Snowdrops, winter harvests and kitchen gardens
Snowdrop season, my winter harvests, growing indeterminate potatoes, a visit to the kitchen garden at the Newt and much more
Snowdrop Season
We are well into Snowdrop Season now and it’s big thing locally. I’m about 20 minutes from Shepton Mallet where they hold an annual Snowdrop Festival (12-18 February). The first person to ‘domesticate’ the snowdrop was James Allen and he was born in Shepton – so the annual Snowdrop Project celebrates his legacy, the history of the town as well as the flower itself. At this time of year, the town roundabouts and open spaces are carpeted in snowdrops, so you get a great feeling by just driving around the town. The festival covers walks, talks, creative workshops, art, music, drama and much more.
Three local partner gardens are part of the celebrations – The Bishop’s Palace in Wells, Kilver Court Gardens in Shepton Mallet, and Yeo Valley Organic Garden near Blagdon and all three are holding open days.
And another event in the area that I can’t overlook, is the Festival of Snowdrops at East Lambrook Gardens near South Petherton in Somerset, running for the month of February. It was the home of galanthophile Margery Fish and the current owners have 140 varieties on show and more than 80 varieties on sale. I really really must make an effort to visit next week.
Winter harvests and potatoes
We are fast approaching the ‘Hungry Gap’, that in-between time when the autumn and winter crops are finishing but spring ones are still to get underway. Supplies are holding up in my kitchen garden and I’ve been picking leeks, celeriac, Brussel sprouts, kalettes, perennial Taunton Dene leaves, potatoes and sea beet, and I still have plenty of stored onions and squash.
And yes, I am still digging up potatoes …. I grow a range of varieties and all were dug up in autumn, except the Sarpo Mira. The Sarpo range of potatoes were bred by the innovative Sárvári family in Hungary more than 40 years ago. Their breeding programme produced potatoes with late blight resistance. Fast forward two decades to when some promising potatoes were sent for trial in Scotland. They were spotted by David Shaw, who went on to set up the Sarvari Research Trust in 2002 at his base in North Wales, where he was already researching blight resistance. The first Sarpo variety to be added to the UK’s National List was Sarpo Mira. It is incredibly blight resistant - I have seen trial fields where the rows of other varieties were blighted and dead, but Sarpo Mira stood unaffected. Since then, many more varieties have been added to the list.
Ten years ago, I was one of the many contributors to a crowdfund set up to save the Sarvari Trust, with the money helping the company to make the step from research to production, enabling gardeners and growers to buy these potatoes. It was a tricky time for the company and the Sarpo potatoes could have been lost, illustrating just how difficult it was, and still is, for small innovative companies to get funding and to be able to compete with the big guys. I remember covering the campaign in Organic Farming magazine that I edit. Nobody in the commercial potato world wanted these potatoes to be successful, not the agrochem companies who preferred farmers to grow potatoes that needed lots of chemicals, the farmers who wanted to buy large quantities of seed potato, nor the supermarkets who only want to stock customer’s favourites, like King Edward, a variety that has so little resistance to blight that it needs spraying multiple times a season. It was left to the smaller seed potato suppliers, growers and gardeners to keep the Sarpo potato alive. Ten years on and they are still campaigning for sustainable potato production.
Sarpo Mira has two useful characteristics. Firstly, it is indeterminate which means it continues to grow in the ground until killed by frost, the tubers getting larger and larger. Also, it has extended dormancy, so you don’t need to dig the tubers up in autumn, but can leave them in the ground and harvest when needed. This means that growers can harvest what they need to supply veg boxes etc and avoid the expense of having to store them. Yes, you run the risk of slug damage (there was quite a bit this year), but you don’t end up with a bag of sprouted tubers. Tastewise, it’s not the best but I find the pros outweigh the cons.
And against all the rules, I have a bed where I planted Sarpo Mira around 6 years ago. I failed to remove all the tubers and now I have ended up with a self sustaining crop – I take what I need and leave the rest in the ground – rather like Jerusalem artichokes. The new plants pop up around my seabeet and do very well. Yes, there is risk of blighted tubers remaining underground and I could have kicked off a potato cyst nematode infestation, but I did start with certified seed potato [the cysts of the nematode are carried on the tubers so certified seed potatoes avoids this].
When to plant potatoes
Well, its all rather flexible, especially in these climate changing times. You can get away with so much most years.
· You can plant early in Feb and March to get those earlies in June, but make sure you protect the first shoots from frost, or grow them in containers under cover.
· You can plant them late – maincrops don’t go in the ground until late March, even April if the weather isn’t great, and you can expect a crop around 100-120 days later. As summer is extending further into autumn, a late start in spring is becoming less of a risk, especially with the indeterminate and blight resistant Sarpos.
· And, come August, you can plant some earlies for a Christmas harvest.
Potato Days
There are plenty of online outlets where you can buy seed potato. but I love going to the Pennard Plants Potato days. I went to the one held at Castle Cary on last Sunday. Pots and pots of potatoes were on tables, lined up in A-Z order with informative labels. You pick up paper bags and a pen and help yourself. You get charged by the seed potato, so you can have as many or as few of each, or lots of different types – its such great fun. There’s plenty of advice on offer too from Chris and his team and also from fellow potato enthusiasts.
Its not just potatoes. There are onion seeds, rhubarb crowns, soft fruits, fruit trees, Saffron crocus, and loads of seeds. Needless to say, I bought far too many potatoes and seeds ….. but I did resist the soft fruit canes. And it was a great chance to catch up with a few friends.
The remaining potato days run by Pennard Plants take place at Marshfield nr Bath on 17 and Frome on 18 February, plus they will attend the Snowdrop and Plant Fair at Kingston Bagpuize House nr Abingdon on 25 Feb.
If you are further north, check out potato days held in Wattlesborough, Shropshire on 10 Feb, Mold on 17 Feb, Preston potato day 18 Feb and Caldbeck 25 February https://www.growvegandfruit.co.uk/events/
If you know of any others please add in the comments. Are there any in the SE or East Anglia?
Part 2 at the Newt
I promised more on my visit to the Newt. The ornamental kitchen garden is a large formal space, mostly laid out with traditional rectangular beds, broken up with arches and ponds, two large soft fruit houses, some very large cold frames and borders of trained soft fruits.
I have been watching how Ellie Dunn, the kitchen gardener, has been trialing some new ideas over the last couple of years; introducing more flowers and dividing up the larger beds with fruit trees, more bark paths and colourful annual beds, as you can see from my video.
Ellie used to work at Barnsley House, so I can see where some of these ideas come from. It was my visit to Rosemary Verey’s fab potager at Barnsley House that first inspired me to dig up a corner of a field and establish a kitchen garden. And I have just heard that Barnsley House has been bought by The Pig Hotel Group so I know the potager is in good hands….
So, back to the Newt. The huge cold frames are deep with compost and there was a great mix of winter brassica leaves including several kales – Nero di Toscana, Red Russian, and Dazzling Blue, which was new to me. This had red veins and blue green leaves. Have you grown this variety before? I see its listed with Vital Seeds and Real Seeds, so I may have to make a supplemental seed order.
I have taken a short video of the hügelkultur, or mound, beds (see below) at the Newt. I have used this style of bed for a while. A lot of effort goes into digging out a trench and backfilling with woody material, wood chip and compost but this provides a stash of carbon for many years. The material is quite moisture retentive too, which helps in dry years, and being mounded, the growing conditions on the two sides are different so you can grow a wider range of crops.
Valentine’s Day flowers
With Valentine’s almost upon us, a word to remind you all (but I bet you know anyway) that there are hardly any British grown flowers at this time of year, so most of next week’s offerings will have been imported. Far better to have some stems of Daphne with its rich sweet scent in a vase.
Talks and Workshops
Talk 9 February Sally on the Climate Change Garden, Wanstrow village hall, near Shepton Mallet – open to all
Workshop 24 March Introduction to growing fruit and vegetables with Sally at her garden at Empire Farm in Somerset
Workshop 5 April Growing polytunnel and undercover edibles over winter with Kim from her garden in West Wales
Workshop 19 April Get climate change savvy GYO course with Kim from her garden in West Wales
Happy Gardening
Sally