Gardening
Siege rations
Denis Wood
When Maud came the other day she opened a seed catalogue and said, "Now you must get forward with our parsnips, Avonresister is the one, bred at the National Vegetable Research Station ... Why': Whatever's the matter with you. You look pale."
"Please don't," I said, retching a little, "I really cannot have them here, sickly-sweet and soapy."
"You'll be sorry one day," said Maud with a sniff. "If you don't grow your own decent vegetables you will be looking for roots and berries in the hedgerows by next year, the way we're going. You really must concentrate on food values. I have told you about sprouting broccoli, Brussels sprouts and other brassicas, but there are others.
"Potatoes, now — you should have ordered your seed potatoes soon after Christmas to make sure of getting them. If for a first early you're going to put in Arran Pilot in March, you should have trayed this up for chitting by now because this only takes about four weeks to sprout. Most of the others take about eight weeks, so you will be all right with your main crops for planting in April, but you'll still have to look slippy getting them trayed up. You could have a few Edwards, but they are not immune from wart-disease, so go chiefly for Majestic, the best one for baking anyway; and knowing the way you like to give yourself treats, you could have a few of Sutton's Pink Fir Apple, a lemon-fleshed, waxy gentleman, lovely as new potatoes and good in salads.
"Then onions. You can sow these in March in drills in very well manured rich soil, and thin the young plants progressively to six or eight inches. Look after them, hoe out the weeds, but don't give them too much water. You can also reserve the space and richen up the soil for some onion sets — you plant these six inches apart in April. They are less likely to bolt to seed and more resistant also to onion fly and mildew. Ailsa Craig would be the best for you. It makes a good, large onion, fairly mild, and a large baked onion can make you think you are getting more for a meal than you are.
"Pulses are nourishing. Get some broad beans in at once. The best for you to sow now is one of the Windsors. Try Sutton's Universal Green Windsor. And then peas — it is late now for the early round-seeded peas, so wait a week or two until March, and put in some of the sweeter wrinkled ones: for example, Little Marvel, only 20 ins high and not really needing pea sticks, but all the better for them because of the protection against wind which they give. Then go in for Hurst's Green Shaft, whose pods have eleven or twelve peas in each. It is also given the top accolade for
flavour in Thompson and Morgan's catalogue; they hang out at Ipswich. And then to spoil yourself again, you could have a few of those French petit pois, Gullivert. If you are pushed for space, peas will do quite well in light shade.
"French beans and runner beans are full of protein and once started they crop very heavily until the frosts. You sow seeds of French beans out of doors about the middle of April, and of runner beans (which are rather more tender) about the middle of May. But with your greenhouse and cold frames you could sow both in peat pots under glass at the end of March, harden them off in frames in April, and get good, well-started plants into the ground by June 1. Get Phenix as a French bean, it is pencil-podded and stringless. Real scarlet runners usually get stringy and instead I would go for one of the pole beans. Try Dobie's (of Llangollen) Blue Lake White Seeded, which is said to be entirely stringless.
"You look as though you Could do with rhubarb from time to time, so in March get roots from your horse-faced girlfriend down the road, plant them and wait until next year when you begin to pull them — you never know how long all this is going on.
"You can diddle in lettuce and spinach and radish and carrots here and there between your peas, etc. I leave that to you. You cannot really afford the time this year to put in asparagus, globe artichokes or seakale, or any of the things that really make life worth living, but it is your own fault. You should have foreseen all this nonsense and started earlier.
"Here is a bottle of parsnip wine — it will make a man of you."
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