Soilman

This really is getting silly.

I’m up to my neck in cauliflowers. Drowning in ‘em.

Anyone fancy a cauliflower? Eh?

And so the glut begins. Thought I was going to get no cauliflowers at all during the dry patch. Now that it’s been pissing with rain for three weeks, they’re going nuts. I cut all of these this evening, and there are more on the way.

I’d normally be triumphant – boringly, nauseatingly triumphant. But I can’t bring myself to gloat tonight. The News of the World scandal is profoundly depressing me.

It’s not the evil, amoral wankers who hacked that poor, dead girl’s phone – although they sicken me. It’s not even the risible, farcical denials from NOTW upper management that they knew nothing about what was going on.

No, what really bugs me is that several hundred decent journalists (most entirely unconnected with the scandal, and hired long afterwards) are now going to lose their jobs so that everyone in upper management can keep theirs.

There truly is something wickedly immoral at the heart of this whole revolting story. The stench that hovers around the Murdoch name and the Murdoch empire is suffocating – and I speak as a journalist and a NOTW admirer (easy to forget, but they used to do – and have done – some great journalism as well as the end-of-pier kiss ‘n’ tells).

It matters for Americans, too

To my American readers, to whom this may all seem arcane and irrelevant: It matters to you guys, too. The Murdoch family, through News Corp, owns vast media interests in the USA, and is bidding for more.

Americans who care about and have any say in good corporate governance need to have a long, hard look at how News International has been behaving on this side of the pond. Do you really think these behaviours have been confined to Britain? What on earth has been going on elsewhere?

Are these people you want running anything important, significant or influential in your country?

Thought not.

The cauliflowers go out on the plot today, and that means a fair bit of aggro.

I hate slug pellets, and use them for nothing else. But you’re pretty much forced into using them on young brassicas – that is, if you want them to grow into old brassicas.

Then there’s the brassica collars, which fit around the base of the young plants to keep off cabbage root fly. Then there’s the netting, which is all rather boring to assemble.

But it’s all worthwhile, because fresh cauliflower – just cut, not harvested some time last week – tastes so, so much better.

Small is hardly beautiful in the vegetable world, but this year it’s the best I’m going to get… so I’m bloody thrilled.

In the midst of the July heatwave, I was convinced my cauliflowers were going to die or produce mini-heads. To my own utter astonishment, they’re now starting to head. Er, not lavishly. But still.

So my habitual pessimism has served me poorly this year. Despite everything the weather has thrown at my vegetables, and despite a distinct want of effort on my part, I’ve had no outright crop failures (unless you count a row of carrots so small they looked like those mini toothbrushes you get on long-haul flights).

Here’s to cauliflower cheese tonight!

Gardening’s a bit like corporate advertising: You know that 50% of it will be ineffective. You just don’t know which 50%.

Every year I try to grow and plant out the broadest range of vegetables I can, in the full and certain knowledge that some (many?) won’t ultimately produce much, if any, food. Some will be an utter write-off.

Why waste so much time and effort?

Because in the UK, the weather is so fucking unpredictable. It can be freezing cold and wet, freezing cold and dry, hot and wet, hot and dry, hot/cold/wet/windy/dry and Christ alone knows what else.

Result: there is no such thing as a season that suits every vegetable. So some thrive, and some die – you just don’t know, in April, which will be which.

Come June, though, the clues are mounting up. And I reckon these cauliflowers are doomed. I got them in late, they struggled to get going, and now we’re getting some seriously hot and dry weather – the conditions they loathe most.

RIP Soilman cauliflower crop 2010.

Incredible: June 9th and I’ve STILL not got my first tranche of cauliflowers out on the plot.

Honestly, this year’s been crap. I’ve had a difficult time lately for other reasons, but the running regime is one of the main culprits. Finding the time to cultivate a full allotment AND run 15 miles a week is proving challenging.

Anyone even further behind than me? Please, please say. You’ll make me feel so much better.

Now the mad time is starting. I’ve got seedlings stuffed into every nook and cranny of the house. There’s even more under plastic outside. I’m gagging to get them all planted out, but daren’t: it’s not frost safe for another month yet.

It’s already turning into a very peculiar growing year. My cauliflower seedlings have grown more slowly than I’ve ever known – the ones above were sown in early March, but still have only two true leaves. Quite extraordinary.

In other news, my potatoes are also coming through spectacularly slowly. Looks like patience is going to be the watchword for 2010… which is dispiriting news, because I have BUGGER ALL PATIENCE.

Wretched pigeons. These were meant to be my autumn cauliflowers.

I had a few heads from them, so it’s not a dead loss, but the rest started to go to seed (I’ve not been to the plot much) and the pigeons were able to reach through the net to pull them up.

Irritating, but there it is.

D-Day for digging and manuring rapidly approaches. I’m praying the weather is dry this weekend, because I need to make up some time fast.

Bastard, bastard, bastard.

These were my overwintering cauliflowers.  I left them on the patio floor, by mistake, for just one night. Too late to sow any more, so no Spring cauliflowers next year.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

The fat, smug, belching sonofabitch you see in this picture has departed this life. Naturally, I tortured it first.

The caulis are ready again, and all coming at once. It’s a problem: I have 15 cauliflowers stuffed in bags in the fridge.

What the hell to do with them? Can’t cook cauliflower cheese FIFTEEN times, and plain boiled is… boring.

Suggestions (of the non-Cordon Bleu variety) gratefully received!