Pea ‘Ambassador’ I’m a bit spoilt for choice this month. The allotment is absolutely bursting with produce: courgettes, carrots, beetroot, onions, spuds, some chard, loads of cucumbers, a smidgen of early kale and the beans just starting to get into their stride. And that doesn’t count the salads and the herbs, still going strong. But [...]
Archive for the ‘Harvesting’ Category
Pick of the month: July
Posted in Allotments, Harvesting, Pick of the month, tagged peas on July 20, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Pick of the month: April
Posted in Allotments, Harvesting, Pick of the month, tagged brassicas, purple sprouting broccoli, weather on April 7, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Purple Sprouting Broccoli ‘Late Purple Sprouting’ I have been waiting for this for weeks… and weeks… and weeks. In fact it’s no exaggeration to say this event has been the most anticipated in the allotment calendar for years. My purple-sprouting broccoli has, at last, unfurled and is ready to pick. Purple sprouting broccoli, or PSB [...]
So farewell then…
Posted in Allotments, Harvesting, tagged brassicas, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale, purple sprouting broccoli on March 31, 2010 | 2 Comments »
… brassicas. Another rite of passage for the year: I’ve been clearing my brassica beds. We ate the last of the Brussels sprouts several weeks ago (‘Maximus’ and ‘Trafalgar’: minimal crop as I’m not very good at growing Brussels and yet again succumbed to the temptation to plant those little itty-bitty seedlings too close together - but [...]
Rogues’ Gallery: Rats
Posted in Allotments, Harvesting, Rogues' Gallery, tagged pests, rats, sweetcorn on January 11, 2010 | 5 Comments »
Shhh – say it quietly. Nobody ever mentions the r-word: but every vegetable garden has them. They say no-one, anywhere, is more than six metres from the nearest Rattus norvegicus (that’s the brown rat – the black rat, Rattus rattus, is apparently almost extinct nowadays despite its notoriety as the cause of the Black Plague. Black rats have pink, hairless [...]
How not to do it…
Posted in Allotments, Harvesting, tagged frost, parsnips, potatoes, winter on December 23, 2009 | 1 Comment »
1. Wait until it snows. A lot. 2. Then wait a bit longer, until a good smattering of sleet and near-Arctic night-time temperatures have frozen any would-be slush entirely solid. 3. Set off to collect your Christmas dinner veg in a large and unwieldy Mercedes estate car with less-than-ideal traction in icy conditions. 4. Abandon said estate [...]
Pick of the month: December
Posted in Allotments, Harvesting, Pick of the month, tagged frost, kale, winter on December 7, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Kale ‘Dwarf Green Curled’ This is a staple on my winter allotment, and in fact in my winter front garden too: it’s so pretty with its frothily crinkled leaves and makes a great contrast to broad-leaved evergreens or spiky winter seedheads. It’s almost libellous to call it a brassica. It is nonetheless undeniably a relative of [...]
Two for the price of one
Posted in Harvesting, tagged beetroot, Brussels sprouts, cabbages, cooking, garlic, onions, turnips on December 4, 2009 | 2 Comments »
This morning I was to be found enthusiastically slicing the tops off all my Brussels sprouts plants. I hadn’t developed a sudden and irrational hatred of Brussel sprouts, though many have done so before me. (In fact we all like sprouts, even the 7-year-old, especially when they’re fresh from the garden and steamed to just the [...]
Happy Hallowe’en!
Posted in Allotments, Harvesting, tagged pumpkins on October 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
It’s just before the witching hour so I thought you might like to see what became of those pumpkins I was so proud of…. This is the biggest one – face drawn by the kids and cut out by me. I think he looks quite cheerful in a vampirish sort of way. Was there ever [...]
So farewell then….
Posted in Allotments, Harvesting, tagged courgettes, frost, gluts, shelter, weather, winter on October 13, 2009 | 1 Comment »
…courgette plants. It was a lovely relationship, and you were generous to a fault, but I think our season in the sun is over. The first frost struck last night: a very light one, to be sure, and I got away with it entirely in my garden, where it’s pretty sheltered. But I arrived up at [...]
Recipe of the month: October
Posted in Harvesting, Recipe of the month, tagged cooking, courgettes, gluts, preserving crops on October 9, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Courgette cake When you’ve eaten courgettes every day for months, your friends have stopped inviting you round in case you give them yet another jar of chutney, and your freezer is groaning under the weight of courgette soup…. it’s time to celebrate by baking courgette cake, the moistest, stickiest, most melt-in-the-mouth, most undeniably green* cake you will ever eat. 200g butter [...]
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Harvesting Now
Blackcurrants, calabrese, cauliflower, courgettes, French beans, garlic, globe artichokes, gooseberries, kale, onions, peas, potatoes (new and second early), raspberries (summer), redcurrants, runner beans, salad leaves, shallots, strawberries, tomatoes, whitecurrantsSowing Now
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