Best after dates

As mentioned, we sowed e.g. tomatoes last Monday. To date, more than 70 have germinated – if nothing untoward happens we (and the nearest and dearest) shall be adequately provided with tomato plants. But what interests me is the following: we had Sungold seeds with the sell by date sometime last year so to get at least a couple of seedlings we sowed all we had.

Sungold record – out of 15 seeds 16 seedlings

Black Cherry (7 sown, 5 so far germinated) and Black Sea Man (4 sown, 4 germinated) had also sell by dates for last year.

Sell by dates are often quite useful – though if you hear me ranting with a packet of parsnip seeds in my hand you can be sure I have read a sell by date several years ahead and am in a completely polite and civilised way expressing my opinion of the moral level of the seed provider as the parsnip seeds remain viable for one year only – but shouldn’t there also be a best after date for species like tomatoes, cucumbers, Californian poppies, snapdragons, etc.?

Some of the aubergines have also been quick

7 out of 7 – Jackpot is really worth its name

Today we at last sorted the garlic bulbs and chose the best ones for spring planting – they are now in the fridge for the cold treatment that will take about a month.

Garlic Aleksandra

They are hardneck garlic and could be planted in the autumn but we have learned that at least here you get bigger bulbs if you plant them in the spring. Might have something to do with the length of the day – the autumn-planted ones stop to grow very early.

We haven’t yet seen snow buntings but a couple of evenings ago we heard (most likely two) eagle owls calling not more than a couple of hundred metres from the house. Can’t give you any intimate details; the bird guide helpfully explains that the voice of the female is a bit higher than that of the male – fine if you have them hooting side by side…

Sweet Banana

Relentless snow

We were supposed to have snowfall at Sunday night. We did – we also had snowfall on Sunday afternoon, whole Monday, whole today and ongoing; it’s getting a bit monotonous.

So what do you do? Pekka braved the elements and went down to the lake to inspect the pike hooks; he came home dragging several days’ dinners to the kitchen.

A monster of 6.3 kg

I carried on with the sowing and have now (almost) finished the first round. Sweet peppers New Ace, Gypsy, Mini Bell (about useless if considered as a dinner ingredient but fun to have a plant full of tiny bell peppers in the winter) and Yolo Wonder; chillies Cheyenne (for upstairs), Lemon Drop (ditto), Hungarian Hot Wax, Padron, Hungarian Black, Bulgarian medium, B. long, B. red (OK, so they all turn red at some stage but I needed a name…). Indeterminate tomatoes Sungold (the favourite), Dattelwein (the runner-up), Suncherry Premium, Sakura, Matina (promised to be the earliest of the earlies), Bulgarian beef tomato (lovely!), Tiger F1, Sweet Baby. Determinate tomatoes Red Alert (the favourite), Black Sea Man (the runner-up), Gold Nugget, Black Cherry, Tumbling Tiger, Peardrops, Sniegiryok, Gartenperle.The last four ones are supposed  to be grown in pots/hanging baskets.

After consideration we decided to have some leeks but not so many as before. Autumn Giant 3 Porvite (my translation; you don’t want to hear what T&M made of the German name).

It’s funny but at least I feel I have to get the veggies done before I can start on the flowers – thinking rationally it shouldn’t make any difference if you sowed snapdragons just before and not just after leeks but there you are; maybe we can call them afters… Snapdragons Circus Clowns, Rembrandt, Rumba, Serenade and Black Prince – didn’t manage this year to get Brighton Rock. Thought about Aquilegia but decided to leave them till next week (green/brown-flowered ones and a medley of strange-looking ones).

I know I promised not to show photos of seed compost but for just this once…

The dark days have caused the upstairs chillies to drop a lot of their flowers but fortunately a few have got pollinated

Cheyenne has a few pods that are beginning to change colour

Getting going

This morning began in a grand way: a flock of black grouse decided to feed on the birches just opposite the livingroom windows.

They are not rare but it’s not so often they come this near the house.

A good day for sowing, we decided – the first day of the waxing moon. So we dragged the compost sack to the kitchen and started to fill various trays. Astonishingly, there was half a handful of lively worms in almost every handful of compost – didn’t know the manufacturer is so accommodating. – They might be useful in the trays, too, but as they are perfect baits in ice-fishing we removed them to our homemade worm farm.

Pekka sanded seeds (peppers) and I did the sowing. All in all, the result was not too bad: we have now in the trays all aubergines we intend to have this year: Bonica for medium-sized fruit, Kaberi and Jackpot for mini fruit; 7 seeds of every cultivar. No, we are not planning a veg stand at the marketplace – just enough for ourselves, family and friends.

As for the peppers, it was just a start – chillies Beaver Dam (mild), Gusto Purple (medium), Friar’s Hat & Jamaican Bell (variable) and Bulgarian short (HOT) are done, and so are sweet peppers Oda (purple), King of the North (red and yellow varieties), Sweet Chocolate (brown), Wisconsin Lakes (red), Ferenc Tender (white to red), Antohi Romanian (white to red), Sakura (red), Phoebus (yellow), Amyka (white), Sweet Astor (yellow), Gourmet (orange) and Alma Paprika (white to red). More will follow…

All tomatoes and snapdragons to do tomorrow (or in the next days); we are still discussing the case of leeks – if we are going to grow them this year we should sow them now but there are plenty of them in the freezer still.

At this stage the sowing feels almost a premature gesture – the forecast promises night temperatures of -15 for the weekend and heavy snowfall for Monday. We try to believe the old adage that in the spring the new snow means death for the old snow…

Below is Pekka’s version of the eclipse – taken through a triple-glass window.

Mirabile dictu

After sowing the Rhodochiton seeds two weeks ago I trawled the net and found out that their germination is at best erratic and slow, a month or more being what you can expect. It was also said that the seeds need to be fresh; our seeds are 3-4 years old – we got them last year from a plant nursery as a present; the lady told us she had had them a couple of years already. So I gave up hope. They didn’t.

Rhodochiton for family and friends…

The chilli seeds have also been unexpectedly fast – 2 Hungarian Blacks (out of 3) and 2 Bulgarian short white (out of 4) are already up and growing. We thought upstairs might be too cool for germination but the sunny days have obviously done the trick.

Hungarian Black

It would be tempting to try more small miracles but not for a few days yet – the new moon is on the 20th and we’ll begin only after that.

In the meantime…

Consuming time

Up to now we have sown this year a. Rhodochiton seeds, and b. exactly 10 chilli seeds for the upstairs plantation (3 Gusto Purple, 3 Hungarian Black, 4 Bulgarian short white). As I suspect you are not overinterested to see photos of seed compost I’ll move on to the consuming part of our production.

We invited Pekka’s cousin from the dairy farm downhill to have dinner with us, the theme being “locally produced and consumed”. We half failed with aperitifs as he presented us with a bottle.

French champagne and local wild strawberries

The days are so dark that colourful food is called for

Peppers Sweet Chocolate and Alma Paprika, shallots

Dried, marinated ceps and mangetout Oregon Sugar Pod

Add Porcelain Doll squash and stir-fry

The flash detracts from the intense yellow-orange colour of the squash

 

Ginger potatoes, vegetable stir-fry. whortleberry jam, green salsa sauce, pork tenderloin

The result was delicious (though the origin of the pork tenderloin was just “somewhere in Finland”) – whortleberries (cowberries) we picked ourselves (the last day before the snow) and salsa is entirely homemade of tomatillos, chillies and onions.

Actually we had planned to have pike for dinner but we couldn’t catch a decent-sized one this week and the last week’s one has already been consumed (in boneless nuggets with plenty of dill).

A 3.5 kg dinner…