Larry popped around yesterday, he’d noticed my absence from the site and so a got a verbal warning. He’s a hard taskmaster as a site rep, but fair. If he nails your head to the table then you know you deserved it. Enough of this Monty Python routine.
We celebrated 27 years of marriage yesterday in our usual fashion, doing very little and Larry asked if I’d bought Val a bunch of flowers. Well, when we’d finished rolling around laughing, he mentioned I had a rather nice cauliflower I could giver her. I think he’s been sneaking on my plot planting weeds again.
As you might have noticed I’ve had my head down recently but all work and no play makes John a dull boy and today the sun was shining so I thought ‘blow it’ and went down to the plot.
Well the cauliflower was definitely worth it and its two friends were not bad either. OK, they probably wouldn’t win a prize but they will taste well and certainly the slugs think so. One was a little damaged by the wee beasties but not badly. There’s quite a few whitefly around in the brassicas but they don’t really do much harm and I’d rather not use pesticides except as a last resort. I did scatter some Growing Success slug pellets around, they’re safe for predators and last longer than conventional slug pellets in rain.
Larry joked that nobody would believe it, I think his scurrilous suggestion was that everyone would think it was one of my famous miniature cauliflowers taken in close up so after taking a shot of it in the ground, Lee and Karen took a shot of me holding it. By this time they were coming from miles around to see my cauliflowers! The variety is Aalsmeerby the way
They’ve got a plot at the top end that they’ve turned into raised beds and it’s doing very well for them. It really does seem the way to go on heavy soil like ours, especially now we’ve a source of bulk compost.
Well my original intention was to be good and return to the slavery but it was almost summer weather and I just had to take advantage. I want to clear some piles of weeds into the compost heaps but I’m planning on rebuilding them so best to get that done first. The pallet built heaps are nearly four years old and starting to turn into compost themselves so the roof of the old shed is being pressed into service.
It should be more effective as a compost heap since, being solid, it will stop the nettles and bindweed coming in from over the fence and hold in heat better.
The first job was to cut down the comfrey bed, it’s nearly done for the year and I don’t want to waste the leaves which will help activate the heaps anyway. The reason I did this now was to give me a dumping space for the un-rotted materials from the existing bins.
The first bin was basically rotted down so barrowed the compost up the plot to dig in later. The paths in front of the bins were covered in wood chippings but that seems to have rotted down itself, which made things a bit awkward. I’ll strip the top few inches off and use them like compost since it’s very humus rich.
Made a good start moving stuff from the second bin when the light began to fade so headed for home.
So, here is me and my cauliflower
Can you cut cauliflower a couple of days before showing and how do you keep the curds white from going yellow thanks Mr c t Rogers
Just cut your cauliflower for the show, trimming the leaves as normal. Wrap in clingfilm and keep in the fridge.