I couldn’t leave the delights of this year’s Hampton Court without saying a little bit about what I discovered tucked away in a shady patch under a rickety old lean-to in a forgotten little corner of the Home Grown exhibit. Most people were walking past without noticing it – mind you that may have been [...]
Archive for the ‘Unusual veg’ Category
Hampton Court 2010: Magic mushrooms
Posted in Other stuff, Unusual veg, tagged Hampton Court, mushrooms on July 16, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Hampton Court 2010: The wierd and the wonderful
Posted in Fruit, Shows, Unusual veg, tagged amaranth, amorphophallus konjac, Fruit, Hampton Court, heritage varieties, kaffir lime, medlars, okra, skirret, strawberry spinach on July 12, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Hampton Court is always a great place to pick up ideas for widening your veg-growing horizons: but this year they’ve surpassed themselves. I thought I was doing pretty well this year what with my sweet potatoes, yacon and tomatilloes. But that’s nothing to the exotica on display in the Home Grown exhibit, right at the [...]
Hampton Court Flower Show 2010: Veggie heaven
Posted in Fruit, Herbs, Shows, Unusual veg, tagged Hampton Court, courgettes, brassicas, Fruit on July 8, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Never mind all that Chelsea razzmatazz and flummery. If you grow veg, the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show is where it’s at. The show has always been where the GYO movement has found its natural home: probably as much to do with the timing as anything else, since there’s not much growing by Malvern (April), [...]
Chelsea 2010: Something to try at home
Posted in Shows, Unusual veg, tagged heritage varieties, Chelsea Flower Show, liquorice on June 6, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Guess what this plant is. I’ll give you a clue: I found it lurking in a corner of one of the courtyard gardens. The garden was the Welcome to Yorkshire Rhubarb Crumble and Custard Garden and it’s all about plants which have a special significance to Yorkshire. You’ll know it’s not rhubarb (d’oh!) So…. what [...]
Sweet nothings
Posted in Container veg growing, Greenhouse growing, Unusual veg, tagged containers, sweet potatoes on May 19, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Another lovely parcel in the post this week! I do like buying myself presents. This one was long and thin: just the right shape for ten straggly sweet potato slips. As you can see from the picture, they were none too happy when they arrived: that’s what spending a couple of days in a cardboard [...]
Something to try at home
Posted in Container veg growing, Shows, Unusual veg, tagged baby leaf salads, heritage varieties, Mexican tree spinach on May 12, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Spotted among some spectacular displays of salad veg and herbs in the Floral Marquee at Malvern: the latest ‘new’ arrival on the veg-growing scene. This is Mexican tree spinach (Chenopodium giganteum), and it’s only really new if you happen not to be from Mexico, where it’s been grown for hundreds of years, or indeed India, where [...]
Safeguarding the future
Posted in Other stuff, Unusual veg, tagged beans, heritage varieties, kale, peas, seed, sowing on February 20, 2010 | 3 Comments »
I’ve fulfilled a long-held ambition this year and put my name down for the Heritage Seed Library. This remarkable band of mainly volunteers have taken it upon themselves, very nearly single-handedly, to save all the vegetable varieties they can. The majority of the veg we grow are registered under the 1973 Seed (National List of Varieties) [...]
Of sun and wind
Posted in Unusual veg, sowing, tagged edible passion fruit, Jerusalem artichokes, slugs on February 12, 2010 | 3 Comments »
This is the other coveted prize I carried home from the wonderful Potato Day I went to in Hampshire the other week. It may not look very promising: it’s just a knobbly sort of lumpy thing a couple of inches across. But within that unglamorous exterior is the promise of wonderful things to come. It is, of course, a Jerusalem [...]
Spud-ilicious!
Posted in Shows, Unusual veg, tagged peas, heritage varieties, beans, onions, potatoes, yacon, jerusalem artichoke on February 2, 2010 | 4 Comments »
I don’t know if you’ve ever paused to wonder how many potato varieties there are. Take a guess. Maybe 30? Or 50 if you count all those wierd knobbly heritage varieties? Well I counted 128 on offer at the 12th annual Hampshire Potato Day, held in Whitchurch, near Andover, at the weekend. There were French gourmet [...]
Garlic a go-go
Posted in Unusual veg, sowing, tagged cooking, garlic, seed, sowing, weather, winter on November 11, 2009 | 1 Comment »
What with the wind whipping about my ears and a relentlessly vicious November drizzle trickling into places no icy water should ever find, I’m becoming glad of the imminent excuse to retire indoors with a pile of seed catalogues to grumble until spring time. The soil is getting soggy now, and soon the frosts will follow – [...]
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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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