Thyme to Learn

understanding what I need to do to grow edibles

I started cooking (having completed the kitchen refit and being delighted to be back at the stove again) and needed some thyme.

Hmm, I thought, growing thyme is something I’m not very good at. Need to learn. And then I was thinking about how I’ve been learning how to grow vegetables at Allotment. It’s been seven years now since I got my first plot and it has been a slow process. Very hard! I’m so envious of people who learned at their Grandmother’s knee!

Ben strimming that first plot for me, 4 August 2019, plus some Courgette plants. I moved next door to a less shady, but equally neglected, plot in 2022

Making some beds on the second plot, May 2022

I realised that the learning can’t be merely theoretical - I’ve read a lot of books and watched a lot of videos, and I don’t knock them, they do really help. But it is the practice, year on year that really does it. That’s what you’d get in the experience of the Grandmother, if you had one.

So… Tomatoes - a-ok, those I have more or less learned. Could be better, I’m sure, but I’m happy with what I’ve got so far - this year, Heritage Seed Library, Stoners no 2 and Brook’s Special and the magnificent Wladeks.

Stoners no 2 and Brook’s Special, Stoners in the bigger pot

Wladeks is the burly beef tomato on the right, still green here

This year I’ve done an experiment and put the usual half dozen plants in my tiny greenhouse, and another 6 in the asparagus bed. Greenhouse have been warm and watered, Asparagus Bed have been competing with Asparagus, not watered at all, and in the open air. They seem to have better flavour than the greenhouse toms. Can this be the case?

My experiment is, of course, flawed, in that I didn’t label them properly and some I didn’t label at all, so I can’t be totally sure what is what… but I think it is the outdoor Stoners no 2 that is the utter best. Even better flavour than Wladeks.

Look at the colour of Stoners no.2 in Asparagus bed, and let me assure you they have taste to match

So tomatoes - I have learned to grow them. If they were piano, I reckon I’d be grade 3.

Some thing are so easy that you don’t need to learn much - once they are going, courgettes are go-ers, all the grower needs to do is keep the water coming. I’m baking them here, with the tasty flowers on, with very thinly sliced Elephant Garlic (yes, I’ve learned how to grow garlic and had a good crop this year).

And it was baking these courgettes where I needed the thyme. I did have some - and as you can see, I have Sage and Rosemary, which I”ve always been able to grow, no problem… and I have learned to grow Parsley, just to complete the song. But thyme I don’t get right.

Thyme, squashed in behind the Back Garden lounger, half -hidden and up against the brick edge. Not ideal growing conditions.

Have some at Allotment too and it’s even worse-looking than this. It’s always a bit twiggy, just hard sticks with a few leaves. So there, that’s a resolution, get better at growing thyme.

After starting to write this, I looked around Allotment to see some good, and one not so good, thing. Let me start with that baddie. Regular readers will know I love homemade compost, I love making it, I love producing it, I love using it. Happily (and perhaps, sorry to say, proudly) I laid a 6 cm layer of my Black Gold across an empty space and sowed some Florence Fennel. A couple of weeks later up it popped, thickly germinated. That’s good, that’s brilliant, that’s the value of organic, homemade compost, I thought. Fennel’s always been really hard to germinate in the past. I think we’ve eaten one homegrown bulb. But look here! Massive success!

‘Florence Fennel’ OR as we should call them, ‘Tomatoes’

Yes, when they had grown enough to be distinguishable, I saw they were all tomato seedlings! Those seeds must have gone into last late summer’s heap, as unripened fruit. There are hundreds of them, and I can’t see one Fennel seedling. A lesson: put the Black Gold down. Let its seeds germinate, hoe all the seedlings off, then sow your Fennel.

And what is Good on the Lotty?

Enjoying cooking Beetroot and French Bean Giant Purple

The beetroot seemed to take about 4 months to become very small roots - I learned I probably didn’t water them enough earlier in the dry weather. But they have good flavour, and I’m sowing more now, in the hope that I can use my learning and keep them well watered. French beans - had a lot of trouble germinating them this year and in the end only had two plants of Giant Purple. But those two plants are producing massively. There is also a white-flowered bean that has just started producing flowers now.

Until I started growing them I had no idea how wonderful French Beans could be, and I’d encourage anyone with a square metre of ground or a large pot to set up a teepee and grow some next year.

Squash ‘Hokkaido’

This year I tried to learn how to grow squash. I’ve failed with these in the past, failed to germinate, or failed to successfully grow, failed to crop. I am still not good on keeping track of the names of varieties - must try harder - but this is definitely Hokkaido. I have some others but I’m not sure what they are called. We’ve eaten one of the Hokkaido - roasted with Allotment onions. Delicious. Many more on the vines. Wonderful when learning has such tangible, such edible, results!