Homegrown corn on the cob is out of this world

Hands up who has ever grown Sweet corn and rushed home with a bunch of fat ears, ripping off the outer layers on route to expose ten inch yellow hand grenades, perfectly formed without a missing corn or a weevil in sight?

I have, it took me 23 minutes to get up and back from my plot, rip off half a dozen little beauties and back home again to a big old pan I started boiling before I sat off. I ripped off the outer leaves and threw them all in the steaming pot as quick as possible to get the sweetest corn that literally no amount of money can buy you from any market in the world.

This was the highlight of 2008's season; I can't recall anything that I grew last year that had the "Oh My God! Pat yourself on the back farmer - you've just cultivated sex on a cob" factor as I munched through three of them, butter dripping from my chin and an Ice cold beer. Max was just as impressed although he's six and had to settle with a soft drink, I think this was the day we both developed the obsession with corn on the cob.

On that 6th September 2008, I made a promise to myself to grow more than the 16 plants I had experimented with, and this year I will be hoping to beat the 23 minute bar.

Why is it so important to get them from plot to Cocotte in the fastest time possible? Well, it is because the natural sugars that are in sweet corns begin to turn into starch from the moment you pick them. You could do a taste test to compare that within just two hours, there is a marked difference with the taste that most people, especially sweet teeth would notice.

Leave it another day and 60% of the natural sugars that exist may have turned leaving you a very different product from your food factory.

The same can be said of peas, that's why many people adore the frozen variety as the farms scoop up the entire plants, shell them and fast freeze them within a matter of hours to capture the sweet flavours, but find the peas to pod from your local supermarkets and vegetable stalls quiet mealy.

Growing sweet corn is a doddle.

I Started by buying root trainers or you could use toilet rolls three weeks back, then placed a single seed into each cell filled with general compost, planting 64 in total. Then I take a pencil and push them gently into the compost, cover with a bit more compost and drench them with warm water from the kitchen sink. Pop a lid on your sowings and leave for a week or so.

After a week or so you should find most of your sweet corn has popped up and you can take the lid off and drench them once again in Luke warm water but leave the lid off this time.

Wait another week and they should be six inches tall and if you are feeling confident that we are going to have the hottest summer in living history then you can prepare to plant them out now.

You can prepare the plot for them by digging deep and incorporating as much organic material as possible. I personally dumped four bags of horse muck and a couple of barrow loads of home brew compost. Then I borrowed James Mantis and tilled the area and piled it up so the bed was raised above the natural level of the plot. I cover the area with gardener’s membrane and slit holes every 18 inches (40cm) leaving 22 Inches between rows so you can sent you kids in to pick them.

From the 64 I planted I was happy with 63 that germinated.



Last weekend I planted five rows of nine plants, I have held back four in-case a few don’t take and gave the remaining thirteen to Bob, he gives me way too much stuff so it was great to repay the compliment. I think he was happy as he was still chitting his corn (Something I don’t bother with).

According to many threads you can plant closer than this but in doing so you run the risk of reducing the yield. At these distances you should expect 1.5 (Average) cobs over your crop so I’m going to be eating plenty come August with a bit of luck and some supercharged summer days.

Cauliflower rant.

Im back from holidays in Mexico - Its been a couple of weeks - Time for a post.

In about a month’s time, I'm hoping for a return on my investment of time and efforts with the over wintered cauliflower experiment. They are looking very healthy now but with these vegetables being particularly fussy and the odds stacked against you in many respects, you can only do what you can do and wait several months before you find out if you did it well or you ended up with a sweaty sponge of minuscule proportions.

Growing the humble Cauliflower it’s kind of like going to war as a Spartan. Death or Glory. Actually is nothing like that at all as Cauliflowers can't throw spears and don’t look menacing enough to be considered a warrior race. But in essence - You either fail miserably or glory in your marvellous achievements’.

Mine have been in the ground since August last year. I started them from seed in June. I have watched patiently, weeded regularly and protected the bed with a "ring of Steel" to fend off early sabotage attempts by feathered brassica jihadists.

Throughout the winter I watched over the caulis wondering "what’s the point of this over wintering ball hocks". They just sat there without much sign of growth, which then ground to a complete halt whilst being battered by cold harsh frosts, snow and no sun light.

One gave up the ghost and popped its clogs two days before Christmas. It was like loosing a family member. Its death cannot be explained. It looked in good health a week before hand, I found it keeled over looking rather slimy so I pulled it out and buried it in the bean trench so at least some good will come of it - for the beans at least. Not that I'm in the habit of burying family members in my bean trench so it wasn't really like a family member really at all, more like a pet goldfish or something I wouldn't think twice about lobbing in the bean trench if it died.

Then as the frosts rescinded, the surviving brood have had treats of blood and bone meal, well rotted manure and rain water from my butt (water). I have even given them a dose of diluted seaweed concentrate which is like a natural anabolic steroid for hungry plants.

Now the weather is warming and some serious growth has begun again, a new wave of lesser attacks have begun.

I have kept the white fly at bay with soapy water spray to clog up the little bastards breathing ducts. Snails and slugs found in the bed have been skewered onto a length of garden twine and their shrivelled remains hung up to ward off theirs friend and family.

Any outer yellowing leaves and the little suckers that sometimes grow at the base have been removed.

There doesn’t seem to be any advice in any of the publicised growing guides that I own so I have consulted Soilmans thread as he also loves the good fight that is the cultivation of Cauliflowers.

Hoeing this little bed is off limits, it's regularly hand weeded to ensure that all the available nutrients are available to my crop, and does not become a feast for the weeds which have gotten into full swing too now.

You can’t compare foreign imported shop bought mass produced long term vegegatbles that'll only cost you seventy pence from the non organic section of a billion pound a week supermarket. Home grown cauliflower is not easy, it can be a pain in the proverbials to avoid the pigeon attacks, adverse weather conditions, slugs and snails and if you don’t get their fussy little requirements’ just right, or forget to pick them on just the right day you still end up with a stinky - yellow - tennis ball sized - loose headed - crap end product.

Get it right on the other hand and you have bragging rights over your fellow farmers and gain respect from the old guard over the plots as you strap your gigantic beast like vegetables to the roof rack of your car and parade it around town playing bagpipe music from your cd player with all your windows down and a pair of ray bans on with one hand waving at the admiring onlookers.

Mine by contrast to Tesco’s perfectly formed jolly foreigners are 100% British and 100% organic.
There will be zero food miles in carting them home (Apart from the victory parade). Even if they taste like a cocktail of horse shit and seaweed and look like they have fallen out of the back end of a bison's bum they are going to get eaten.

So unlike the 65% of vegetables grown that never even reach your dinner plate there will have been a point to their existence.

If at first you don't suck-seed.

A month ago I was wondering if the growing season would ever begin, now it seems to be getting ahead of me. Greenhouse is cooking on Gas now after the disaster a few weeks back.

First of the 64 sweet corns and 80 borlotti beans poked their heads up from the root trainers yesterday.

27 of the 32 Courgette seeds have germinated. These are from self saved seed from last season’s bumper courgette gluts. A few of them were left to get to monster proportions. The seed was saved for this years planting. They are really nice with a cold one toasted in the oven too with the smallest amount of oil and salt.

8 Market more Cuke's and 12 Dwarf beans have smashed through the soil in their recycled coffee cup pots

50 - OMG - 50 Pepper plants have germinated. It looks like a near on 100% germination rate. I'm going to have to find the time to prick these out and pot then into a root trainer before Sunday.

96 Blue Lake Climbing French beans planted last night.

80 Musselburgh Leeks have been pricked out into three large pots filled with quality compost which will be taken up the plot because space or lack of it is becoming a real issue

A friend has offered the use of his greenhouse in exchange for some of the extras. I tend over plant expecting only fifty percent germination rates but at this rate there’s going to be plenty of happy potholders’ come the seedling swap up the plot in early May.

Last year was my first and I was chuffed to bits that so many people kindly donated their extras to me. Along with paying silly money from garden centres for plug plants. It was the only way I was able to make the plot productive I hope to be able to reciprocate those gifts this year and help out some of the recent joiners who are frantically digging over their newly acquired starter plots.

Have you seen how expensive the veg is in the commercial garden centres this year? £1.99 buys you four spindly broad beans or six peas at home base - Incredible when for the same price, you could have bought a pint of broad bean seed from the Suffolk potato fair in February, that’s around a hundred and fifty seeds. The crop you get from four plants would probably cost you the same to buy the beans in a supermarket in the first place. They are taking the royal piss if you ask me.

I may ask the grounds man Bob if I can rent the road that was marked between me and my neighbour.

Like a lot of intentions on the plot, the road never got going, as the width was miscalculated. It’s too narrow to use without driving over my raised beds "Which has happened several times - grrrr". Not this year though, railway Steve gave me a length of steel track which is going to be buried into the corner that gets the worst of it.

Let’s see if they like driving into that instead. I will paint a bright colour so it’s clearly visible though.

Normandy Weekend

We travelled to Normandy, France last weekend to see my wife’s family. The house we stayed in is her uncles, and I love it. It’s a Norman Farm house with several Hectares of land. The house itself dates back four hundred years with huge French oak beams and just oozes old charm. It has a brick fireplace and a bread oven to its side which makes you feel so comfortable in the chilly evenings. Outside the kids were fascinated with Jean-Marc’s three horses, cows, Chickens and rabbits. I was equally impressed with his Cave filled with wine and Calvados.

The best thing about France in my opinion though is not their fantastic wine or cheese. It's their roads. If you love driving then you would appreciate the French motorways which are not crowded. People don't drive in the middle lane creating road rage and the fast lane is just a pleasure to open up and give your motor a good workout. You are allowed to drive at 80 mph which means 90 mph and they have huge signs telling you that there will be a speed camera before you approach it. The only problem is that you pay for the pleasure with regular tolls, I'm not sure, but I don’t think you pay road tax if you are a resident in France so it would equal itself out as you pay when you use the infrastructure. You may even save a few quid if you don’t use the motorways that often.

We went into town to a Carrefour supermarket on Saturday morning. I went to the gardening aisle and was a little disappointed with the selection of seed available. I had to get something though and opted for some Mange tout, Onions and triumph de Farcy French beans. One thing I did notice is that the packets contain double the quantity than you get for the same price in England. I didn't have the opportunity to go to a garden centre as we were committed to seeing the family.

We arrived home around five o’clock on Sunday, I popped over to the plot for a quick peek. It always amazes me that even in the space of three days you see a marked difference in your veg.

The Radishes are quite visible now and the foliage has grown enough to cover the small drills I made a few weeks back. All the little spring onions have grown to about four centimetres and the Nantes early carrots have pushed through nicely. Soilman was happy to see his carrots had germinated under a cloche. I didn't use one and they have still come through although they are not as big as his so I think they would have liked a bit more heat.

I was surprised too, to see that the first early potatoes in one of my larger raised beds have begun to poke through the soil. I thought I had planted them a bit deep and they would have taken another couple of weeks but the weather has been kind since mid March so that has probably helped them along the way.

The Cauliflowers I over wintered are doing well now. I don’t think it will be too long before they begin to form their heads.

I have figured out what I sowed in my mystery raised bed now. I drilled several rows in a moment of seed frenzy three weeks back and forgot to label them up. There’s a row of Lambs lettuce, four rows of spinach and a couple of rows of beetroot. All of it has germinated in some fashion and the first true leaves on the spinach are beginning to form.

Lastly I noticed that the broad beans have begun to set white flowers which hopefully means that my over wintered experiments have by in large been successful. A few fellow plot holders had grown various brassicas over winter and they have bolted as soon as the weather turned milder.

So off I went home to check out the progress on the greenhouse seedlings;

Kohlrabi - Developing second sets of true leaves - will be ready to plant out at the weekend hopefully.

Tomato's - Only five plants have survived after the disaster - Four of them are doing well, the seed wouldn't budge from the last one for weeks and it tiny.

French Beans - One has germinated - Only planted last week.

Salads - All have germinated - Will have to give some away as I over planted.

Leeks - Look Crap after being smashed up. Have sown some more.

Peppers - over thirty have germinated over the weekend.

Calabrese - again thirty have germinated over the weekend.

Cabbage spitfire - Looks great, these are developing their first true leaves, ones near the windows of the green house looked parched but they will recover. Took lid off now.

Bortolli Beans, sweet corn, cucumbers, courgettes - Nothing yet only planted last week.

Basil - Growing slowly.

March Picture Gallary

Peggy suggested that I should post some pictures.

I agreed it was about time I remembered to take the camera.

So heres a few snaps from this afternoons bolt up to the plot to pick up my seed box.

http://picasaweb.google.com/CazauxFood/March2009CazauxTime

Its all a bit brown on the plot - I'm sooo looking forward to seeing my scratch of a patch become an oasis of green.

Nature sticks it to my Food factory.

So like any other day, I return from work last night after a long slog, hoping to kick back and relax before the next instalment of Groundhog Day, the elements provided a nasty surprise for me when I got home.

Apparently the wind picked up yesterday afternoon, and during the course of the evening it caught hold of my little greenhouse and tossed it about for a while. There was no damage as such to the greenhouse but inside was a whole different story.

The Staging at the back of the greenhouse had been knocked for six and along with it the majority of my seedlings that were coming on a treat. They had been upturned in their pots and scattered all over the floor.

To say I was major league peeved off would be any understatement. I’ve lost all my salads, Sage, Thyme and Tomatoes (except a few tomato's on a windowsill indoors). I managed to save about half of the kohlrabi and some of the basil looked salvable.

Thankfully the leeks were ok; they had been on the bottom shelf and managed to avoid natures little rabbit punch to the solar plexus.

I went into salvage mode, repotted the Basil, firmed down the few kohlrabi that survived the assault and threw the rest into a large sack for the local recycling centre.

The survivors got special treatment last night and spent the night in the comfort of my house. My wife must have felt pity for me because she didn't complain about the uninvited guests and I got a hug which cheered me up.

Lessons Learned: No point in crying over spilled milk. I'm going to move the greenhouse into another location and bolt it down so securely, that even if we get a storm of biblical proportions my greenhouse will remain a safe haven for the seeds I'll be sowing this evening. Just for that Mother Nature, I'll not be recycling for a week.

In less that on hour Spring will have arrived.

A monumental event occurs for all budding gardeners and vegetable plot holders on this day.

The vernal equinox occurs this morning. As the sun crosses the celestial equator at 11:43 GMT we will officially be in real spring. Not the meteorological spring which marks the seasons by dividing the seasons into four tidy three month periods but REAL SPRING.......

This has the old stomach butterflies’ whipping up a frenzy providing a moment of anticipation for me.

The greenhouse is alive with the emerging seeds that have been carefully planted over time since February including Kohlrabi, Early peas, Leeks, the first salads, Tomatoes, peppers, Sweet Basil and spitfire cabbage.

I can begin to think about Brussels Sprouts, Calabrese, next years sprouting broccoli, Dwarf French beans, Paris silver skin onions, cape gooseberries and so many more of the seeds that have been burning to escape from their foil wrapped imprisonment.

Over on the plot, the Kelvedon early peas are beginning to emerge, Radishes are showing their true leaves and have been thinned out. The early Nantes carrots are beginning to poke their feathered foliage through the soil.

Only three more weeks to go until my favourite day of the year. The day we get our evenings back and we finally get to spend a little time pottering around after work.

Happy Days!!!

So it’s been a month since I last posted.

So what’s been going down on the plot since the big thaw?

Well, for a start I now have a lovely new machine called a rotivator. It’s a 5.5 hp beast.

During the winter months I have been hand digging with what felt like no end in sight. Pulling out bramble clumps and perennial weeds from the new section of my plot and digging over the existing parts and adding in my home made compost and bags of well rotted manure.

A couple of weeks ago I removed the carpets that covered three of my raised beds. I have added some seaweed granulised fertiliser into these and have begun this years planting.

I raked over and hoe drilled several rows into one of the raised beds in preparation for the first sowings of the year. Into which I have sown four rows of French breakfast radish - Do the French eat radishes for breakfast? Three rows of Nantes Early Carrots and a couple of rows of White Lisbon spring onions. These are all quick croppers, chosen on purpose so that I can use the bed again in June for something else.

The following week I prepared a second bed in the same way as the first and have sown true spinach, some corn salad and bolt-hardy beetroots.

The over wintered Onions, Garlic and Shallots are growing big guns. Fantastic green leaves and the Shallots are showing several shoots on most of the plantings. The drainage I worked hard in achieving by adding several sacks of sand and the bitter cold weather looks like it will reward me with a bountiful crop in early summer.

The over wintered Cauliflowers are putting on new growth now too. I have several of these. It was hard to believe they would ever get going again after watching them just sit there without any sign of getting bigger since lat last year. The pigeons began their assault on them in December so they are all netted up now and have make a remarkable recovery.

I have planted out a row of Autumn Bliss raspberries, two red currant and two black currants in a section which has been given over to fruits. I have ordered three blue berry bushes which should arrive this week. Will probably sink some large containers in the fruit area to grow the blueberries in. They need a highly acidic soil to really get going and I don’t think I could modify and maintain my soil down to a ph level of 4.5 very easily.

The Summer Strawberry bed has settled down from the digging up and replanting late last year. It was a real mess with all manner of weeds and grass. The Plants set dozens of runners to so I though the best approach was to dig them up, add muck, and plants them back through gardeners membrane and provide a mulch of wood chip to make it look nicer and to hold the membrane in place.

On the 8th of March I planted twenty or so well chitted tubers of Maris Bard, Home guard and another I forget the name of. These went into the third raised bed. When they begin to poke through the soil I’m going to mulch up with straw and other organic materials.

That same week I also dug a narrow trench and planted a hundred or so early peas.

I went over on Sunday this week and gave the rotivator a good working out, or rather it pulled me around for an hour. I'm happy that I first dug the plot over taking out the majority of the roots and weeds as these machines have a bad reputation for turning your weed problem into all out weed warfare by chopping up perennials into thousands of pieces which in turn each grow into a new weed.

The over wintered broad beans were a bit of a hit and miss. It’s my fault really, I hoed the bed just before the killer weather that we had and the loosened soil allowed the ground frost to get at the roots. I probably lost half of them. I grew some space fillers in the greenhouse at home and got them planted in

I have given my Sons a raised bed to do what they want with. Max planted four broad beans I had left over; he has replanted some Rainbow chard for another of my beds. He managed to pinch one of my potato seeds so that went in too. He also planted several sun flower seeds. I had to prise my seed box from his hands as he was about to empty out several thousand carrot seeds in there too. I'll give him a hand next week so he doesn’t repeat last years over seeding.

So it’s been a while and I hadn't blogged for a month because I thought I had nothing to write. Then you get it out of you and you realise that quite a bit has gone on really. Won’t leave it so long next time.

Happy Gardening - Spring is finally in the air.

Mr Potato Head

I'm Going to the East Anglia potato fair tomorrow. I feel like i'm 7 years old and its Christmas eve.

Dear potato Santa,

Iv'e been a very good boy, please can I have the following for valentines day?

Love Cazaux.

Name Type Qty
Amorosa First Early 6
Accord First Early 6
Riviera Frst Early 6
Maris Bard First Early 12
Maris Peer Second Early 12
Wilja Second Early 12
Anya Second Early 12
Pixie Second Early 12
Mayan Gold Early Maincrop 12
Desiree Early Maincrop 12
Galactica Early Maincrop 6
Sarpo Mira Late Maincrop 12
Sarpo Axona Late Maincrop 12
Golden Wonder Late Maincrop 12

Fresh snow Rulz

We have had some incredible weather here in Essex over the last few days. I couldn't wait to get out and about in it. You don't see this every day, so we wasn't about to let it go to waste.

Here's a picture of my eldest son who has been with me on many weekends getting this scratch of land usable. Max was really excited to be knee deep in the lovely fresh snow instead of dirt. He was especially happy I was not digging or working on the plot so we could concentrate on the important things like throwing snow at each other, rolling snowballs into huge boulders and leaving them on the paths to melt, in say a June..... he he he - chuckles...


Looks like I'll be on the sidelines for a couple of weeks whilst this lot melts and the soil becomes workable. Hope this dosn't kill the broadbeans, they were the winter "experiment" - under the waterbottles to the left. Surely the garlic, overwintering onions and shallots will be loving this?

I wouldn't want to be at the bottom end when all this begins to melt as they will be flooded for a while.

My plot is right at the top of this amazing landscape, we had great fun with a closely fought snowball fight on the way down and had giggle.

In the winter you dont see the foxes roaming the streets like you do in the summer

They retreat to places like this.

Check out Mr fox halfway up the path.

Sorry, can't say that they are my favourite animal in the world, they turn out your bins and crap on your driveway for ten months of the year. I won't mention the pet rabbit meets hungry fox tragedy of 1999.


As much as they get a bad press from me and so many others, I hope he finds some food and is not too displaced by all the snow so he can live to crap another day.