Topic: Annual Update from the Desert

[Stork]

Hello all,

Some of you older members will recall that I tore myself away from my allotment in Harrow to relocate to the deserts of Qatar. Amazingly that was very nearly five years ago. My allotment is still the thing I miss most of all about life in England.

So here I am sitting on my patio at 9:52 pm and it's still 34c after hitting a peak of 46c at midday.

But it's not all bad news. In the pots surrounding me I have two thriving basil plants, thyme that has been flourishing for a year, some rosemary that is going strong and a lime tree which looks a bit heat stressed but is generally OK. It fruits well in the winter when it's much cooler here.

I also have a coconut palm which I brought back from a holiday in the Maldives in January. At the time it had a 2 inch shoot. It's now a foot tall with seven healthy looking leaves so I am very happy with it. I am not sure I will be here long enough to harvest the first fruit from it, but some lucky bu**r will benefit in the future.

I also have a papaya tree in the garden which has about 15 fruits on it at the moment. I hate papaya but my daughter loves it and she can't wait for the fruits to ripen. I planted it a year ago and it has shot up from 4 feet to 8 feet in that time so I must be doing something right but I am not sure what. I think the camel poo fertiliser keeps it going.

In a few weeks I will head back to England for the annual summer break and some serious seed buying. My new house here in Doha has a massive roof terrace which is going to become my new allotment. Come the winter I will be growing tomatoes, peppers, chillis, cucumbers, courgettes, aubergines and lots of salad leaves which are unbelievably expensive over here (six quid for one of those supermarket bags of rocket!!!).

Last winter I had a go at purple sprouting broccoli as somebody gave me some seeds but keeping stuff like that alive in this summer heat is impossible. Ho hum.

I'll sign off by wishing you all a long and happy harvest. I'll be admiring allotments with an envious eye during my holidays.

All the best,

Stork.

[Tulipa]

Hi Stork, I remember you :) 

I also lived in Doha for a while so I can picture your life :)  I love the idea of a roof top terrace, I had a roof top that would have been ideal as roof terrace but never got round to it.  Enjoy the lovely evening temperatures, I do miss that but not the heat of the day at this time of year - took my driving test in July!  Glad you are still enjoying life out there, I think it is a little different now to when I was there.  Enjoy your leave too.

T.

[Kleftiwallah]

I did a stint in Oman,  tomato plants from the sewerage farm and growing well with water from the aircon unit.     Cheers,    Tony.

[zigzig]

This is very interesting to me. I loved my stays in Thailand and my hosts told me that they could not grow certain things that in the UK we thought were basics in our veggie plots. Flowers too.

Well I brought back some seeds from there to try to grow them in the UK. The weird and wonderful fruits and vegetables even herbs. (yes it is legal)

The seeds did germinate and showed promise but some things went straight to seed. I believe (from a chat with some experts) that was because in the UK we get too much light. Others grew more slowly and before they could ripen our frost set in.


Over the decades I have taken seeds from exotic plants and tried to grow them in the UK. Not totally unsuccessfully but generally, they have not performed brilliantly, no or few crops. It was fun trying.

I do not envy your desert home in the English summer. Only in our winter would I prefer to be some where warmer.

Currently we are enjoying freshly dug potaotes, freshly picked peas, tiny little carrots (so that the rest can grow bigger)  the most tender cabbages and a variety of salad veg which all have an intense flavour to die for. They need little more than a smitdgen on seasoning (and for me a load of melted butter).  The herbs are delicious when tiny and fresh too.

Hope you are getting a generous salary because as an OAP I can honestly tell you that the taste of freshy picked ready to eat fruits, vegetables & herbs right now makes our megre income worth staying here for. 

Mind you, we do have all the time in the world to look after our veggie plots.

So sorry too that you youngsters will have to wait so long for your oensions until you might be too old to enjoy them like we do.

Loving my life. Old but totally fit.

Do I feel guilty?

 Nope

There are too many youngsters who need the work I am qualified and fit an able to do. I am not greedy. I have enough in savings and pensions to manage.

[cornykev]

Harrow Stork, it's been a while, the weathers been about mid 20's to 30 here, thats hot enough for me, it sounds like your winters are our Summers, good luck with the coconut palm.   ;D

[artichoke]

Kleftiwallah (does that mean something?), my sister has done long stints in Oman (years) and I joined her a few times to work together on a book about useful/edible wild plants (published by Oman in the 80s).

Where were you? In Salalah, I used to go to the sewage wadi nearby just before sunset (6pm!) because a lot of wild plants that could only otherwise be found in the mountains (Jebel Samhan, exhausting climbing and expensive helicopter flights), would wash down and grow in that wadi, I discovered.

My sister tried to grow veg when she lived there all the year round, and her only success was okra.

And yes, I couldn't help noticing the drips from the aircon, but was never there long enough to do anything about it myself.

But one of our team set up trial wire fences across parts of the jebel to catch the mists drifting across Dhofar during the Kharif, to show that crops could be grown in a line along the fences where the mist condensed into drops of water.

Among our best sites for wild plants were the balsam bushes (Euphorbia balsamica) which likewise condensed the mists into drips, and also sheltered rare wild plants from the sun. Happy days.