A View From (Just Outside) The Greenhouse; It’s The Weather, Stupid!

I’m “penning” this missive a little earlier that I normally would, as I have a busy weekend coming up. Accordingly, it won’t be as up to date as I’d normally like, but I’m sure my loyal reader will understand and grant me a little leeway. The weather continues to confound (more on this later) as does politics and all its many and various machinations. Call me a cynic if you like, but someone paying an Only Fans “chuff hawker” to throw a milkshake over a prospective Parliamentary candidate, thereby ensuring twenty four hours of wall to wall publicity for both parties involved, isn’t exactly beyond the realms of possibility, is it? It could have been worse I suppose. Ed Davey could have turned up, floating just off Clacton Pier, dressed in a jester costume and rubber ring, in an effort to convince the electorate, via Robert Pestons’ “X” feed, that (unlike the aforementioned Farrij) he’s a serious “conviction driven” politician.

I’ve probably mentioned that I’d (somewhat begrudgingly) bought turmeric and ginger roots, in the hope that I may be able to produce both in the greenhouse. The process has been frustrating and the ginger still hasn’t germinated (nor does it seem likely too) but after several weeks of watching and wondering, both the pots with turmeric germinated and seem healthy enough, although I was worried I may have drowned them. Water, both the lack of it and the excess, may well be my nemesis this particular year. Any road up, all things being equal, I’m hoping to at least have fresh turmeric, if not ginger, to grate into my morning beetroot juice and cider vinegar “cocktail”.

You know those jobs you keep putting off, the ones that really seem both mind numbingly boring and ultimately pointless? This week I decided I couldn’t leave this particular one any longer so, having borrowed Mrs C’s “Keep Calm And Carry On Weeding” kneeling mat I set about painstakingly weeding the two raised beds, one containing kohl-rabi and beetroot and the other leeks (which also needed thinning out) and onions. I did it while it was raining, to take advantage of the give in the soil, using the blade of my trusty penknife to gently ease out those stubborn buggers that wouldn’t be teased out with thumb and forefinger. I didn’t end up losing any leeks, I simply moved them around a bit, replanting in spots where seeds hadn’t germinated. It may not look much of a job, but I stuck at it for two mornings. Pleased with the result, but the hip knows it’s been to work!

I took the plunge, as it were, and dug over a section of the smaller remaining patch to the back of the capsicum “section” and got the aubergines in. Only five plants, but if they look as if they’re going to be successful I may well try for another half dozen or so. I recently tried a dish called Baba Ganoush and was quite taken with it, having never really seen the point of aubergines (especially the purple variety), although I did once grow a white and purple striped “finger” variety, which hid well in a tray of roasted summer vegetable. Nowt venture, nowt gained, as they say.

I posted a similar picture last time round. I’m not being lazy, but there are a couple of recent additions, including a short row of sweetheart cabbage and another go at getting some chard started. Outside sowing of this particular plant has been troublesome, I think it’s more dependent on the weather than most things, which is a bit surprising, given its Swiss origins. On the plus side, having almost given up on outside grown peas from a heritage strain, the recent “flood” seems to have kick-started the germination process and there are at least a dozen healthy looking plants popping up. Having said that, I’m not counting my bowls of broad bean and pea risotto quite yet.

Over the years, as the roof timbers have suffered the brunt of the weathering, there’s been a natural adaptation of the venting system. At one time there were twelve opening vents, manually controlled by levers either side of the door. Over time, and for expediency’s sake, seven of them ended up disconnected from the pivot and were fixed in the closed position. It wasn’t the ideal solution, but the mechanics behind the repair and/or replacement of each skylight was something of a time consuming and complex business, not least because it required one man with three arms and the time to get up there and make a proper job of it. The head of buildings and maintenance, who now has a little more time on his hands (don’t tell him I said that) put his thinking cap on and came up with the simple (ingenious) idea of utilising a “dead man”. Not a corpse, but a piece of rigid metal about thirty inches long, that screws to the frame and holds it in place whilst the “lost” hinges and the folding fulcrum that actually opens the skylight are fitted. Three down, four to go!

After much cogitation surrounding where to put the turmeric (understanding that, as a root crop it needs to be in “loose” soil) I decided on the rather packed down area to the front of the aubergines. I dug two holes around eighteen inches deep which I back filled with a mix of loose-ish soil, compost and small pebbles, before lightly packing the compost from the pots around the plants and covering with a little more sieved soil. I haven’t bothered checking which type of soil it prefers, I’m getting less rough in my work, but I do have a reputation to maintain. Crossed fingers and diluted nettle water will hopefully do the trick.

I hadn’t planned to make my last paragraph about the weather, I’ve been down that road more than once, but the risible nonsense from The Meteorological Office, informing us it had taken the George Orwell quote; “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” to its logical conclusion, by revealing that wet, windy and decidedly cool May was, in fact, the warmest May since the end of the Mesozoic era, couldn’t be allowed to pass without comment. The inference, of course, is that “man” and his filthy habit of belching millions of cubic tonnes of a gaseous, “highly polluting” trace compound into the atmosphere is solely and irredeemably responsible for the tissue of lies they now refer to as “Klimate Khange”. Ignore planetary oscillation, volcanic eruptions and unusual (rarely occurring) solar activity, ignore very credible evidence that, throughout the history of mankind “extreme weather events” have occurred without warning and that real climate change, evidenced by the unpredictability of weather patterns, is something we’ve had to live with, as a race, since the beginning of history. “Acid rain” came and went, holes in the Ozone Layer were mended and the “greenhouse” effect, which was going to see us all off in the 1970’s, if we hadn’t all already frozen to death, was easily remedied by people switching to roll-on deodorants. All this that matters little, there are vast sums of money to be made from the climate grift and plenty of unscrupulous people wanting a share. There are examples aplenty I could quote, but I’ll finish with a home-grown one. In 2009, quoting from a report he’d commissioned in 2006, Gordon Brown (he of the manse and cheap bullion salesman fame) said that “We have just 50 days left to chart the course of the next 50 years” adding that the Himalayan glaciers could all have disappeared by 2030 (or thereabouts) and the Arctic ice-caps were rapidly disappearing. Al Gore he ain’t. The weather in the British Isles on the 80th anniversary of The D Day landings has been, to all intents and purposes, almost a mirror of how it was on that fateful day itself. This (no doubt unintended) nugget of truth was brought to us by The Meteorological Office, via the ever reliable BBC Weather people. There’s an irony there, somewhere.
 

© Colin Cross 2024