The Joy of Gardening and the Almost Forgotten Art of Carrot Storage

Back in London, the start of each spring would see me wander through Tooting Bec Common to our local garden centre to purchase my tomato plants. The chili plants would already be at home, strong and healthy, having been grown from last year's seeds. Come summer, all would be thriving in pots on our sun-drenched and decked back yard.

Hardly an allotment, but great fun nonetheless.

The tradition has been maintained in our first spring back in Sydney. What's different is that here I am without my own seeds and, at least for now, left to experiment with a few varieties of local chilis and tomatoes.

This and that with us fortunate enough to have a decent garden I've claimed a bit for a vege patch. Beans, carrots and a token in-ground tomato, as well as basil, thyme and continental parsley.

You can take the boy out of Europe, as they say.

It might be more expansive, but it hasn't been all plain sailing. First there's the neighbours' cats. Being the softest part of the garden they found it an ideal toilet. The beans were robust enough to take the punishment but the carrots and herbs have suffered.

My sister had the same problem last summer. Taking a leaf from her book I put sticks and small stakes into the ground to stop the cats from squatting.

Sure enough, problem solved.

Next my darling son. A small fence was erected to stop him walking onto the garden and, much to his mother's surprise, it has withstood his shakes and remains upstanding. The only problem is that with so many sticks in the ground on the other side he thinks this is where all sticks belong.

When not picking them up, or replacing the potting mix he has redistributed from around my potted plants, I sometimes consult my gardening book to find out what other, more typical problems might lie ahead.

Green top, fanging, sclerotinia rot. Stuff like that.

My book is Dr D.G. Hessayon's The Vegetable & Herb Expert, purchased a few years ago because it looked like the sort of book every bloke should have, albeit a bit over the top for one with nothing more than half a dozen terracotta pots.

Despite this, and the planting guides following northern hemisphere seasons, it's both handy and a darn good read.

The book is a best seller in Britain and one of 22 'Expert' books the green-thumbed doctor has published since 1958. To quote Dr Brent Elliot, librarian at Britain's Royal Horticultural Society, "the Expert Books have been the biggest innovation in gardening publications since the death of William Robinson in 1938."

That could very well say it all.

That and the life Dr Hessayon continues to breathe life into what I can only imagine is the dying art of carrot storage.

Carrot storage, that is, sans fridge.

It's a trick designed for the British summer and its all-too-often abrupt end which leaves mature carrots unharvested and exposed to the elements.

Using only those which can be picked without damaging the roots, the leaves are cut back to half an inch and the carrots placed in a 'stout box' between layers of sand or dry peat. You have to make sure they don't touch. Then it's simply a case of keeping the box in a dry shed and checking the carrots occasionally to make sure none have started to rot.

Apparently they'll keep this way for five months. If you have a dry shed. Not to mention the curiosity and conviction.

Dad v. the Huntsman

I'd just popped on the headphones for a bit of mid-morning air guitar when I spotted the bugger in the top corner of the study. Though not yet midway through the first verse there was no question I had to stop.

It wasn't fear of the spider. More the embarrassment of having an audience.

And it was just as well Kate was at work. She hates the things. Tough as nails on a netball court, but put a bug in front of her and she's up on the nearest chair.

She'd also been beavering away in the study from four to six this morning. I'd hate to think what would have happened if our eight-legged friend had arrived a few hours earlier.

And by hate I mean preferred to keep sleeping.

Anyway, scene set - now for the action: one brush, three strikes, out the door.

The first took it from wall to mattress. Next was a shot I couldn't repeat in fifty attempts - a flat drive from sofa to curtain cord. From there it was easy: extend the cord out the door and kick the thing into touch.

Okay, not just into touch. Once there it was doused in fly spray until it looked like Frosty the Snowman.

Talk about mellowing with age. In the old days I'd have lit a match.

Okay, possibly still a bit excessive. The spider was outdoors where it belongs, and it's not like it was a Red Back. The Huntsman exists purely to scare New Zealanders and English tourists.

Big but harmless. A kitten in a Tarantula suit.

Still, we do have a wild sub-tropical backyard and I'd like to think there aren't any big spiders in it. Let alone one that's pissed off and lurking 'round the corner.

The First Day of Spring

It’s the first of September; the first day of spring. Back in England I’d have been waiting another three weeks, such is their obsession with the equinox.

Of course, even by 20 March I’d have been lucky to be sitting outside my South London house with a glass of Rose, which is precisely what I’m doing now.

It’s a belter of day, the floors are clean, the washing is out and the boy’s fed and asleep. I think this is what the professionals call ‘me time’.

Whatever, so long as mine is served well chilled.

And well justified. There’s a real sense of freshness to this particular seasonal shift. August closed with the end of the football season, so there goes the thrill of the match day and my Wednesday night training session with the lads.

August was also a month of family visits. Though delightful and full of moments to cherish, these were also bookended by days of frantic cleaning, baking and shopping.

Weekdays, needless to say.

And, as if a glutton for punishment, yesterday I added to this list with a coffee-fuelled decision to spruce up our garden before spring arrived.

Heck, I wouldn’t be trumpeting my role as a stay-at-home dad if the inside of the house wasn’t kept spick and span. That being the case it was always going to take some lateral thinking for me to get any sort of kick out of the spring cleaning tradition.

Well, that and doing it in winter – a season that warrants, if not making absolutely necessary, the use of one’s brazier to fire up all those leaves and fallen branches.

If only I’d kept watch over my fire in the company of a mulled wine.