Asparagus and gladioli

…even when you’re feeling warm
the temperature can drop away
like four seasons in one day.

Not my line, but Neil Finn’s. Crowded House were singing about New Zealand of course but the lyric is also true of the English springtime. Last week was sun, this week there is snow. Spring comes late to our patch of earth anyway and I still have pots of daffodils yet to bloom; it was a genuine surprise last weekend to visit the Welsh borders and see roadsides and gardens awash with yellow. The party is all happening elsewhere, it seems. And yet, earlier this week, it was warm enough to play outside in the garden, and Harry and I had a good close-up look at the bees as they visited Granny’s primroses. Three days later it was sleeting.

March 28: Playing in the garden with summer sunshine, framed by Granny’s primroses
April 2: Cloudy with a risk of snow. Daffodils brighten the banks at Coughton Court

The few days of warm made me turn my nose towards Evesham. Are they in yet? Is it time? The annual pilgrimage to find the shockingly expensive few spears of new asparagus came on 2 April. I simply boil these tender new stems for a few minutes until they are bright green, with a slight resistance to the tip of the sharp knife. I serve them dripping with butter. It is one of the most important meals of the year, marking the turn of the season. Plus they make your wee smell, which is always amusing.

First Evesham asparagus of the season at Hiller’s Farm Shop. I have taken this exact photo on roughly the same week for several years.

Outside, it’s still too early for any serious planting, but there is springtime remedial work going on. The autumn raspberries were pruned a month ago now, but the entire patch is dense with encroaching brambles and grass. The brambles I do my best to dig out, but the grass – dear GOD the grass! It is the constant perennial problem of our plot.

Believe it or not this is the ‘after’ shot! Autumn raspberries were pruned about a month ago, but the grass and brambles remain a perennial issue.

So today I spent a few hours forking out great clumps of couch grass and buttercups from around the perennial flower bed and vegetable beds. The soil in the veg bed feels hard, compacted, but around the flower bed it is soft and friable, and seems healthy. So I was surprised to see that the few short row of tulips, which I planted back in the late autumn, seem short and stunted this year – as if they’ve had insufficient nourishment. Perhaps it is too early and they will perk up? Next to them are two rows of alliums, planted for cut flowers, and up from them (not in shot) I’ve put in three rows of gladioli. They are new to the plot for 2022, and reminiscent to me of that former resident of Harborne (and lover of pink), Dame Barbara Cartland. What could be gaudier than a few hot pink glads in a vase? I’ve popped a few bulbs into my back garden too to see if they fare differently there to the allotment.

The first sign of growth on the perennial patch, with alliums and just a few tulips. Next to them (not in shot) are the sleeping dahlias, and then the emerging shoots of lupins and echinacea. Three rows of gladioli complete the scene.

Inside, I’ve started off a few trays of seeds, but I don’t want to start too early, not with these cold nights. Slow and steady, that will be my seed-sowing mantra for this year. In other exciting news, work has started on building a new lean-to greenhouse for the back of our house. Will it be ready for the proper hardening-off period in May? Watch this space…

Also this week:
Harvesting: First tulips for cut flowers. In the shops, first asparagus, first English strawberries.
Sowed: Tomatoes, broad beans, peas, lettuce, rocket, spinach, chard, courgettes, cornflower, amaranth, millet, snapdragons, cerinthe, calendula, phlox, scabious, wild carrot. Everything else can wait for a few weeks.
Also: Planted gladioli in garden and allotment. Weeding. Have trays of achillea, broad beans, sweet peas in the cold frame toughening up. Matt has started building the green house that has been boxed up in the utility room since February. Still no sign of the builder for our bathroom, however (5 months since quotation).
Cooking and eating: Slow roast lamb shoulder with garlic, cumin and paprika, bulgar wheat, hummus, green beans, roast onions and aubergine. First asparagus with salmon and broccoli tart. Lots of mini-eggs and hot cross buns though it’s two weeks to Easter. Ice creams in Hay on Wye.
Reading: Agatha Christie, The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side, picked up for a few pounds in a Hay bookshop.

Four seasons in one day

There’s a famous Crowded House song that tells of the changeable weather in New Zealand:

The sun shines on the black clouds hanging over the domain
Even when you’re feeling warm
The temperature could drop away
Like four seasons in one day.

Lyrics that could easily apply to England in April 2016. What is going on with this crazy weather? Through glass the sun is HOT (temperatures hitting 35c+ in my greenhouse) but then blink and suddenly it’s snowing, or at least sleeting. My late afternoon visit to the allotment resulted in freezing fingers and reddened cheeks.

It’s difficult weather for veg and flower growing as I have seedlings that need to be outside already. At the weekend I succumbed and planted out my overwintered sweet-peas, which were threatening to literally put down roots in the greenhouse unless given a new home. They’re surviving this week’s Arctic blasts cheerily enough, protected from the wind by some perspex squares salvaged from an art project, and cosseted with thorny branches to ward off the pigeon.

The lettuces aren’t doing so well – the lollo rosso looks suspiciously slimy – but the spinach actually looks happier now than when I planted it out. Some veg do well for the cold weather, of course, and the parsnips and leeks (sowed one full year ago) look a heck of a lot better now than they did back in our warm, soggy autumn.

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Last of 2015’s leeks and parsnips, better now than in the autumn

But spring is apparently here: I have tulips in bloom and the cherry tree outside our flat is tinged with delicate pink blossom. It was St George’s day at the weekend, the traditional start of the English asparagus season, and so today I took a VERY circuitous route home from a meeting to track down some of Evesham’s finest.

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Evesham asparagus is back in the farmshops, but expect to flash a bit of cash

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New season grass – a culinary highpoint of the year

Two bunches of asparagus set me back the princely sum of £9.66 and even the seasoned assistant in the farm shop took a sharp intake of breath. I don’t care. It’s NEW SEASON ASPARAGUS…the first culinary highpoint of the year. These spears are to be lightly steamed and served with jersey royals that I will toss in butter and anoint with sorrel from the allotment.

In other allotment news, I’ve planted out the potatoes and direct sown various kales and brassicas (I want to see how these lot do against the ones that I’m raising under glass). Oh! And we’ve got hold of some guttering to see if it does indeed make a happy home for salad plants. Keep you posted.

ps. Dear reader, we have a mortgage and aim to move house in a few weeks. Thanks for all the nice messages to keep one’s chin up in the face of mortgage-madness.

Sowed direct: PSB, Frills of Hex, Cavolo Nero, Cima di Rapa
Sowed in a gutter in greenhouse: Chives, Chard, Tuscan lettuce mix, Spinach
Planted out: Autumn and January-sowed sweetpeas, Reine di Glace lettuce, Spinach Medania, Lollo Rosso, seed potatoes