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Onions And More.
Having bought my Onions sets a few weeks ago I finally got round to planting them in mid March. This year I put extra in as last year they didn’t do very well and my mate didn’t get so many. He is a great fan of Onions and likes to pickle them, which works well because he is happy to have most of the smaller ones for pickling and I end up with the bigger ones!
On the subject of Onions, it won’t be long before I can start harvesting my Welsh Onions, or everlasting Onions as they are also called. They make a good alternative to Spring Onions and are starting to shoot without the need for sowing seed every year.
Another member of the Onion family and good for salads are Chives and I have a bunch at home. They had over wintered well and were starting to shoot, so I divided the clump up. Out of the one bunch I got nearly 20 little
pot-fulls.
My Asparagus will follow on from the Sea Kale this year, as it should. The cold spell at the end of February held it back a little unlike the other year when I was cutting both the Sea Kale and the Asparagus together! The crazy mild weather throughout December did surprise one farmer though. Commercially, a lot of Asparagus is grown in Poly Tunnels in this country to give it better growing conditions and after the Christmas break, the grower in question looked in his tunnels, to find his Asparagus shooting prolifically. Indeed, it was so far advanced, and there was so much of it, that he had to call in staff to pick it. He said that it was over a month
to 6 weeks early - even for crops grown inside.
Back to the Sea Kale - The Offsets that I potted up have started to shoot well at Oak Tree, so I am hoping they are also starting to root in the same way that Rhubarb pieces do when they are divided. If left alone, the mature plants do spread though. Now the original plants, in the beds, have started to leaf up, I can see offsets poking up through my new paths! More free plants for someone!
Fruit plants are never far from my heart and when I saw a new, fruiting, edible, fuchsia advertised in one of the mail order catalogues, I decided I had got to have one. A couple of days later, before I could make up an order to get one, and much to my surprise, my brother told me, that he had ordered one for me and it would come in May. Throughout my younger life I had often seen Fuchsias that had finished flowering, with little berry like fruits on and wondered if they were edible. Obviously somebody else had the same idea and now I know they are, or at least they are edible on this one particular variety.
My Chenopodium – Strawberry Sticks, fruited well last year, but I did notice that better plants grew in a bit of shade where it was damper. So, as they were starting to shoot, I dug some up and moved them, replanting them in a shadier position between some fruit trees. They seem to be getting a bit of publicity lately, but more for their Spinach like leaves than their fruit. As I often do when replanting things, I decided to pot some up for Oak Tree.
Still on the subject of fruit, in mid February, my little Almond tree flowered on my Allotment for the first time. The pretty little, white flowers continued into March when the Apricot on the yard at home also started flowering with its much more showy, pinkish blossom. My Peach with its spectacular flourish of red flowers and the big Quince, with its large, blousy, white flowers, followed on. A little later, the mature Medlar will put on a bit of a brief show with its large white flowers as well. Although, on my Allotment I also have a very small Medlar tree which was a “Rescue Plant,” and only about 4 feet high, that surprised me with a few fruit last year. I used to meticulously cover all of these early flowering fruit trees with Horticultural Fleece to protect the blossom from late frosts, but these days I just let them get on with it. Sometimes I don’t get any fruit, but often I do, and without all the fuss. With the intense sunlight that we often get the Fleece doesn’t seem to last very long as it breaks up and so it comes expensive to use anyway with the constant need to replace it.
Nothing manmade seems to last these days – only nature goes on endlessly.
 
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