The Great Leek Scape

Posted on January 7, 2022 by james

Or perhaps not, given today’s weather, but the weather is presumably what is responsible for the behaviour of this particular leek that I noticed in the veggie plot yesterday and photographed today after a snow shower with the biggest snowflakes I have ever seen.

Given the purple sprouting broccoli that has been flowering for over a month and lettuces that are trying to flower I guess I shouldn’t really be surprised, but it is another indication of how messed up some of the plant world has become this year.

I had my attention drawn earlier in the week to the BSBI New Year Plant Hunt, which records the number of different native or naturalised plant species found to be flowering over the first few days of the year. Historically apparently only twenty to thirty species would normally be expected to be in flower, but last year the total reached 714 (an increase from 627 in 2019 and 615 in 2020) and this year the provisional result is 897! I have no idea what this means for the future of planning winter vegetable production, but I don’t imagine it’s going to make it any easier.

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Growing Degree Days

Posted on January 7, 2022 by james

I’ve come across the concept of Heating Degree Days or Cooling Degree Days in work I’ve done (basically the number of days where the temperatures has crossed some specific threshold where heating or cooling of a building is required) and have used it for some years, but only in the last couple of days I’ve also come across the concept of “Growing Degree Days”, which is a similar measure where the temperature exceeds a given value (often 5°C, it would appear) that allows plants to grow.

As an example, if the threshold is 5°C, then four days where the average temperature was 8°C would constitute twelve degree days (the sum of the actual temperature less the threshold for each day).

It seems that research may support the idea that to within a relatively small margin, specific varieties of plant reach the point of flowering once a given number of degree days have occurred, I think from the starting point of the plant having developed two true leaves.

Whilst flowering isn’t an issue for quite a few vegetables because we eat them before they get that far, I think it might be interesting to track the numbers for those that I do want to flower, so this year I’m going to try to record the necessary data. If it proves practical then I can continue to do so and see how the figures compare year on year using the data from my weather station to calculate the “GDD” figures.

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Swimming, 6th January 2022

Posted on January 6, 2022 by james

I have to admit that I really wasn’t feeling keen on swimming today. It may just be a reaction to the Covid booster that I had on Tuesday, but I was feeling quite tired. It never feels as bad as when you’re contemplating not going though, so I dragged myself off to the pool and whilst it was hard work, I think it was definitely useful.

My 50m reps were pretty much on the pace I’d want, though I had some failures and quite early on too, with my first coming on rep nine. I’m happy to see the pace coming back up, but not happy to go backwards in terms of the first failure. Hopefully I can improve on that next time.

My 25m reps were close to the pace I’d like to see, but towards the middle of the set I began to wonder if my head position might be a little too high. I suspect that having a raised head creates a larger bow wave, causing more drag as my head has to push water upwards, and allows my hips to drop slightly as my body rotates about the centre of buoyancy, again creating more drag. I spent the remainder of the set deliberately trying to lower my head a little beyond what felt normal and it did appear to result in an increase in speed. I think I probably need to experiment a bit more with this. Sometimes it would be great to have a video so I can compare how things look, but in a public pool that’s just not going to happen.

Overall though, I’m looking forward to my next session (on Sunday if everything goes to plan).

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Garlic comparison

Posted on January 6, 2022 by james

As I posted a couple of days ago, this year’s garlic has finally made it out of the ground. I’d been feeling a bit apprehensive about what was going on because it seems to have been far slower to get going than last year.

In 2020 I couldn’t initially find the variety of garlic that I wanted to grow, so took what I could get and planted it outdoors on 10th October. I later did manage to find someone stocking the variety I was after (Solent Wight), so I bought some of that and planted it in the polytunnel towards the end of November.

This time around I planted my own saved garlic, both outdoors and in the polytunnel, on pretty much the same date in October as I had done the previous year. Now I’ve looked back in detail, the difference is quite surprising. These are the only two sets of leaves showing above ground outdoors from what will be this year’s harvest on 5th January:

By comparison, this photo was last year’s crop, with the photo actually taken a month earlier.

And in the polytunnel, these are the only two shoots I could find yesterday:

Whereas last winter the plants were at pretty much the same stage two weeks earlier despite having been planted five weeks later.

Given that late autumn and winter have been so mild so far, I’m surprised that the previous crop should have been so far ahead at this point. I know that garlic needs a period of cold to develop properly, but I believe that relates to bulb formation. I don’t know if it has anything to do with the production of foliage. The RHS website says:

Most varieties need one to two months at 0–10°C (32–50°F) for good bulb development.

which is a bit of a concern given that we’ve barely had more than a few days below 10°C so far this winter.

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Swimming, 5th Jan 2022

Posted on January 6, 2022 by james

First swim of the new year, and not entirely to my surprise the pool was unusually busy. Past years suggest that it will have all calmed down again by the end of the month 🙂

I wasn’t expecting too much today as my shoulder was feeling a little battered after my Covid booster shot yesterday, on top of which I’d only swum once in the last two weeks I think, but actually it wasn’t so bad. I did have a few slow reps where I was avoiding other swimmers, but generally I was less than a second off where I’d like to be for the 50m reps. And oddly enough my shoulder felt much better for the exercise afterwards.

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At last we have garlic-sign!

Posted on January 4, 2022 by james

I’ve been a little apprehensive about the garlic for next year. I saved four of my best bulbs from this year’s harvest to replant, and did so back in October. Despite the fairly mild weather however there’s been no sign of life whereas last year the bulbs I bought seemed to take off quite fast. I wonder if something to do with the way they’re handled makes that more likely?

Anyhow, today I was out trimming back some of the trees overhanging the compost heaps and veggie plot, occasionally having a little weed of the beds and whilst doing the latter noticed that a few of the garlic bulbs are now making their way out of the ground which is very reassuring.

I’ll have to check the ones in the polytunnel tomorrow. It needs a bit of a tidy up in there now anyhow, as many of the pepper plants have dropped their leaves.

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Smoke #2

Posted on January 2, 2022 by james

This morning I’ve smoked the second batch of cheese, or, at least, the Tesco own-brand cheese. The rest somehow “disappeared” from the fridge and is nowhere to be seen. It’s a mystery…

This time I used apple wood dust from Gwernyfed Wood. I don’t know much about them, but they had a selection of different woods available on that long river place which means I can try a few different ones out.

Getting the smoke generator lit was easier today than yesterday, but I can’t say whether that’s just me starting to get a better feel for it, or if the wood is perhaps drier than the beech I used yesterday. In three hours it burnt further around the generator than the beech, so perhaps the latter explanation might be favourite.

I had to rush out and protect the smoker from the rain halfway through, but nothing disastrous appears to have occurred as a result of a few drops getting onto the smoker and when I finally took the cheese out after three hours it looked pretty much the same as yesterday’s.

It’s now wrapped and in the fridge, and tomorrow I’ll vacuum pack it.

It’s tempting to try some sausages next — just plain pork or something else very simple. I’ll do a bit more reading first though.

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My first attempt at smoking…

Posted on January 1, 2022 by james

Cheddar cheese in this case. It rolls ok, but it’s a pig to get lit 😀

Slightly more seriously, I bought just over a kilo of cheese earlier in the week. Given that this was going to be my first attempt I bought the cheapest I could find. A couple of varieties in fact — Tesco’s own brand extra mature and Pilgrim’s Choice mature. I’ve actually no idea what they taste like before smoking as for obvious reasons we buy pretty much all of our cheese from the local butcher 🙂

I cut half of the cheese into blocks of about 100g.

To see if it would make any difference, I put them on the top and middle shelves in the smoker.

First time around I opted to try the beech dust provided as part of the smoker kit by ProQ. I filled just the outside channels of the smoke generator spiral as I’ve read that the entire outside takes about four hours to burn and that would give me a bit of time in hand if there was any messing about. It’s not been the ideal day for smoking given the temperature (over 14°C here) and because it’s been quite breezy. The latter made the smoke generator a little awkward to get lit and whilst I had a little hole burnt away above the tea light I really wasn’t sure it was going to work.

After a sluggish start it did get going though, and seemed quite happy in the bottom of the smoker.

I checked about an hour and a half in, and whilst the burn hadn’t progressed as far around the spiral as I was expecting it was clearly working so I left it to get on for a little over three hours at which point I removed the smoke generator from the base of the smoker. It still hadn’t burnt as far as I expected.

I’m not sure why that should be at the moment. Perhaps my wood isn’t as dry as it could be, or perhaps the wind interfered with the burning process in some way.

Anyhow, once the smoke generator was out of the way I opened up the smoker and took out the cheese. It’s very clearly changed colour, turning a bright yellow.

I’ve now wrapped the cheese in paper and put it in the fridge. Tomorrow I’ll vacuum pack it and we’ll keep it in the fridge for at least three weeks before tasting it. At least, that’s the plan 🙂

Assuming we have acceptable weather tomorrow I’ve decided to smoke the remaining cheese with apple, firstly to see if we can tell the difference between the two, but also so we can compare it with the apple-smoked cheddar from the butcher.

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Last shot from the plot

Posted on January 1, 2022 by james

For 2021, at least 🙂

I lifted a good couple of dozen leeks to share with my extended family when we saw them just before the new year. Fortunately there are still plenty left for us.

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Pickled jalapenos

Posted on December 29, 2021 by james

I’ve just realised that I meant to show what I did with all my green jalapenos from this year. No idea how I can have forgotten something so important 🙂

I did save a few to stuff and bake, but the majority got sliced up:

I added some sliced garlic cloves and peppercorns to the jalapenos

Then I made up a brine with white wine vinegar, salt and sugar (I can’t recall the exact mix now — I must have it written down somewhere). Once the sugar and salt was dissolved, in went the chiles, garlic and peppercorns, leaving them to simmer for a few minutes.

After which they went into jars. The chiles were packed in first and then the jars topped up with the brine, tipping the jars over once the lids were on so the hot liquid could sterlise the inside of the lid.

We still have an unfinished jar of commercially produced pickled jalapenos, but I’m very much looking forward to opening up the first jar of these quite soon.

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