Well we had a good productive meeting on Sunday despite it clashing with ‘Mothers Day’ and as well quite a few ‘regular’ people not being able to make it. We talked about growing plants, and we swapped plants and seeds, and we put lots of seeds in packets.

Discussion included the fairly dire bean growing summer season this year due to our weird hot, wet and cold cycles from January through till April. People reported having tomatoes and beans growing ferociously now in late autumn when they should be usually dying off as the cool weather sets in. This varies a lot of course from the top of the Mountains down to Lapstone – but we are all now having a good productive autumn period which means we may still get some good seed to at least keep things going in the way of seed for next year.

There seems to be plenty of autumn growing activity now and we are all putting in our winter crops like the Brassicas, Peas and so on that are getting a good start.

We packed quite a few seeds – amongst them varieties of Broad Beans, Carrots, Parsley, Korean Perilla (Shiso) and some Alliums like Garlic Chives and Leeks.

The leeks we packed are a very old variety called ‘Carentan’. This variety grows well in our local Mountains climate and produces good sizeable stems. Leeks or Allium ampeloprasum – have an interesting documented history dating back to early Phoenician traders and at least the Roman Emperor Nero (37-68 AD) who apparently ate a lot of them! They were distributed all over Europe from the Mediterranean region very early on and have always been popular.

We wound up the meeting early so that people could get to family events but achieved a lot in the time we had.

Thanks to all who came and helped out and see you at the next meeting!

Our next meeting is on August 6 so there is a big gap now over winter till we meet again in late winter/early spring.

However the way our meetings have been rescheduled we now have 3 more meetings closer together over spring going into summer before the end of the year – which is a good time to swap plants and seed.