Winter vegetables - English and Italian

When I got to the allotment today, Joe (56/58) was planting garlic and Joe (86/87) was planting red onions.

When I passed latter Joe, he told me I should be earthing up the fennel plants he gave me, or they would bolt.

I asked him again which of the winter lettuce he'd given me were which, because by now I was completely confused, and he pointed them out patiently and gave me their names. I turns out I've got them all wrong.

Anyway, it explained why the "lettuce" I tried the other day was bitter - it's name is cicora, i.e. chicory. The red one is cicora rossa. He says they develop hearts like lettuce. There is another chicory which I have, which he says you must dig up and transplant deep at the end of this month, because it has a big root (I guess this must be the chicory they make coffee with).

Later on, he brought me two lettuces in a bag and said, "Try them, see which one you like." One - the frizzy one - is scariola - the other, I think, is cicora.

In contrast, I had the first of my winter greens yesterday - a couple of miniscule cauliflowers and the first sprouts.

Winter vegetables

All the tomatoes that I brought home have succumbed to blight, and I'm going to have to throw them in the dustbin. I don't know whether Joe ever did spray my broccoli, but not a caterpillar remains. We are now crossing over into winter, and I shall have to get used to puritan vegetables like cabbage. But the rows of Italian varieties of lettuce given me by Joe are flourishing, and look very pretty, especially the scariole, though I had to go and buy a canister of slug pellets, since the slugs have already taken a fancy to them. I bought some garlic (three bulbs from Sainsbury's cost 89p) and planted two rows. The Italians plant around ten rows, and I think I will plant more, because the six or seven bulbs I grew last year were infinitely superior to the dried out old stuff you buy in the shops.

I must confess I have started digging up the potatoes on the Salvation Army's half of the allotment. This is because they haven't been down for five or six weeks and I can't bear to see good food go to waste. The spuds are big and cook well, but I got my come-uppance last night when I was peeling one and out of a slug hole wriggled a 3-cm centipede. I ran outside screaming, and cut out the offending portion of potato over my lawn.