Soilman

O frabjous day! Callooh Callay! It stopped raining!

We have an extraordinary 48-hr sunshine window. Can’t pretend it’s warm – 14C max – but at least it’s not pissing. I’ve enjoyed the first productive gardening day in a month.

The cauliflowers are in, and even the asparagus has appeared. At last. Not in time to save the UK asparagus festival, but better late than never.

Jeez, but things look and feel so different in the sunshine. One sees proper colours again, the way God intended… not the washed out, bleached, deathly pallor of life under leaden skies.

We’re back to rain on Monday, but the break has felt like a holiday.

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!

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.

Look what I picked up on the way home from work!

A freshly picked cauliflower is a thing of beauty and gastronomic delight. They really do taste different fresh. Cauliflower cheese tonight…

The first cauliflower seedlings are in. This is where the hard work starts. Everything hitherto has been buggering about, frankly.

Why? Because if you’ve ever grown cauliflowers, you’ll know what utter bastards they are. Everything has to be just so: the soil, the sun hours, the rainfall, the nutrients, the pest and bird protection.

This fine specimen is wearing a brassica collar. It’s a circle of tar-impregnated cardboard intended to deter the ghastly cabbage root fly. They do work, but of course it’s an added pain in the arse.

Everything’s a pain in the arse with cauliflowers. So why do I do it? Excellent question. Let me think about than one for a few days and get back to you…