L's
changing colours
CdP, 5 December 2008
The orto where I have it now is just fine in spring and summer. But at this time of the year, I’ve discovered, it gets the early morning sun (of limited benefit seeing as how it’s so icily cold up here early in the mornings and the ground is still more or less frozen) after which the sun swings around behind that big oak on our boundary with Mario’s and goes off the garden until about 3pm. Then of course by 4.30 it’s dark.
Many oaks around here have lost their leaves now, especially after the high winds of the past few says. But that particular orto-shading oak is a Quercus pubescens – a roverella in ordinary Italian, Downy Oak in English – and part of its attractiveness is the way that its leaves turn russet then cling on. And on. And on. Unless a veritable hurricane whips through, the leaves will probably still be there for another two or three months. And my few brave brassicas and onions may or may not survive the lack of warmth and direct sunlight. We shall see.
What I need, therefore, is a couple of beds right up by the well. This is not the most convenient place for me. I mean, you can’t get much further away from the house without clambering down to the bottom field. On the other hand, the sun beats down upon it from dawn to dusk, with no obstacles whatsoever. Even the fruit trees I have planted up there will never cause too much winter grief: they, after all, obligingly lose their leaves at a very early stage in the autumnal proceedings.
The other thing I need, I’ve discovered, is a winter cold frame. And there’s no reason why that shouldn’t be up there too. The problem with vegetable gardening in small beds, as I do, is that they’re fine in summer when vegetables are neat and compact, and easily squashed together… not to mention fast-growing and speedily consumed. But winter vegetables are different. They are huge (I’m thinking cabbages and cauliflowers here) and ponderously slow. If you’re going to have them in the ground from seeds – or at least from minuscule seedlings – then you need endless space to allow many of them to go through the process at different times. If I had a roomy cold frame, on the other hand, I could sow, then keep growing seedlings in there until they were a healthy size to plant out. They wouldn’t have to rob space where larger plants could already be nearing the time to be eaten. What I’m saying is, I need to get my planning sorted out.
At the moment, for example, I find myself with five cabbages. Well, four, actually, because we’ve eaten one already. They all seem to be maturing about three weeks after each other. Five is, I have to admit, not a great number. Really, I’d like to have just slightly more frequent cabbages than that. But even had I gotten my act together and sown more (actually, I may have more but I’ve quite forgotten what some of the tiny things up there are…) I wouldn’t have had anywhere to put them. And I’d have been afraid of invading beds which, in three months’ time, I’m going to be needing desperately for spring and summer crops. The logistics are as intricate as a chess match.
So, yes, I need, every couple of weeks, to put another few brassica seeds in my root trainers. And some lettuce. What else? Those kind of things that survive through the big freeze. Then as soon as I can, I need to shift those into a cold frame; one which gets constant sun all day thus spurring my plantlets on to grow at heroic speeds. And then, as they get nice and large enough to thrive in the outside world, I need to move those into my garden beds. Not too many: a very orderly few every couple of weeks, scientifically, depending on how many we really expect to consume.
Can I really be that organised?!