Our entire carrot harvest of 2011

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 13 September 2011 in growing | 8 comments

I’m thinking maybe HFW’s sweet carrot jam? Scaled down, I think it’ll be, for the 1g of carrot: 0.9g sugar, juice/rind of 1/500th of a lemon, juice/rind of 1/1000th of an orange, 1/500th-3/1000ths of a cinnamon stick, 3/500th of a clove and 0.005g of nutmeg.

Now where are my scales? And my microscope?

Last of the potatoes

Posted by louisa on Saturday 10 September 2011 in growing | 6 comments

(Like Last of the Mohicans, except starchier.)

After expressing my meh-ness the other day, I actually had a productive few hours in the garden today. It’s John’s fault – after carrying down some chicken food for me, he stayed in the garden tidying some stuff at the bottom and I felt kinda guilted into staying out there too. I did a little weeding but then prioritised stuff that needed harvesting, namely the titular potatoes, some tomatoes & a gorgeous courgette. Some of said potatoes:

As I said a few weeks ago on Twitter, I don’t think I’ll grow potatoes next year. I’m restricted to growing them in containers at the moment and while it does have some advantages (diseases are contained and no digging!), it has plenty of disadvantages too. Most importantly, they use up a lot of soil and I don’t have access to a lot of soil at the moment, so to grow them means there is less soil/compost to go around everything else (or at least I have to buy it in – and it’s too expensive to buy in to use on potatoes). Growing them in containers also means they need more watering than they do in the ground, which isn’t terrible, just another job to do. Being in containers does, well, contain them a bit too: they don’t really get to stretch out to full capacity so the harvest isn’t as bountiful, either in number or size, as it would be in the ground. And of course, there is the diseased Satan gonad issue.

But the most important thing really is that we don’t eat a lot of potatoes – we cook with them no more than once a week, probably closer to once a fortnight. This last week we’ve not been eating wheat so our usual pasta/noodle/bread staples have been out but still, we’ve not actually eaten any potatoes (I was supposed to have jacket potato on Wednesday but had leftover risotto instead). If we were aiming to be completely self-sufficient then I suspect we’d eat more as it is easier to grow them than cereals but right now, we don’t need a whole lot of them and it seems a risk to grow a lot to use so gradually when we can buy the few we do want locally and/or organically ones for a frugal-friendly price. I’d rather use my limited soil and motivation/energy elsewhere.

Having said that, if we did have bed space for them, I’d probably be tempted to give them another go, or in a few years when I have more than enough homegrown compost to spare, I might try containers again. For future Louisa’s information, the Orla maincrop did well this year and have resulted in some good spuds, and the Charlotte-esque basic seed potatoes I got for next-to-nothing at Home Bargain also turned out well.

As for the other harvested stuff today: I collected just over a kilogram of tomatoes, mostly cherry tomatoes but a few big Romas too, for ripening inside since their home plant were looking worse for wear. Some are already orange-y but most are green; if they don’t seem to be getting with the ripening programme in a couple of days, I’ll turn them into Aurora’s chutney. There is probably about the same again out there and in dribs & drabs, we’ve (mostly John) has probably eaten about that so far. Three kilograms/six-and-a-half pounds isn’t a huge haul considering how much space they took up in my small greenhouse – some plants have been very productive but others not at all. John has *loved* the sweet cherry ones though, so I’ll definitely grow them again.

The courgette I picked was our first in our second wave of the squashes: we’ve had a few almost courgette-free weeks because I’ve been feeling meh so not picked the nutrient-hogging now-marrows from the plants, but there are lots of baby courgettes again now. The taste of summer still lingering on.

Have you been harvesting anything this weekend?

Oops

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 2 August 2011 in growing | 3 comments

Or in other words: why I should have picked this courgette last week or not grown it next to railings in the first place.

I might love my neighbours and broccoli but I hate squishy seed potatoes

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 26 July 2011 in growing | 8 comments

You know how seed potatoes go squishy and brown by the time you harvest your new potatoes?

Is it just me or is putting your hand into that BALL OF VILENESS, the vegetable equivalent of Satan’s diseased gonad, enough to put you off growing potatoes for life?

…

Just me?

I heart my neighbours – and broccoli

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 26 July 2011 in growing | 6 comments

My attempts to grow broccoli this year were one big flop – they all went to seed during the hot spell in April.

My attempts to grow broccoli-substitute rapini were also a big flop – they went to seed too (although since they only need about 45 days to grow, I might be able to squeak out another try of those this year).

Then yesterday, I bumped into one of our dog-walking buddies while out with Lily-dog. We’ve been walking the round hound in the evening recently so haven’t seen him for a good few weeks, perhaps a couple of months. We chatted growing successes and failures this year, and he mentioned he had some spare broccoli – already in pots and starting to bud – and would I like some?

I said I would – expecting a few little seedlings. He dropped four of these bad boys off yesterday afternoon.

You know that empty bed I mentioned the other week? Empty no more!

I don’t really have any plants to share at this point but I think a pack of eggs, some freshly made lemon curd and whatever else I can conjure up will be heading his way soon.

Thanks neighbour!

Freezing courgette/marrow flowers

Posted by louisa on Friday 15 July 2011 in cooking, Featured, growing, preserving | 13 comments

We love having marrow flower fritters for lunch at this time of year. Made with eggs, courgettes & marrow flowers from the garden, and served with homegrown salad, they’re very low in terms of food miles – and they’re easy & super tasty to boot.

But at the moment, our 13 (gulp!) courgette plants are cranking out more flowers than we can sensibly use – so I freeze them.

The petals are torn up for the fritters but I think it’s better to freeze them whole so they don’t clump together too much. I treat them like soft fruit – I wash the flowers then spread them out individually on trays before putting them in the freezer. A few hours later (well, probably sooner but I leave them that long), they are frozen solid and can be bagged up for longer term storage.

Because they’re so delicate, they don’t take long to defrost at all – we lift out the half dozen or so we need at a time, and leave them on the side while were gathering/mixing the rest of the ingredients. By the time the flour & eggs are mixed and the courgette chopped and added, they’re ready to go.

I don’t keep them in the freezer for months and months but they’ll certainly be fine for a few weeks, by which point our fresh supply may be waning slightly.

Do you eat marrow (summer squash) flowers? What do you do with them? We’ve got so many that I wouldn’t mind a few more recipes! :)