KW-14 Especially cheffy

and a tomato house gets prepped.

Gardeners in the winter spend a lot of time reading old gardening books, planning new beds, arranging the growing season in their minds, and spending as much time wandering the gardens of their imaginations, even when they are trapped inside by the long dark nights and the hard frozen ground.

when you’re talking about vegan fine dining, you’re talking a lot of the time about mushrooms. For the second time, I found morels growing at the Barracks. I shall be sautéing them and scoffing them today.

Well, this year, I am planning on being especially cheffy in all things. We eat the best food that money can’t buy here. Seriously, in the coming weeks, we are going to be drowning in baby leaf spinach, organic asparagus, the first of the lettuce, and the last of the potatoes. In 2024, though, we’re planning on upping the stakes.

I am pretty much always thinking about growing and eating awesome food, but this week, we spent a good amount of time planning the edible flowers, edamame beans, the fanciest herbs, kitchen and medicinal, and the banana trees are now of a size where we will definitely be enjoying curry served on banana leaves at least a couple of times this year. And in the winter, I am already planning a long-standing desire of mine - to cook potatoes 100 different ways!

Weekly pig butt shot

This week, we also got properly cracking with the tomato house. There will be much more progress to show next week, but I thought you might like to see a bit of a picture compilation of a proper start of the process.

Lots of things can all happen at the same time. We’re going to be making the majority of the structure with roundwood. This is your pirate using a Swedish drawknife to scrape off the bark (and the phloem and the cambium) off the structural elements. All we want is the hardwood, or xylem, that makes up the majority of a tree. The bark provides the tree with a lot of protection when it is growing, but when it is dead, it just traps water inside, making it more likely to rot faster.

The whole of the front of the structure will be these super fancy windows I got from a guy I know whose job it is is to pull down buildings. They had a quick spray wash in the sunshine yesterday. We’ll give them a proper clean as well.

And, of course, no tomato house should be without proper foundations. We are building very proper foundations!

And so, this week:

• Sowing the last of the summer wheat (I got about half of it in last week)

• I really want to try the first couple of rows of soya beans and sweetcorn as well. It’s quite risky going in this early, but it’s worth a go perhaps.

• I guess we really are into April now. It wouldn’t hurt to get a load more other seeds into the pots. I’d like to start off some peas and beans. And pumpkins. And kale. I have a strong urge for kale.

• The posh composting toilet needs a bit of extra strength after being blown over in the winter. We’ll probably do that.

• Go for a swim. I really fancy a nice long swim.

As you can see, another busy week. I hope you all have a good one too. Enjoy the lengthening evenings, and be excellent to each other

Your loving

Pirate Ben

xoxo