Summer starts when the beans and the beet break though
Tuesday evening at the plot. It is a ‘leaf day‘, the first for a while and I am keen to get in salad and spinach seed. The claytonia has flowered, so too last year’s rocket. Even the mizuna is a foot high and getting nettley, fribrous, and I am craving something newer, sweeter, greener.
Shocked by how much everything has shot up in the few days we were away. The kale has grown six inches, the aquadulce broad beans are covered in flowers, the betroot seedlings have broken through. But my greatest excitement is reserved for the potatoes. Mauve and green shoots are scattered through the square. The first, oddly, are the later varieties, Yetholm Gypsy and Skerry Blue. If we get to eat them before the rats – or the blight – we’ll be in allotment heaven.
I lay in a long row of red leaves: Brown Envelope‘s Outredgeous lettuce, Bulls Blood and some of the amaranth I brought back from the Kerala agricultural college. Add a couple short rows of the Herbary‘s Bloomsdale spinach, which I am pathetically excited about. Have tended to leave spinach too late so it bolts and usually stick to tried-and-tested chard. But have very high hopes for this.
After adding a half row of dill between the fennel and the parsley, I cut some mizuna, the last of the red frill and rocket for supper and pull some kale to have Chinese style for another supper. And it is still properly light when I get home. Who could want for more (except maybe to eat it all tomorow)? So who else is getting to their garden or allotment these long evenings?
