Some of my best ideas come to me when I am at the gym. On Sunday afternoon while at the gym I was thinking about our next symposium and my need for good vegetable and the idea come to me to cover the sorrel in fleece so it really gets moving, giving me a great crop the last week of February.
We have lifted the last of the carrots so that the area can be dug, I want the place in good order before I go off on my tour in six-week and Thomas looks after the garden. We are going to have rain this week so I am going to use the time to make lots of different soups to freeze for the next symposium, the carrots will be a base for one soup. The variety is C. ‘Chantenay Red Cored’, they do smell great.
I have really enjoyed looking at this wild Antirrhinum on my morning runs through the city because it is a plant that I grow in a pot in the kitchen yard at GD. The seed was collected here in Jerusalem and I have grown it for at least two years and very much enjoyed it. It grows out of the walls on the side of the road, you also see it in rocky areas. They have seed setting on them now, mine does not set seed in England.
It is great to be back here in Jerusalem and catch up with all the very interesting things going on in the Botanical Garden. But I am also very happy to see how much my friends Lior and Ayala have done with the little park garden in front of their apartment, they now have a good vegetable garden.
With morning after morning of good frosts it is worth thinking about the vegetables that you need to lift the day before. 4pm is a good time to lift them. The ground is not hard and the light is still good. I have lifted root vegetables today to make soup tomorrow morning. We have a good crop of parsnip this year.
I did ask at the end of autumn that we get some good frosts this winter and we are getting them. I did not remember that with a good nights frost you often get a great sunrise, my bedroom window looks east so I have the best view of them. With a little Justin Bieber on it is a perfect start to the day.
The summer raspberries are now tied in and cleaned up ready for their moment in the summer when they start to fruit. We now just have to weed the area and then feed it in spring when the leaves start to develop, this maybe a job for Thomas, I must start a list. It is great to see the plants in good order, like a fresh-cut rough hedge.
We have not had the rain day that I wanted to bring me inside to make a list of the seeds that I need for this year but today we had snow which meant that I stayed in this morning and made the list. I have found a few new things to try. I was able to get out into the fruit cage after coffee and enjoy the snow with a clear sunny day after a night and morning of snow.
It may not be a day of rain that keeps me in but a snow day. The great thing about England when it snow’s is that the whole country stops because we do not have enough snow to get all the equipment needed to keep the country moving like they do in Europe of the U.S. We are lucky, we get snow days, the country stops and takes a breath. If we have snow still in the morning then the dogs and me will go out a shake the snow off the evergreens and I will bake a potato for lunch.
I did think I would have had a seed order to Kyle by now, maybe we need a day of rain for me to sit in and do it. I was very happy to get some more seeds in the post from Antonia who runs are great residency called ‘First Food’. Antonia has become my Amaranthus seed supplier.
Great Dixter Vegetable Garden 