May 4th Week: Cucumbers, Beans, Feast & Fast, Apples, 'Of the Woods'

A cold snap in May can do damage so he waits as long as possible before getting them out into their final growing positions towards the end of the month.

Dirty Nails cultivates Marketmore, which is a climbing outdoor (or ‘ridge’) variety producing an abundance of delicious, slightly spiky fruits. Having raised them from seed in the greenhouse (a windowsill is ideal, too) since mid-April, they are now sporting three or four lush, richly veined leaves, and look like they really want to get growing.

He prepared their bed some weeks ago. A sunny sight against a shed, with netting to clamber up, is ideal. The earth was enriched by heaping two buckets of soil onto one bucket of manure per plant, at 2 feet (60 cm) spacings.

Dirty Nails only needed to part the top of each mound with his hands to accommodate the pot-grown cucumber root ball, fold the soil back and water-in. He uses a fine rose on his can to sprinkle water lightly and gently from above.

BEANS: Speaking of cold snaps, beans don’t like them either. Dirty Nails has had lovingly nurtured runners and climbing French beans nipped and killed by frustrating mid-May frosts, and it is upsetting.

However all is not lost because beans can be sown direct into the ground now, 1½ inches (4 cm) deep, at two seeds per cane to be thinned to the strongest.

Although they won’t crop until slightly later, steaming portions of lovely, tender green beans will be on the family menu this summer, all being well.

FEAST AND FAST: There are good years and bad for different veggies. Some years, a particular crop will grow like the clappers, while others won’t shift for love nor money. It could be down to husbandry, weather, quality of seed, disease, pestilence, or the unexplained.

For instance, leeks are generally a tough, reliable food source. Alas, a tray of Carentan 3 has been somewhat neglected which means that this year’s pre-Christmas supply will be down on recent years.

Dirty Nails never tires of leeks, but this anticipated short fall is not the end of the world. In fact Mrs Nails is quite relieved, as she has confessed to becoming sick of the smell of them cooking towards the end of last winter.

Hopefully the lack of leeks in the kitchen will be more than made up for by Ormskirk Savoy and January King cabbages. Both are performing very well at the moment and inviting the promise of a bigger crop than usual.

APPLES: A selection of apple trees was planted in the New Year, as maiden whips. They have thrived, producing abundant leaves and good blossom. However it is important to allow apples to establish themselves for at least a couple of years before letting them take the strain of bearing fruit.

Therefore Dirty Nails has pinched out the pea-sized embryo apples forming on his trees. He is also giving them a goodly weekly bucket of water each.

Patience and control exerted by the grower now, with the saplings in their formative years, should hopefully result in stronger, healthier, heavier cropping trees in the future.

EXTRACT FROM DIRTY NAILS’ JOURNAL OF THE WOODS: “I always take a gentle pace when going on down through the woods. This is not just because the deeply rutted, muddy, sloshing tracks demand it but because in here, amongst the giants that stand as living monuments, totally complex and incomprehensively marvellous as you or me in their own unique and individual ways, I feel compelled to just take time to stand and stare.

"Call it a fascination, maybe it is their incredible size, perhaps the sweet music of woodland birds that envelops my senses and captures the soul for the period of time I allow myself to be lulled into this special place. To put my mind and body into neutral deep in Wincombe Woods is to loose track of that other world on top.

“A world which began to change when I passed the Creamery and was confronted with the grandeur of unfettered hedgerow sycamores. When I stood sheltered beneath the canopy of one of these billowing sentinels and watched clouds of twittering, bubbling, mischievously chattering house martins and swallows exploding from within and around the treetops, feasting on the seemingly limitless bounty of insect protein attracted into the vicinity of these tall trees, I was already somewhere else.

"The black and white martins twisted and curved in dazzling mazey feeding-frenzied dance, swirling in response to the movement of their food and the buffeting of a pre-shower strengthening breeze.

"Swallows dashed and weaved lower down, jewels of flashing, streamered blue, trawling for morsels just above ground height like well-aimed and well-thrown pebbles skimming the surface of a pond.

“And now, here is a place where five minutes passes into half an hour or more with effortless oblivion to timetables, schedules or appointments. The passage of what we describe as seconds, minutes, hours are but crude punctuation marks dreamt up by us to keep our lives in order.

"In the woods, long seasons and years count for what we might interpret as those tiny fractions of time to which we have wedded ourselves and are inextricably now enslaved throughout, if we are lucky, our 70-odd years or so.

“This is a place where swirling winds over the top are calmed to a stroke, their roar hushed to a gentle purr that is scarcely noticed and certainly does not offend the ears.

"Where a shaft of sunlight can spear down between the trees and bring a bramble-skirted ride to glorious life, then ease away with such subtlety that its disappearance is only highlighted when the next blast of warming radiation makes you startle and think, ‘Wow! The sun’s out again!’ “Of course, this environment is not here without the hands of men. That these monster plants still stand hundreds of years after that small acorn or nugget of beech mast landed on the leaf-littered deck, got a toe-hold in the fertile woodland soil and sent a thick taproot plunging downwards, reflects the fact that no-one has yet chosen to cut them down.

"Even when I sit at home and look out of the rain-splashed window at the stair-rods lashing down, or have a cup of tea with my wife, or bend my back in the garden or on allotment, I need to know that these trees are here, as they have been for all that time, still doing whatever it is that they do as only they can.

"Knowledge of their continued existence orientates my spirit and sense of self, gives the locale a sense of place and belonging. They offer an opportunity to come along and share space and moments if the mood takes, regardless of whether or not that opportunity is embraced.

"By linking the past with the present and future their continuity is priceless, and all the more inspiring when viewed first-hand within hugging distance.

“Even the stands of larches, planted with deliberation and choice, reverberating with the crisp trilling bubble of warbling blackcaps and mirroring the blue carpet of bells beneath with a tufty green haze above, strike a chord in my heart.

"Clumps of coppiced hazel, tall but dainty rowan adorned with thick creamy clusters of flowers and a canopy that sways and rocks in the wind, reminding me that somewhere in the core of my being, in the distant instinctive memory of my ancestry, I am a woodland animal whose forebears came out of the trees and to whom the irresistible magic of this amazing world will be a powerful but at times almost tangible feeling, sense, emotion.

"Stuff that I must carry invisibly and take with me wherever I go.”

JOBS TO DO IN THE GREENHOUSE: Check over all crops.

Water tomatoes daily.

Pot-on Green Sprouting calabrese sown in early May.

Pot up French marigolds from the market into individual pots and place throughout the greenhouse to naturally deter blackfly.

Pot-on Black Beauty aubergine.

On the plot Plant out marrow, Red (Uchiki) Kuri and Spaghetti squash.

Weed amongst Jerusalem artichokes.

Plant sunflowers in their final positions.

Plant out Autumn Giant cauliflowers, celeriac, sweet corn.

Erect a barrier around the sweet corn to deter badgers (who love the stuff!).

Sort out accumulated rubbish.

Take time to potter and absorb the early summer magic.

Check over all crops.

Weed amongst maincrop onions.

Plant out Marketmore and Bush cucumbers.

Water outdoor tomatoes.

Sow lines of Autumn Giant carrot wherever space allows.

Keep sweet corn well watered.

Earth-up all spuds.

If runner beans have been frostbitten sow fresh seeds (two per cane for later thinning to the strongest one).

Replace courgette plants which may have been eaten by slugs with specimens purchased from the market.

Hand weed here and there.

Remove tiny developing apples from newly planted trees to conserve strength for future harvests.

Keep the hoe busy between rows of veg.

Clean and clear weeds from winter onion and shallot beds.

Thin Swiss chard, leaf beet and lettuces.

Take time on the plot with young relations, showing them the amazing things that happen. Get the nervous or inexperienced to do some watering, those with more confidence can get their hands dirty with some thinning or weeding.

Thoroughly water young fruit trees.

MAY VEG ON THE MENU: Leaves and greens
Lovage
Purple sprouting broccoli
Roots, tubers and stems
Asparagus
Carrot thinnings
Radish
Rhubarb
Salads
Flat-leaved parsley
Lettuce
Anouk
Lettuce thinnings
Rocket
Winter purslane
Onion tribe
Chives
Leek
Onion (store)
Edible flowers
Salsify

How to Grow Your Own Food by Dirty Nails (ISBN 9781905862115) is available from www.dirtynails.co.uk or good bookshops, rrp £10.99