JOE'JOTTINGS

JOE'S JOTTINGS DECEMBER 2013

The great storm predicted at the beginning of last month came and went. The Met office got the prediction absolutely spot on. 90mph winds passing over the southern part of the country overnight and early morning. They managed to get everyone prepared for the worse. Sadly a few people were killed and injured by falling trees and debris but on the whole, everything went to plan. Some folk were moaning about the railways preparation but then again would you like to be sat on an express train thundering toward a fallen tree or would you like to think that the engineers at Network Rail had taken the time to check the line before opening it up to traffic. I often give the Met Office some stick over there predictions but credit where it’s due. They called this one before you could see any activity on the satellite images. They gave a range of area it was likely to pass narrowing that down as it approached. From the initial forecast it shifted some hundred and fifty miles south. Which was good as it totally missed God’s county and caused no trouble whatsoever.

My oldest apple tree in the garden, which, has been threatening to shuffle off this mortal coil for some years now has produced a bumper crop of apples. They are classed as eaters but as we all know if they are picked too early they are guaranteed to give gut rot. I tend to leave them on the tree as long as possible as this allows the apples to ripen to their fullest flavour. A good trick to know when they are just right is to give them a gentle twist and a pull. If they are ripe the apple will come away from the tree easily. If it clings on and refuses to part company, it is best left a bit longer. What The Kitchen Skirt and I really liked about the apples from this tree was their flavour which took us back to our childhood days and you could get some pop called Barrs Ciderapple. I think they called it this as sometimes these things are shuffled in the memory bank. Anyhow I will call it Ciderapple. The flavour of this drink which had an alcohol content similar to bottled shandy (1/2 a percent) this gave a hint of cider, rather than just apple juice. We used to think we were proper grown up drinking this stuff until we sampled the real cider a few years later. With such a large crop not all the apples could be eaten so The Skirt set about making some of her famous apple crumble. In my mind there are not many foodstuffs which I would describe as divine but The Skirt’s apple crumble is one of those foods. Apart from the apple she adds orange and lemon to the mix to bring out a truly remarkable dish. In a bit of a rush because she was due to be out with her drinking cronies she forgot some of the sugar in the mix. In a flash of inspiration she added the remaining sugar to the crumble topping and popped it in the oven. The result was spectacular as all the sugar caramelised and gave the topping extra crunchiness. It was served with clotted cream ice cream. There is no finer food.

December is not a brilliant month for working outdoors but on good days there is still work to be done. Pruning trees and fruit plants is best done over the winter while the plant is dormant. Having no leaves allows you to see how the plant looks and where to cut. It is well worth learning how to prune trees to give the best appearance during spring summer and autumn.

As Christmas is approaching some of the cuttings can be used for decorations. Just add a bit of false snow and away you go. Holly is showing berries if you are lucky enough to have some in the garden this always looks good above the fireplace. Christmas is a good time of year to sit back and reflect on the previous year and start to plan what you are going to do for the following spring and summer have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I will be back in January with the usual start to the New Year, in the meantime there’s work to be done Top 10 jobs for this month are:  1. Check your winter protection structures are still securely in place 2. Check that greenhouse heaters are working OK 3. Prevent ponds and stand pipes from freezing 4. Prune open-grown apples and pears (but not those trained against walls) 5. Prune acers, birches and vines before Christmas to avoid bleeding 6. Harvest leeks, parsnips, winter cabbage, sprouts and remaining root crops 7. Deciduous trees and shrubs can still be planted and transplanted 8. Take hardwood cuttings 9. Keep mice away from stored produce 10. Reduce watering of houseplants

JOE'S JOTTINGS JANUARY 2013

The weather through December has been as one would expect, cold, wet, milky sunshine, frosty mornings and the occasional snow flurry. What we did get that is a bit out of the ordinary was “bottle ice” or black ice. The stuff that is caused by freezing rain. The rain falling from the sky is liquid water at zero or one degree and as soon as it touches a frozen surface it turns to ice. The ice quickly builds up and puts a glaze over everything. At a quick glance it looks like the surface is just wet. The reality is one of the most dangerous ice event there is. In very cold areas such as Russia and Canada this type of ice has been known to bring down large electricity pylons by adding so much extra weight to the structure. The term black ice is not because it is black but, when if forms on roads it is indistinguishable from a wet road until you hit and go straight to scene of the accident. This type of ice costs all of us a boat load of money as the hospitals (NHS which is you) have to treat the wounded. Time is taken off sick and the misery if you happen to be one of those unfortunate enough to slip on it. Having said all that it does have some lighter stories of near misses and hearing them conjures up delightful and often funny pictures in the mind. A mate of mine Mick from Allerton went outside to scrape the ice off his windscreen. His road has a very gentle slope so he didn't anticipate any problems. That is until he started scraping the windscreen. At this point Newton’s third law kicked in and Mick went sailing gracefully down his street unable to stop until he managed to grab a door mirror on a nearby Astra. He returned to the car on all fours, turned on the engine and waited for the screen to thaw. Another funny tale I overheard in a pub The George I think. Every morning this fella lets his dog out into the garden. Every morning his dog is stood there wagging its tail and eager to be out chasing the neighbour’s cat. This morning was no exception, the dog bounded out of the door over three steps and onto the path which leads to the garden gate about fifteen yards away as the dog landed it skidded once to the left and then to the right finally ending up on it’s belly hurtling toward the garden gate at a great rate of knots. The gate arrested the dog who looked back at his owner with a look on his face which said “what the hell happened there”. The dog managed to get to it’s feet and staggered like a drunkard back to the house with it’s tail between it’s legs. So always check before you step out on a cold morning it may not be rain you are looking at. One guy recons he gets about in this type of weather by putting some socks over his shoes. Worth a try I suppose.

I must admit that this autumn has been hectic and I have not had much time in the garden The kitchen Skirt has been moaning at me to tidy it up. Its just the small thing that usually don’t get done, brushing the algae off the paths, picking up dead vegetation from summer bulbs and trimming the hedge. On one particular day we had a hoar frost, the frost which coats everything in fluffy white frost and in extreme cases it looks like snow. The garden looked superb with the hard landscaping stood out against the white frost. The dead vegetation took on a new life as the frost only left the form of the plant to be observed and not the usual sad grey – brown autumnal colour. I was dragged out of bed this Sunday morning and frog marched out to the garden. A brush was thrust into my hands and I was told in no uncertain terms that if this isn’t tidy by lunch time you can forget any thought of bacon butties and coffee or a pint at the local when the sun goes down. Like I said it just needed getting stuck into. Twelve thirty The skirt presented me with a well deserved butty. The garden is looking a dam sight better for just a few hours work. I am now going to put my feet up for an hour or two while she is out at her mate’s house.    

Top ten jobs for this month.      1. Recycle your Christmas tree by shredding it for mulch 2. Ventilate the greenhouse on sunny days 3. Dig over any vacant plots that have not been dug already 4. Repair and re-shape lawn edges 5. Inspect stored tubers of Dahlia, Begonia and Canna for rots or drying out 6. Prune apple and pear trees 7. Start forcing rhubarb 8. Plan your vegetable crop rotations for the coming season 9. Keep putting out food and water for hungry birds 10. Prepare a polythene shelter for outdoor peaches and nectarines, to protect them from peach leaf curl    

JOE'JOTTINGS DECEMBER 2012

Here was my thinking we are having a fairly mild and uneventful November when all hell broke loose on the weather front again. Floods over large parts of England and Wales, due to some very persistent rain over several days. Falling on already saturated ground. I thought we had our fair share of rain over the last twelve months. In early spring the powers that be in the water companies were predicting drought because the underground aquifers were nearly empty. Only autumn storms could save the situation. As all the rain in spring and summer was used up by the plants or evaporated. Mother nature as usual provided a few surprises, which was the wettest year for more than one hundred years. Drought what drought.

As you have probably heard many Ash trees in this country have contracted the Ash Die-back disease. This threatens the very existence of Ash trees in this country. I was invited to a seminar on the problems associated with the disease at a hotel in London. Now its been quite a while since I ventured near the capital, so I thought it might be a good idea to take The Kitchen Skirt with me and we could have a mini break. The seminar only lasted a morning so we would have the rest of the day to ourselves. Have you ever noticed how every man and his dog can get cheap hotels, flights, theatre tickets and rail journeys from tinternet but as soon as I try they don’t seem very cheap. I think quite a few people tell fibs to make themselves sound a bit canny. Anyway to cut a long story short we ended up at Idle travel. (I know I keep mentioning them but they are good) They set us up for two nights in a hotel B and B and train tickets for under three hundred quid. On the morning of departure The Skirt produced this massive suitcase which would have been good for a month. Off we went down to Shipley station to catch the train, dragging the steamer trunk along the platform. I must say that if you are travelling between city centres the train is a brilliant way to travel. Fast, quiet and comfortable. It also allows The Skirt to indulge in some of her favourite intoxicant whilst speeding through the autumnal countryside. I had forgotten how busy certain parts of London can be. Kings Cross was chaos. Get an oyster card I was told. Wrong! What we needed was a day or three day transport pass which allows unlimited mileage on the underground, buses(best way to see London if you can work it out) and a reduction on the water buses. The underground to Leicester Square got me into panic mode as I could not move for two stops. The Skirt was drifting away down the carriage being carried along on a wave of seething bodies. Luckily Leicester Square seemed to be everyone else’s stop and we burst out onto the platform gasping for air. The Skirt demanded we see a show that night hence the rush to the booking offices in the said square. We wanted to see Warhorse but it was full for a month, so we decided on the London Palladium to see a local girl Sarah Earnshaw starring as the ghost of Christmas past alongside Tommy Steele in Scrooge. Good show but a little bit cheesy. Tommy Steele is fantastic for his age. On the Sunday night we went to see the new James bond film Skyfall. It’s a cracking film with a lot of the action shot in and around London which gave it immediacy as we had been in several locations that day. On the Monday I went to the seminar in the morning and met the Skirt in Covent Garden. One of the guys at the seminar recommended a look around Freemason Hall which is just around the corner from Covent Garden. What a fantastic building, probably one of the finest art deco buildings in London and the tours are free. Most people know the building as the headquarters in BBC’s Spooks. Later in the afternoon I had made an appointment to see someone in the Houses of Parliament which meant going through security in Portcullis House. For a change I went straight through. The Skirt however was hauled off to one side by a huge copper gripping a Heckler and Koch machine pistol. “Have you anything sharp in your bag madam” shouted a sergeant from the x-ray machine. It’s not often that you see the Skirt terrified but this was one of those occasions. “No, No I haven’t” she said meekly. “Well what is this” he boomed. I’m thinking what the hell is going on here. I stepped towards The Skirt but the sight of a gun barrel pointing at me persuaded me to back off. The sergeant produced a small black plastic bag from The Skirts handbag and gingerly tipped the contents onto the table next to him. “Oooh” shrieked The Skirt. “It’s a butter knife I bought in Covent Garden. I forgot it was in my bag. I’m so sorry!” Much fluttering of eyelashes and smiles melted the coppers, who in the end saw the funny side of it. The knife was held in custody until we returned to collect it on our departure. Getting back to the important business of the Ash tree problem and the reason for visiting the capital in the first place. Ash dieback is a fungus disease which is spread by spores. It was first discovered in imported trees from the continent. But it has been found in the wider population suggesting it has also arrived through natural means. On the backs of migratory birds, lorries, wind borne and on peoples shoes. It is important to identify the disease when you find it. This is what you look for: Blackened, dead leaves – may look a bit like frost damage. Dark lesions – often long, thin and diamond-shaped – appear on the trunk around the base of dead shoots. The tips of shoots become black and shrivelled. The veins of leaves, normally pale in colour, turn brown. In mature trees, dieback of twigs and branches in the crown, often with bushy growth further down the branches where new shoots have been produced. The problem with winter and autumn is they naturally lose their leaves and it can be other problems and diseases. If you suspect that your Ash tree has this problem you must wash your boots, bike or car tyres. Don’t disturb or remove any twigs, fallen leaves or other plant material. Report it immediately to Chalara helpline: 08459 33 55 77 (open 8am – 6pm every day)

Top ten jobs for this month are: 1. Check your winter protection structures are still securely in place. 2 Check that greenhouse heaters are working OK. 3 Prevent ponds and stand pipes from freezing. 4 Prune open-grown apples and pears (but not those trained against walls). 5 Prune acers, birches and vines before Christmas to avoid bleeding. 6 Harvest leeks, parsnips, winter cabbage, sprouts and remaining root crops. 7 Deciduous trees and shrubs can still be planted and transplanted. 8 Take hardwood cuttings. 9 Keep mice away from stored produce. 10 Reduce watering of houseplants