The Hungry Gap

 The scent around me is intoxicating, sweet and heady.  Not roses or honeysuckle, but black kale in full bloom.  Clearing away the last of the winter and spring brassicas makes me realise that we are now firmly in the grip of that period in the self-sufficient growers calendar know as the Hungry Gap.  It somehow seems wrong, when the temperature is hovering around thirty degrees,  and the bees are humming,  to find that the vegetable garden is a bit thin on edibles. 

Looking around, I can see garlic and shallots which won’t be good until sometime in June.  There are a few leeks, very much on the point of bolting – slightly corrugated as the flower head pushes up through the centre.  And, yes, I can see one flower spike already.  So leeks for a another week, perhaps.  A few chard and perpetual spinach plants are just starting to put on some new growth.  Eat it all now, or be patient for a week or two?  By which time they too may be running to seed.

There are a few lettuces, the autumn sown Rouge de Grenoble has stood the snow very well, although probably most spectacular are the self sown bright green lettuces, a type of salad bowl, I guess, in amongst the tulips.  I’m not sure if they came in on the wind or via a mulch of not hot enough compost spread in the autumn.  Whichever, they are a welcome addition.  The broad beans are just starting to set.  The carpenter bee has not yet found them; it’s too big to fly up the flower trumpets so simply drills a hole at the top, has a feed but doesn’t pollinate the flowers.  Beautiful, beastie, if annoying.

We won’t mention the single spear of asparagus.  It makes a pencil look chubby.

In the house, I have the last of the winter squashes; one beautiful Crown Prince, still showing some blue on the skin, although now perhaps a little more orange.  This one will get roasted at the weekend and will do as a vegetable, soup and risotto before it is through.  In the store cupboard are the last of the dried pulses and a few jars of roast tomato passata.  And of course, there is a freezer.  But as we are trying to be frugal (mean) on our electricity bills, it is just the bottom three drawers of a triple A rated fridge/freezer and currently stuffed with more leeks, the last of the chillies and tomatoes, a few blanched haricot beans.  And some stock, naturally.  We do have lots of jars of pickles.  Lots.  I guess they must count as one of your five a day?

Of course, I did plan for the Gap, a range of varieties of kale and sprouting broccolis which should have cropped one after the other, not all in a frenzy over  little more than a month.  And then the spring cabbages would have been ready – first harvested as loose headed and then the later ones hearting up nicely.  I planted  a dozen.  The slugs promptly had half.  Mole excavations obviously left a few more with their roots in mid air as they turned up their toes quite early on.  And the remaining half dozen bolted without producing anything to eat at all.  Harvest?  Zero.  The pak choi all went the way of the slugs, too.  I’m not put off and have two different varieties of pak choi for this coming winter.

Now is the time to plan for the Hungry Gap next year.  Maybe we’ll just get a big freezer?