there will always be one annoying teaspoon left. Any new shirt I buy will have sleeves far too long for me. My football team will start the season with a flourish, head for the top spot and a pundit or two will say, “This is going to be their season.” They will promptly lose 0-5 to the bottom team and their best player will suffer a cruciate ligament injury, ruling him out for the rest of the season. Are you getting the picture? A weather forecaster will say, “There won’t be any more frosts now.” So I’ll put out my dahlias and then, after a previous warm and sunny day, I’ll wake to find the wind had changed to a northerly in the night and there’ll be a disturbing white cover on the lawn. At this point, some readers are entitled to say, “Is he banging on about the weather again?” My response would be that gardeners, like farmers, bang on about weather all the time, we can’t help it.
We are halfway through the year, and I am desperate for a hot and sunny July because I want to convince the sceptics who say, “You can’t grow sweetcorn in Scotland.” To which my answer would be that here in Ayrshire we enjoy a very favourable climate for plants that would need to be under glass in, say, north-east Scotland. Even in Ayrshire itself there are micro-climates. Certain areas are frost pockets. I’m assured that Dalrymple is one. Those of us who have gardened for a long time will have come to terms with the particularities of their own area.
Sweetcorn can be grown in South Ayrshire, but a good summer helps. By that I mean as much sun and warmth as possible. There are general trends in the weather that appear to be inescapable and can encourage gardeners willing to experiment with plants such as sweetcorn. Here I turn to S.N.I.F.F.E.R. for support. “What’s he going on about now?” I hear you say.
The Scotland and Northern Ireland Forum for Environmental Research (www.sniffer.org.uk) is a charity that has charted the impact of climate change over the past thirty years. Their evidence has established that in northern Britain the length of the growing season, from first to last frost, has increased by four weeks. This is good news for successfully growing a tender plant such as sweetcorn. So next year, give it a go!
As a child in the sixties, I never ate corn on the cob. Our family meals were all very predictable and seasonal. Lots of root crops in the winter, peas in the spring, brassicas and runner beans in the summer. One of my first memories is shelling peas at our kitchen table; something a child being brought up now is unlikely to experience, unless their parents have a garden or an allotment. My personal preference is mangetout peas. The climbing variety can produce a very generous crop from just a few plants. I would recommend a variety called Golden Sweet. The flowers are purple, and the pods are a vibrant yellow colour. It is a very attractive plant and the pods are excellent either raw in a salad or cooked as a vegetable.
In amongst my mangetout peas, runner and climbing French beans, I grow my sweet peas. Gardeners are divided on the best approach to grow them from seed; whether to start in the late autumn or early spring, and whether to sow straight into the garden or indoors, the latter being my preference. I nick the hard shell of the seed with a sharp knife, and sow them in the cardboard tubes from toilet rolls in a moist mixture of compost and perlite. They then jostle for space on my bathroom windowsill like an overcrowded penalty box as a corner is about to be taken. There is never enough room as I’m over ambitious in my early seed-sowing. Once they have germinated, I transfer them to the cool of the garage and let them grow slowly. I plant them out in April.
Now in July my sweet peas are five to six feet tall and in full flower. I choose varieties that promise a heady scent as well as a striking colour. This year my two chosen varieties are Singing The Blues, a deep blue-purple with a long flowering season and lengthy stems, and Matacuna, which has smaller bicoloured flowers. They are both worth a try next year.
I have grown sweet peas for a good number of years. I used to find, however, that the flowering season was disappointingly short. I had an allotment for a few years and always found my neighbours full of good tips. It is how most gardeners learn – trial and error and asking others for advice. One day in early September, I stood admiring a row of sweet peas that had a wonderful display of flowers, several weeks after mine had gone over. Pleased with my obvious admiration, the allotment holder asked me what fertiliser I used for mine. I replied that I used a standard nitrogen-based product that I used for my vegetables. That was my mistake, she explained.
“I’m sorry, Chris. You’ve been encouraging the leaves, but not the flowers.”
When I looked crestfallen, she continued: “Don’t worry, it’s a common mistake. Use a tomato fertiliser. Apply it every fortnight, once the flowers appear.”
So, there it was. I had been doing the wrong thing for a good number of years.
“Don’t forget to keep cutting. And remove any seed pods as soon as you see them.”
Well, I was aware of that, but I nodded and thanked her. That advice over fertiliser has seen me in good stead for many years now.
Back in the vegetable garden, my first early potatoes, planted in late March/early April are ready to be dug. It is a pivotal moment in our household. We love potatoes in our house. Rocket for first earlies, Charlotte for second earlies and Pink Fir Apple as our main crop. They’re waxy rather than flowery. How fussy have I become over the simple tatty?
Supermarkets have made ‘choice’ the most important factor in shopping for food. Globalisation has ensured that most varieties of fruit and veg are available throughout the year. Fresh melons, sweet potatoes and avocados for example. Who even thinks where they are from?
It’s a far cry from our staple diet in early married life. Tinned meatballs and a packet of savoury rice, followed by Angel Delight, also from a packet. That butterscotch variety was so good. I’m getting a Proustian moment as I type this. I’ll need to check if it is still available. Come to think of it, I was also quite partial to Neapolitan ice cream…
In our next edition I’ll consider the merits of autumn raspberries, homemade chutneys and the best place in South Ayrshire for picking brambles.
