We had a disaster with our Florence fennel at the allotment this year. Bar a couple of plants, it all bolted, and once that happens the bulbs are too tough to eat. I think lack of watering at a crucial stage may have been to blame.
But every cloud has a silver lining and this weekend the bolted plants looked fantastic – about 6ft high and the kind of fresh, bright green that you only see in spring. They looked positively other-worldly amid a sea of decaying, brown plants.
Next year I’d like to actually eat some fennel so will make a bit more of an effort to look after the plants. But I’ll definitely neglect a row so I can enjoy the flowers too.
OMG! so much in the press about Greece going bankrupt, John Terry being a racialist and the X Factor bosses in meltdown but NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about your Florence fennel. it really is a crazy mixed up world!
And you think the X Factor is news?! There’s enough ugliness in this world without me adding to it, worried about Greece and Terry as I obviously am!
the best grafitti i ever did see was in New Zealand and said simply…
‘In such an ugly world the only true protest is beauty’
I live my life by that mantra!
Funnily enough, when I was thinking of doing this blog, my tagline for this blog was going to be exactly that!
Yes, next year you ‘make a bit more of an effort to look after the plants’.
I bet if you tried to get them to bold in a flower border they wouldn’t!
For a moment there I thought you were going to make a comment about me making ‘a bit more of an effort’ in general. Which would have been entirely justified!