Tuesday 24 September 2013

A Crazy Spud and Crimes in Cold Blood

The work of some utter shithouse or other
Sunday gone was a day of tidying up, weeding and covering up sections of the plot that shall harbour no more crops until next year. Such activities do not make for great or interesting pics, so apologies for the lack of veg-porn, but the season's abundance is very much drawing to a close.

We'd finally hacked down the insanely prolific climbing bean plants the week before and have frozen a couple of large bagfuls of what was left on them. The only harvesting of any note that went on over this last weekend was the digging up of the last spuds to remain in the soil, our Pink Fir Apple main crop. I had only planted three small rows of these as for some reason I doubted whether they would grow well at all. These fears proved fairly groundless as I ended up with a a fair trough full of them, most free from slug damage too. This in spite of the shameful mess I'd allowed the patch to get into; see if you can spot a spud plant among the docks and poppies.

Embarrassing
As well as growing in reasonable quantities, this type of spud wins the award for daftest-shaped potato hands down. In addition to some snigger-inducing tripod shaped affairs were such beauties as this.

This is all one potato. Mental.
Elsewhere, we plucked a few more cougettes and a decent batch of raspberries, which have confounded expectations - I thought we were going to have to pull the canes up and start again - to produce a very welcome and enjoyable crop. I think we have a quite late variety as they are still producing perfectly good fruits even now.

Still going strong
All of which relative positivity leads me to the point where I have close this missive with much darker tidings. **Spoiler Alert- Mild Swearing Ahead** You see, some absolute neanderthal piece of shit fuck-wit (or fuck-wits?) decided it would be a great idea to go drag their knuckles around from tap to tap, taking a hacksaw to each, removing the (more or less worthless) plastic taps as they went (see pic at top of post). Presumably whoever did it has some unresolved beef with the people who run the allotments, but quite how they think sawing a bunch of taps is going to advance any particular cause is beyond me. At least they did it now when water is not scarce, rather than in the height of the heatwave when this would have been a total pisser. It must have taken a fair bit of time to saw through all the taps that have been done. If people can't grow a bit of veg next to each other without falling out to the point where criminal damage seems like a proportionate measure, it doesn't bode well for some of the globe's more intractable problems. Israel/Palestine? Forget it mate. Sometimes people are such unutterable shits.

Anyway, sod them. There are still more than enough very nice people on the plots to make it a pleasure to be down there.

Finally, I cut off as many green tomatoes as I could find on the remaining plants, and put these, optimistically, on the living room window. Who am I kidding? There's no way these will ripen before going off. Looks like another batch of green tomato chutney is in the post.

Chutney to be.

10 comments:

  1. I can't believe your taps...I really don't get the mentality of some people....and they certainly haven't gained anything by it!!!

    Your pink firs look great...they are usually a good cropper.

    I really need to get the rest of my spuds out the ground....maybe the weekend!!

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  2. Do you think the vandalism was someone on the plot rather than an outside job?

    Do you know which variety of raspberries you have as if they are an autumn fruiting variety they need a different pruning regime

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The general view seemed to be that it was an "inside job".

      I've no idea what kind of rasps they are as we inherited them. They weren't great last year and I was planning to uproot them, but a sterling performance this year may have earned them a stay of execution. How should we be pruning?

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    2. If they are autumn fruiting varieties then in spring you cut down all the old canes to ground level and should have new canes start to grow which will fruit later in the year.

      Summer fruiting ones will have produced new non fruiting canes which will look fresh and green. With these you cut all the canes that have fruited down to the ground and tie in the ones produced this year. My guess is that if it is fruiting now and hasn't produced fruits earlier that it is autumn fruiting

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  3. Oh dear, what rotters.
    Love it when you find a funny shaped potato, I've just harvested my first ever sweet potato.
    I won't be getting many raspberries next year as the dog has chewed all the canes, mine is summer fruiting. Just a tip for the tomatoes, put them in a bag with a ripe banana, they will be red in no time.

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    Replies
    1. So I saw, are they much bother to grow? Might have a shot next year. Our toms weren't going to ripen before going off, banana or not; they're chutneying as we speak!

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  4. How pathetic to do that to the taps! Love that potato.

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  5. Having the same experience - with raspberries, not taps, thank goodness. Mindboggling!!!

    Ran out of space for the usual Pink Fir Apple this year, so no knobbly tatties this year.

    Your tomatoes will ripen with time, and the banana treatment may assist too.

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