Having stood in a queue for 20 minutes this week to get fruit and vegetables, it really does bring home the value of growing your own sometimes! We are in what is called the hungry gap between finishing what we grew last year - I had to buy spuds for the first time in 8 months yesterday - and being able to eat what we are growing now - I am hoping for a few broad beans next weekend. I am relieved that the butternut seeds are starting to come up and there are signs that the chilli seeds are also sprouting, but without a decent greenhouse, things get leggy very quickly, so I will need to be on top of potting on or I will get nowhere.
As Father Mark was at the market selling tomato plants, I indulged in a few - he grows old varieties and things you won't always find elsewhere. I got three cherry tomatoes which should have dark or black fruit and a couple of general culinary use tomatoes. On Wednesday I hope to buy the bulk of my tomato, pepper and aubergine needs at the market, where the prices are about half what I paid on Saturday, but the varieties are a lot less interesting. As we are due storms for about a week (according to Meteo France anyway), I planted the tomatoes out under paraffin bidon cloches. We don't use paraffin as a heat source, but neighbours do and we recover the plastic containers for just this purpose. The vegetable areas are almost looking serious now!
John can be seen preparing seed beds - he has carrots, beetroot and two types of radish sown, and carrots are coming up already. The seeds are about 6 years old in general, so it is a bit of an experiment. Less of a trial are the potatoes, and they are coming up now too - today I counted 24 out of the first 32 as showing some growth above ground, which is good to see.
Today's light lunch was very pleasing - eggs from Mac and Jak, baked in ramekins with asparagus from the garden at home. OK so the splash of cream wasn't us, the butter was from Benoit (see yesterday) and the tarragon mustard was from Super U, but the main ingredients were down to us!
Comments