A Smallholder's Diary, Week 5 (20th-26th July 2021)

20^th July 2021
On the evening checkup, I take a close look at the broad beans. We knew we had one or two broken stems, and so a bit of bruised flesh was natural – but looking at the plants tonight, brown and black spots and patches are rife on several plants, even affecting some of the pods.
 
I research this – probably something called “chocolate spot”, which sounds tasty but isn’t. I harvest a number of pods – those on badly affected plants, chiefly. I suspect the plants have ended up growing too closely, which will have exacerbated fungal spread, but it’s probably more than that.
 
When we shell the beans later, aside from a few weirdly half-empty pods, there are also some spotted and unhealthy beans, which have to be discarded. I’m disappointed.
 
Last year we lost perhaps half of our small tomato crop to late blight. Adrian Bell speaks about the gritty desperation of the smallholder, because the smallholder forges independence in incredibly precarious circumstances. That makes every loss all the more painful. Every lost bean is a step away from resilience.
 
8 eggs, 10oz Aquadulce broad beans (1.6oz shelled)
 
21^st July 2021
The boys taste the first few ripe tomatoes off our most successful planter. Some of our tomatoes are struggling for nitrogen (shallow pots), and the collection in the mini-greenhouse have definitely struggled simultaneously with being too vigorous (and therefore growing a lot but not flowering) and being intermittently dry (leading to scorching of some of the flowers that do come through). My own fault, of course; my design, my systems. Tomatoes are a bother, it has to be said. Maybe fewer next year?
 
Short evening checkup with a friend. Multiple courgettes now ready, of various colours and varieties. The repeated bird attacks have definitely killed a few strawberry and Brussels plants – but I have spares, so no despair yet.
 
6 eggs, 2 Garden Pearl cherry tomatoes (1.51oz)
 
22^nd July 2021
I work in the twilight again. Though cooler the chickens are still preferring to sleep out – I’ll probably have to work on that soon, once the weather turns.
 
Aside from watering and tidying, I fill a harvest basket. More onions, peas, beans, radishes, lettuce, and our first courgette (a black variety; we have 4 varieties out there). The corollary to the pain of losing the broad beans – and the food reserves they represent – is that true resilience spreads its bets. Last year our tomatoes were blighted; this year they’re coping much better. This year the beans have chocolate spot, but we can learn from that – in the meantime we have plenty of other things.
 
Having spotted potatoes peeking above the ground yesterday, I glimpse some more today, and head into the potato enclosure. The Earlies are beginning to die back, slowly – yellowing leaves for now, from nitrogen withdrawal – and some of them have a half dozen potatoes on the trunk above ground, as well as whatever is beneath. This may be due to the density of the clay soils here, but just as likely is just the potatoes being vigorous and cropping heavily. Good news, though bears watching.
 
6 eggs, 2.1oz Aquadulce broad beans (0.32oz shelled), 1.1oz Meteor peas (0.42oz shelled), 5 heads Beauregard lettuce, 7 French Breakfast radishes, 1 small Black Beauty courgette, 1 Garden Pearl cherry tomato/0.75oz, 2.54oz onion greens, misc onions
 
23^rd July 2021
Brief visit today with a friend. I move the cold frame from the rapidly overgrowing courgettes to cover the vulnerable strawberries that birds have been attacking (even through the netting, which they have torn!).

5 eggs, 2 Garden Pearl cherry tomatoes/1.51oz
 
24^th July 2021
No visit today, due to feeling under the weather.
 
7 eggs.

25^th July 2021
No visit today either. Helen mentions on her return that where the potato plants are withering some exposed potatoes are turning green. This is from producing chlorophyll to maximise sunlight intake, but it causes the tuber to become utterly inedible. They’ll need harvesting and then processing – either cutting out edible parts, or composting, or turning to seed potato for next year.
 
7 eggs
 
26^th July 2021
A long evening block working at the allotment and then processing. The light is falling away much more quickly than I expected – a month on from midsummer and, with any cloud at all in the sky, it’s gloomy by 10pm. There is a circadian rhythm here, though – there is something fitting about the harvest gradually fading into black.
 
Now, with the cold frame in its new place, I discard dead plants from under it and plant out a couple more strawberries. I also put a few small, quite eaten spare chards in with their brethren – given how regularly we can crop them, the more the better. Space shouldn’t be an issue.
 
I also water everything, before commencing the harvest.
 
More radishes come up – enormous ones, now, bigger than any so far this year, as big as a fingerling courgette. Another handful of bean pods, several heads of lettuce, and then finally a very respectable haul of potatoes – but many half-green.
 
I do remove one plant altogether as it is shallow and has nothing left, and crop off its neighbours heavily. However, it is only a few Early plants in the centre of the Early ridge that are growing tubers above ground; aside from slight exposure, nothing else is. After finishing harvesting these, I dig from the partner ditch and cover a few of the plants more thoroughly so that as their tubers grow, they stay covered.
 
At home, I process everything – shelling peas and the like. The potatoes go in a thick brown paper bag and under the cupboard, the darkest place in the house. The beans, alas, are all rotten – the pods themselves are intact, but the fertilised beans have shrivelled and turned black, and the pod has often grown into that space, like a tumour. I struggle to find an explanation online – they seem to have been pollinated (surely), but perhaps something went wrong there; perhaps it is the effect of the chocolate spot, but this affected even healthy-looking beans. A mystery, for now. Agriculture is a detective story.
 
5 eggs, 0.5oz Meteor peas (0.125oz shelled), 4 heads Beauregard lettuce, 10 French Breakfast radishes, 1.25oz Aquadulce beans (0oz shelled; rotten), 6lbs6.75oz early potatoes (green material inclusive)