Home Again, Home Again

And here I am on the train again, with someone unexpectedly playing a tune on the harmonica – or more accurately that sort of monotonous two-chord drone demonstrated by Alanis Morissette on Jagged Little Pill. I can understand why so many people are crap at the harmonica, but it’s always been a source of wonder for me that they don’t know they’re crap. Oh well.

I’ve spent the last few days working on the characters for a fiction project, working title The Rhymer’s Son. It’s interesting to look at their goals and motivations, but I’ve been so busy solving some logistical problems with the plot that I haven’t yet got a proper handle on the dynamic between the two main characters that is so crucial, even in a fantasy plot like mine. Miss that, and your novel can really only appeal to young men who are, let’s face it, all Aspergers anyway.

In my absence my beloved Witchypoo has harvested the remaining peas which is one of my most hated jobs. Pick, pod, freeze; pick, pod, eat; pick, pod, dry; can you tell I’m not actually all that fond of peas? This year I was conned by Garden Organic who were selling a variety called ‘Sugar Snap’ but which turned out to be – you’ve guessed it – a snow pea rather than a snap pea. Wretched flat things, hardly worth bothering with. My aim next year is to have a couple of half-rows of plump, crispy snap peas that will keep us in fresh pods for the whole of the early summer, with a row of podding peas for freezing or drying or whatever. It’s vital that these are ready all at once (or as close to it as possible) because that maximises my chances of getting someone else to do it.

 

Legumes punctuate the whole of the harvest season for me: broad beans first, then peas, then runner beans, and lastly French beans cropping into the autumn. Next stop, my favourite time of year; carrots, spuds, and long walks in the woods with my mushroom basket. But not today – whatever time I get this evening will be spent making sure the polytunnel is bursting with food during the next hungry gap. That means clearing out strategic spaces, making the first overwintering sowings, and marking out the remaining beds which weren’t fed with compost earlier in the season.

The corrected proofs of the second (and hopefully final) polytunnel book is now back with the publishers, and will be printed in just a few weeks. Whereas the Polytunnel Handbook was more of a technical manual, How to Grow Food in Your Polytunnel is a proper gardening book and I’m really pleased with it. Mark and I set out to show that polytunnels are more than big greenhouses, and how you can use them to have some fresh produce coming in all year round, without heat, even when it’s freezing outside. Forget hot weather crops (although I grow those too of course) – my tunnel really earns its keep from winter through to the end of the hungry gap.

So, on with the sowing – I’ll be glad of the food in April!