Not just your Average Thistle: Globe Artichokes

First picking of Green Globe

This awful spring has produced one big surprise harvest in the garden.  Artichokes.

But, it has taken four years to get to this point.  In the first year we were in France, the lone surviving plant from the initial handful grown from seed produced a single aphid and ant infested head which we shared.  It was small and not worth the bother.  The plant promptly succumbed to the cold or the damp or both over the winter and never re-appeared.

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.