Harvest Day Of The Romanov Family

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Gifts of the Romanovs' vegetable garden

On the second Thursday of September near Kolpino, on a garden plot known to many gardeners of the Romanov family, the already traditional Harvest Day took place. This year it passed a little later than usual.

Usually Boris Petrovich and Galina Prokopyevna invited journalists who write for gardeners and summer residents, representatives of the Union of Gardeners and Gardening Organizations in the last week of August. But now this was prevented by inclement weather at the end of the last summer month. True, even earlier, journalists from AiF, TV journalists from Channel 5, LOT channel had already visited the garden …

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The Romanovs call this day the harvest day because it is now that they begin the massive harvesting of their harvest. And you need to see their harvest, with this, I am sure, all our readers will agree, after looking at the photograph, which captures only a small part of the vegetables and melons collected on this day from the beds and greenhouses. Where else, besides the market turmoil, you can see, for example, so many watermelons and melons, if not in the Romanovs' garden. But these melons were grown not in the Astrakhan steppes, but in the swampy area near Kolpino.

This watermelon pulled 15 kg

But the business is not limited to melons: a variety of pumpkins have been grown - round, turban-shaped, oblong, dumbbell-shaped, including a giant pumpkin weighing 40 kilograms! And also zucchini, weighty fleshy and fragrant multi-colored tomatoes (Have you ever felt the aroma of tomato in the market?

You can feel it if you remove the ripe fruit directly from the bush and cherry tomatoes - small, red and yellow, but unimaginably sweet; juicy thick-walled peppers, eggplants shining with an appetizing sheen, cucumbers green in pimples, potato tubers, carrots, beets, parsley, celery, basil, a variety of salads. Plums and apples are also ugly today … In a word, such an abundance in one area is unlikely to be found anywhere else. I have not yet mentioned the many flowers and ornamental plants that have found a place, care and attention on this amazing site.

When you get here, the desire to speak completely disappears. I just want to walk around the site, listen to the owners' explanations and watch, watch … Because in our climate they create miracles.

Every year, something new appears on this site: buildings, technologies, plants, varieties. I immediately noticed that the huge greenhouse - almost 80 square meters - was now only partially used - by about a third. But in another corner of the garden there was another - a smaller one. As a result, the Romanovs had three small greenhouses this season.

I ask Boris Petrovich: was the harvest higher than last year? He shakes his head - smaller, in the old, big, he was taller. In fact, his dream is to work in a greenhouse four meters high, so that tall, large-fruited tomatoes can be grown there with full dedication. Then, he is sure, the harvest would be gigantic in general.

Cherry tomatoes really hang like cherries - in bunches

I saw that a tomato of the Pink Honey variety disappeared from the greenhouse, which last year made me happy with a very high harvest. But I was not surprised - the Romanovs are in constant search - they are looking for the best, each year testing more and more new varieties.

And they are not going to complain about the current harvest - there are many weighty pink and yellow fruits, and now, despite September, ripe and still ripening fruits of various shapes and colors hang in abundance in greenhouses. Red cherry tomatoes seem to be ripening cherries, they hang in clusters from bushes in greenhouses. Peppers are ripening along the side walls of one of the greenhouses.

And here there is a variety - weighty red and yellow specimens, and next to it - chocolate-colored peppers. And what's that? Another novelty and curiosity, which, I am sure, has not been seen by many readers. These are peppers of the Fakir variety - its fruits really resemble a fakir turban - green and already reddened, they hang in abundance on a growing bush. To be honest, I have seen exactly the same fruits only on foreign websites on the Internet. And now they are ripening in the garden near Kolpino …

The new zucchini of the Festival variety amazes with its shape and appearance, and how impressive are the nutmeg pumpkins …

The eggplant harvest is also pleasing

One of the journalists, when visiting the Romanovs' vegetable garden, expressed, in my opinion, a sensible idea: to make it a training and experimental site of the Union of Gardeners or the Office for the Development of Gardening and Horticulture. We often repeat the phrase "There is no prophet in his homeland." And indeed it is.

I recently heard the news: the famous Austrian farmer Sepp Holzer is coming to visit us and he intends to organize his courses here. He will give lectures and conduct practical exercises on the territory of the region - to teach how to profitably use the peculiarities of our soil and climatic conditions to obtain high yields without chemistry. Thank you, of course, especially if this study gives results - maybe we will have profitable farms. But we also have our own experience.

If only 10 percent of our gardeners had followed the path of the Romanovs, and even some farmers would have joined them! What the result could be! After all, Boris Petrovich and Galina Prokopyevna also do not use mineral fertilizers and chemicals. Cow dung, without which it is impossible to create warm beds - that's all they allow themselves.

At the same time, Boris Petrovich strictly adheres to his technology of irrigated agriculture - he makes sure that all food brought in for vegetables is absorbed without creating harmful accumulations, for example, of nitrates. The crop grown on their site can be eaten by any person, even those suffering from allergies. All vegetables are beautiful, clean and healthy - a feast for the eyes.

The owners of the garden are Boris Petrovich and Galina Prokopyevna

Like any farmer, the Romanovs have their own difficulties and problems. But with their experience and willingness to work, they are all removable. Another thing worries. Recently, I watched on TV a TV journalist's report about a visit to the Romanov household. She cheerfully broadcast: “We arrived at one of the gardening plots near Kolpino …” But this is not at all the case. This is where their main problem lies.

The Romanovs do not have a horticultural plot, but a garden plot. Anyone who understands this will understand that this site is temporary. And although they have been working on it for more than a quarter of a century, lately there have been more and more rumors that some kind of construction is possible at the site of truck farming. And all the many years of work, the main achievement of which is the magnificent fertile crumbly soil, almost black soil, into which, it seems, you can easily stick your hand up to your elbow, can disappear, disappear, and with it - the richest experience of the Romanov family.

Therefore, those words of the journalist about the vegetable garden for the study and implementation of advanced agrarian experience in the conditions of the Northwest were not at all accidental. After all, those watermelons and melons that are praised by everyone who tried them, they have all been grown for more than five years in any weather in the open field, and not in a greenhouse! At the same time, there are specimens of watermelons up to 15 kilograms! But I have often met gardeners who bragged about their success by growing one or two watermelons, three kilograms each, in a greenhouse. Many have heard about the technology of a high warm ridge, and Boris Petrovich brought it to perfection, which allows you to grow melons and gourds in any year …

Galina Prokopyevna and I walk through the site. She shows new items, explains where and what is growing. He proudly demonstrates a medicinal bed on which more than ten medicinal plants grow at the same time: St. John's wort, chamomile, sage, valerian, motherwort, fenugreek, Baikal skullcap, Rhodiola rosea and others - they all found a place in this living "pharmacy".

She created this novelty herself. And last year I amazed everyone with a large bed of basilicas - there were also more than ten varieties and species. They surprised with thick juicy foliage and a variegated combination of colors - bright green, dark green, purple. And the scent that rose over the ridge. Current medicinal plants also feel at ease in the Romanovs' garden.

This giant pumpkin weighs 50 kg

The owner of the garden is mainly engaged in vegetables. The hostess's main hobby is flowers and ornamental plants. There are probably more than a hundred of them on the flower beds. The list alone would take up a whole page. However, Galina Prokopyevna confidently calls their sometimes tricky names: gatsania, by the way, several varieties of this plant are still in full bloom; Commeline, Anagalis, Arctotis. This year, for the first time, hibiscus has grown and bloomed here, which we are used to seeing only in tubs indoors.

There are several types and colors of beautiful and beloved marigolds on the site: yellow, orange, variegated … Snapdragon here is traditionally short and taller than a person. I would find something to admire here, and a fan of phlox, dahlias, nasturtium and many other plants. Galina Prokopyevna is grateful to the firms "Severnaya Flora" and "Mika" - sponsors of the contest "Envy, Neighbor!" They offered seedlings of their ornamental plants as prizes to the winners. The owner of this garden more than once became the winner or prize-winner of the competition.

And now you can see these prizes on the site. Junipers, various Potentilla plants, cotoneaster, Japanese scarlet, barberries, spireas - they are no longer small seedlings and feel very confident on this fertile land. The scarlet tree has almost outgrown the nearby greenhouse, it is covered with lush foliage. On the barberry, which has changed its green outfit for a bright autumn one, the fruits are already hanging in red clusters. Cinquefoil, despite the fall, bloom magnificently. Many shrubs have turned crimson and look very beautiful.

Plums are abundant this season

There are many different plants on the site. Many interesting compositions could be formed from them. But the owners are held back by the uncertain status of their land. And yet, despite this, Boris Petrovich created several arches for his wife - at the entrance and in the center of the garden there are flower arches, they are wrapped in beautiful climbing plants - beans, peas, other flowers, there is an arch on which bright orange decorative pumpkins look beautiful, there are original flower beds, where various flower arrangements amaze everyone with their beauty.

There is still a lot to say about the site of the Romanov family, their amazing plants and technologies that they have mastered, but I agreed with its owners that they themselves would tell about everything new and interesting that happened to them in the outgoing season. And we wish them new achievements and solutions to all their problems.