Have you tried Oca yet?

Oca (oxalis tuberosa) doesn't seem to have made it into any of the main catalogues yet, but is quickly growing in popularity. I got a few tubers from ebay a couple of years ago and this year five of us have grown it at the allotments (on six plots). Usually I dig it up a couple of weeks after the frost has killed the tops off, but this year the plants are still alive as we've only had minor frosts. As the tubers start to grow after the autumn equinox, a late onset to frost is great. Digging up the oca has the same excitement as digging up potatoes. The colourful waxy skins make them look like jewels in the autumn sunshine.

 

The waxy skins make the tubers easy to wash and they are cooked and eaten without peeling. I really like them roasted with honey and ginger, but like a potato they are very versatile. Try them raw too. If you have trouble getting hold of some, drop me a line and I'll sort you out.

Another Bag of Carrots

I thought while we're on the subject of carrots, I should show everything. This is the bag with the carrots for winter use. I've just started to eat them, and they are great. (I am so modest). It may seem strange to make a fuss about carrots as they are far from exotic, but until I experimented with growing in builders bags I was totally unable to grow them where I live. They just seemed to hate the heavy soil and carrot fly maggots were all over them. Now I have clean crisp carrots which more often than not serve as part of an impromptu lunch while I'm on the plot.
I tend to make about eight parallel drills across the soil when I plant, giving plenty of room to grow. The  bag gives them about a foot and a half of soil depth which is more than I have on most of the plot. I heard of somebody who grows all their veg in these bags, but for me its a way to create a space with customised soil for a specific purpose.

A Bag of Carrots

I mentioned in the celeriac post that I grow my carrots in a buiders bag. This is because my soil is rather heavy clay which the carrots don't seem to like. This handful of early nantes were the last of the summer carrots. Most importantly there is no carrot fly. They don't seem to like the height of the builders bag.

I cleared an area of brambles and weeds last year and composted all the roots in a builders bag. I bag everything - dandelions and bindweed included, and then seal it up for 12 months. I then riddled the compost and put back any roots that still looked to be alive, then planted my carrot seed in the seived compost. It seems to suit them. Now the carrots are gone, I've been using the compost to pot up various cuttings. I don't use any bought compost on my allotment. I've now started to eat the winter carrots, which I'll show another time. 



Another Welcome Mushroom

This little baby cheered me up no end. I innoculated the log at least 18 months ago and assumed it would never come to anything, but here we see the first shiitake mushrooms. I don't really know what season they are supposed to fruit, but at least they are still alive. I made the mistake of leaving the logs in a rather exposed spot and they got dried out, but I repositioned them, and they seem to be getting somewhere.

Celeriac competition winner 2011

We've had a very informal celeriac competion these last few years at the allotments, largely because it doesn't really seem to want to grow. This year I tried a new approach which involved growing just 12 plants in prepared soil in a builders bag. This is the way I normally grow carrots as they don't do well in my soil. The celeriac seems to like this treatment. They have grown to about six inches across - more than double the normal size. I have awarded myself first prize, though to be honest nobody else got beyond sowing seed this year.

Mushroom bonanza

The wine cap mushrooms have been a great success growing on woodchip from a friendly tree surgeon. Only £8 for the spawn and I've had up to three punnets of mushrooms some weeks. Much easier to succeed with these than the white agaricus. This is my second year with growing these and the spawn is easy to cultivate once you have it. This picture shows a bed where I dug a trench last autumn and filled it with fresh woodchip along with a spadeful of inoculated woodchip from last years bed. As you can see the slugs like these too, but there are enough to share!