Garden notes – Page 4

Medlar tasting

I picked all the remaining medlars early in November, after they’d had a couple of frosts, and because I noticed they were starting to drop off the tree. They’ve spent a few weeks bletting in a box on the kitchen windowsill. I ate a few in a zoom meeting just to confuse my friends, and they were pretty good – I think people were slightly surprised when after eating one, I then had another! The other day I decided that it was really time to tackle the remaining dozen or so.

The darker medlars are the soft ones, like those that have been cut open (to the right of the bowl)

Inspired by a friend who has a slightly older medlar tree and larger harvest, I scooped out the flesh and pushed it through a sieve, to remove the seeds (not many per fruit but they are annoying) and make the pulp look generally less unappetising. This wasn’t a quick job, and I’m not sure whether with more fruit you’d just get used to eating them as they ripen? But I wanted to try them on my long-suffering partner who has so far refused to tackle the pulp in its unprocessed state – and to be fair, it is finicky to eat and doesn’t look like much.

I ended up with a few tablespoons of brown mush. I have found medlars so far to have an unfamiliar, fruity but tangy flavour, and decided to soften the impact for my chosen victim by putting each portion of medlar puree on some tinned peaches, with a blob of vanilla ice cream by it. Unfortunately this turned out to be a bit of an own goal, in that the peaches and ice cream flavour smothered the medlar. I guess in small quantities it just isn’t that strong a flavour.

On the positive side, it was definitely inoffensive and I think medlar would be a good filling for a tart.

A few of the medlars were not yet bletted, the insides being mostly pale green. Next year, when I hope the tree will have more fruit (2 last year, 20-ish this year), I should have a better idea of how to judge blettedness from outer consistency.

The medlar tree is one of this year’s few orchard successes, as it’s been fully hardy and took no heed of the late frosts which destroyed the entire apple harvest. And it provides fresh fruit rich in vitamin C during November. While I can see why it fell from favour, I can also see it as a valued staple of the Anglo-Saxon orchard.

Last carrots of 2020

I harvested the last few carrots from the Rumwoldstow garden yesterday, as they’re starting to go manky in the ground, plus some beetroots.

The carrots and beets have been surprisingly successful, given the bed was only built this year and the seeds planted in July. The white beetroots are very tasty and the leaves make an excellent spinach substitute. And the fact that they’re providing fresh green veg in November is amazing – even with the mild weather it’s impressive.

Oh, the garden is so full of weeds and overgrown…I have been reluctant to cut back flowers because they feed bees, but I really do need to start tidying things up. Except that right now I have No Time…so it’ll probably be a New Year job.

The orchard is now resting, I guess. The sheep are long gone, all the fruit harvested.

Skirret for dinner

Back in 2019, Al bought me a packet of skirret seeds off the internet, and because I am not a confident gardener, the wonderful Freya germinated them and gave me back young plants. I planted these out round the garden, where they did OK and I gathered seeds and in the spring of 2020, germinated and planted out some more skirrets.

These plants are perennial and it was clear from the first-generation plants that I moved, that the roots take a while to develop. So I waited until now, November of 2020, to dig up one of 2019’s seedlings and try cooking the roots.

As I’d hoped, the plant was easily separated into three, and I replanted one section. However the roots were not that big.

Some plump roots but lots of little ones

White beetroot and skirret ready to be washed

I cut off the larger roots and washed them, then scrubbed them with an old toothbrsh. The soil came away fairly easily but it wasn’t a quick job, with so many little roots.

Roasted white beetroot and skirret. What’s left, anyway.

I roasted the beetroot and skirret in beef dripping, putting the beetroot chunks in first so they got half an hour or so, and the skirrets 10 – 15 minutes. The skirrets became very soft when cooked, and the texture was creamy and very pleasant, apart from the sinewy cores of the narrower roots. It’s pretty easy to eat the soft outer and leave the core.

The larger roots were soft all the way through. The flavour is indeed somewhat like parsnip but more peppery.

Our guest found a use for the cores – they can be used to floss your teeth!

Overall I’d say skirret is a success, but you’d need much bigger plants to make a meal – I served these as a side dish. I hope that by next year, or the year after, the older plants will be more productive. A skirret bed clearly takes several years to establish.

Late grazing

I failed to post a photo earlier, of the damson harvest. I thought we’d lost them all in the May frosts, but one hardy damson survived!

In October, the sheep returned for late grazing in the meadow and orchard.

Dog days

There hasn’t been much happening here, and last weekend I scuttled off Oop North to play at Vikings in the lovely Danelaw Village, now happily reopened. A small group of us carved spoons from sycamore wood – though my first spoon cracked overnight and needs some work with polyfilla and sawdust when it’s dried out.

Back at Rumwoldstow, the flowers are nearly over although the cornflowers are still attracting the bees and the yarrow is out. Still nothing but huge leaves from the elecampagne.

The new North bed is doing well – I’ll probably need to move some of the plants in the spring as they are all crowded in and growing fast.
All the late-planted vegetables are coming up at last, with even the second go of dwarf beans finally making a reluctant appearance. I’ve started to harvest salad leaves and am looking forward to cropping the lamb’s lettuce.

The Cripp’s Red apple seedling died, which is not surprising because its root was broken off. However I have two more Braeburn seedlings in action now making three in total. One of them has three seed leaves so it is definitely a mutant! Still 5 – 10 years to go until I find out if any of them produces good apples. With the hot weather, I’m watering them like crazy and today put them in the shade, though it’s still about 32 Celcius out there. Flewf.
I brought some early apples home from the Tudor garden at the Danelaw village, which don’t yet have viable seeds. I’ll keep them and see if the seeds develop.

A quest and a mystic well

In these times when we have literally no idea what is going to happen next, it seems a bit daft but I have embarked on what is likely to be a ten year project. This is the Quest for the Pippin of St Rumwold. I’ve now planted two apple seedlings that had germinated inside the apple; these are imported apples that have been in cold storage and so were ready to germinate. I plan to try local English apples when the season comes round, which should be more suited to the local climate, and I would guess that if you start with a better apple, you’re more likely to get a better pippin.

The thing about apples is that they are pollinated by at least one, maybe two trees of different varieties and the seedlings apparently don’t necessarily resemble the parent tree. I’ve always wanted to try growing apple trees from seed but never got it together. I read that it can take seven to ten years to discover whether a seedling will bear eatable fruit or whether it has reverted to something like a crab apple. I’m hoping that if I persist, then I will eventually grow even just one tree with a tasty apple, that will be unique to Rumwoldstow. Ambitious plans for two of the tiniest seedlings you’ve ever seen!

In the Rumwoldstow garden, we have the first flowering of the Madonna lilies. I planted three bulbs a bit late in the spring, and they’ve all come up but the other two don’t seem to fancy flowering this year. Aren’t they lovely? If they get properly established they’ll be fab.

The Christmas rose (hellebore) continues to defy the seasons and is flowering like a good ‘un. And we have one other vegetative miracle in the form of a time traveller…a potato plant has sprouted in amongst the heartsease, strawberries and sorrell! Brother Julian dug in some compost and I guess there must have been potato peelings. At this point I might as well let it grow, and hope for some harvest later in the year.

Construction work continues; the Roman well (ahem) is now set in a firm foundation ready for the wall to be built around it. And brothers Alf and Julian are hard at work on the foundations for the Roman gatehouse.

Can I borrow your wheelbarrow?
It is full of concrete.

No sheep today, just as well with the wet concrete!

We’re looking forward to the return of Chris the Stonemason, who this year built the new raised bed in the Rumwoldstow garden and also rebuilt the side of the bridge across the Black Brook. It looks well posh, though everybody keeps asking when is the other side going to be done…the problem is that the other side is a strange bodge-up with a rotting railway sleeper supporting the road bed, unlike the fancy side with the beautiful stone arch. My guess is that the bridge was originally lovely all the way through but narrower, and then somebody widened it for farm vehicles. Anyway, it’s now safe to walk on.

Visitations

Al let the sheep into the orchard, which is a good way of clearing out some of the undergrowth. However the lambs are now large enough to make a lot of trouble while still being young enough to be springy and gung-ho.

Yup, up they climbed onto the carefully stacked stash of stone for…something or other in due course. They were very keen to eat the nice hazel hedge up there, because literally everything is nicer to eat than grass. And it turns out that young sheep can scramble up and jump down just like goats. This was all very well but the wall between the orchard and the Rumwoldstow cloister garden has been taken down so that the foundations of the old Roman gatehouse can be built. And those sheep decided that Rumwoldstow looked much more interesting so managed to knock aside the panels blocking the gap and go for a good rampage around the gardens.

I say, I say, I say, how can you tell if there have been sheep in your bed?

Hoofprints in the beetroot!

See that big gap in the beetroot seedlings? Thanks, Mr Lamb. Where’s the mint sauce?

Overall the veg are coming on well in the new bed, with only the dwarf green beans stubbornly refusing to come up. These are all late varieties, it’s a bit marginal but I hope we’ll get some crop of white beetroot, salad leaves, carrots and spring onions. Two of the second planting of beans have finally germinated, these are ones that I soaked for an hour before planting. And one got firmly sheep-trodden so I can’t really blame it. I am sure that next year I’ll need to move some of the larger plants around as they’ll get a lot bigger, but just for now there is space for them all. And the snails haven’t discovered them yet, perhaps because of the walls.

Back in the home garden, the older dwarf green beans proved a tasty target for the sheep before they all ran out into the road…then fortunately all ran back! I’ve been very lucky, the sheep might have eaten and trampled a lot more before Al shooed them back to their orchard.

Water

Every garden should have some kind of water feature, for the insects, birds and small creatures to drink at, and just because it’s nice. I pondered for some time how to shoehorn in a pond or something in the Rumwoldstow monastery garden, and finally came up with a plan. And that plan is being actioned by the great energy and skill of Brother Julian – with the stonemasonry of Chris to follow in due course.

The plan is to build a fake Roman well, purportedly part of the old fort within which the monastery is sited. Like the rest of Rumwoldstow, this will be ‘authentish’. The water table is about 1.5 m down and an actual well would be hazardous, and not of benefit to wildlife. So the plan is to set a round pond liner into the ground with a low wall built around it – and a couple of little tunnels to allow the frogs and so on to creep in and out.

In addition, the brothers have begun demolishing the shonky old end wall (once the north wall of a breeze block barn) and reopening the full width of the gate. Watch this space!

I planted an apple seed which had started to germinate inside the apple (a Cripps Red). It’s currently about 10mm high. I’ve always wanted to grow an apple tree from seed and have a unique apple tree. Will this be the one? Or will it die / produce nothing worth eating? Again, watch this space…

Wrens

I was super excited when Brother Alf reported that a wren was building a nest in the corner of the cloister. We assumed that the female would eschew it because there’s too much human activity including the sweet song of the concrete mixer as work begins on the Roman gatehouse…but no! She clearly thought it a des res and for several weeks we’ve been seeing little wrens flying in and out of the cloister, bearing food for the chicks whose cries at feeding time have become louder and louder.

Look carefully…there’s a wren watching you

For the last couple of days however it’s been completely silent. I hope this means the chicks have fledged and moved on; I read up on it, and apparently it’s dangerous for chicks to hang around the nest, because the longer they stay, the more likely predators are to see or smell the nest. Smelly things apparently, chicks, and you can see why. So while the dead silence is alarming, it’s probably a good sign and we’ll keep our eyes open for fledgelings around the place. I saw a few earlier in the year so I’m guessing this is a second brood. Yay wrens. I never saw one before we moved to Rumwoldstow and now we have them breeding in our cloister! The next question is whether we should remove the nest and clean the area to make it nice for them next year? Or do they ever reuse nests? Time for a little research…

North bed, new plants!

Brother Julian has filled the new raised bed to the north of the four square beds, with soil and horse manure. I’ve planted a collection of perennials which are more utilitarian than those in the first four beds. Some were used for dyeing, some for repelling insects, and some for medicine. The bees have already found the goat’s rue and the hyssop – which is sadly rock hyssop, and so probably not exactly what the Anglo-Saxons used, but very close.

The wormwood and southernwood were gifts from another century – a Tudor re-enactor who lives up the road donated cuttings to Rumwoldstow. Thank you James!

Further north, building work is in progress

The wren’s nest in the corner of the cloister seems to be occupied – an adult is seen flying to and fro frequently. And another small wonder is an out-of-season Christmas Rose, with this fine flower.