KW-22 It's oh so quiet

An understanding of systemic risk

It’s all gone a little multiple personality in the vegetable gardening world. I am simultaneously miles behind where I should be, and further ahead than ever before.

Tony is watching you. Always.

Let’s do a quick recap of where we are.

Potatoes - some are doing great, some appear not to be coming at all. And that’s some of the second earlies. This is troublesome.

Tomatoes - awesome. We’re doing great on tomatoes. Twenty in the polytunnel, 36 in the field. Now we just have to see what the weather thinks about us having tomatoes this year. Hopefully, it is more generously disposed than last year was. I have taken some precautions, but still, it’s 80% down to airborne funguses now.

Beans - behind. No doubt about it. I might end up without enough. Which would be bad.

The rest of the vegetables - kinda here and there. The pumpkins are doing bad. The greens are doing good. Nearly all the roots are in. If the last ones go in the ground in the next few days, that’s still ok.

There is a LOT of rhubarb. Of course, don’t eat the leaves, stick them on the compost heap

The vineyard - The ground isn’t ready this year. I have put in 8 rows of sunflowers, 7 of quinoa, 10 of fodder beets, 1 of potatoes and some sweetcorn. Maybe 4, maybe 6. I think 4. We might only get sunflowers. Pulling up new ground and expecting it to be ready just a week or two later is crazy. Unless you have access to at least 100 tonnes of well rotted compost. Which I don’t. It’ll be better next year.

So, in summary, where we are is “the end of May”. It’s always like this.

Let’s have some photos.

a bit of a wildflower montage. The colour explosion at the barracks at the moment is stunning. And I get to enjoy it all on my own. 😕

The one success of the vineyard this year (other than getting it ready for next year) seems to be the sunflowers. So yay for being self sufficient in sunflower oil. If someone gets me an oil press for my birthday 😄

I gave at least 2 seconds serious thought to delaying this newsletter until this afternoon when these bottles will shine with the back-lit afternoon sun. I guess I’ll post it on IG later today

Main job for this week is going to be tidying this all up. It doesn’t look too shabby now, but you wait until next Monday!

Tomatoes in the polytunnel

And with that, I will sign off and wish you all a great week. If you ever have any food-producing questions for me, shoot them over. I’ve always got time for advice!

What’s going on in your garden this week?

Love you all

The Pirate Ben

(now also on TikTok. Ulp)

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