Monday 2 May 2016

Harvest Monday and a trip to South Yorkshire

This week I thought I'd expand my foraging to include plantain from the allotment. I also picked the last of the PSB (purple sprouting broccoli - the plant which I'd moved recently), a few leeks (three of which had self-sown from plants I'd let seed previously), some corn salad which had started to go to seed, plus I lifted a couple of garlic plants to see how they were getting on.
First the plantain....I'd read it's full of nutrients and that you can boil it. I have it all over the allotment so thought I'd give it a go. Well, unfortunately it was rather grim, even with a bit of added butter! I've since read that broadleaf plantain is better (I had ribwort plantain) and that after boiling, you can sauté it and add other stuff to make it more palatable. This time though, it was far too bitter. Eugh.
My second fail of the week was an attempt at corn salad soup - there's a very basic recipe in a Wild Food book I have (can't remember the author right now). After the fail with the plantain I thought I'd cook it up with some other bits and bobs (chickpeas, onion, potato). Well, it turned out really bitter aswell, oops! I should have suspected this before as I knew that the plants turn bitter when they go to seed, sigh.
But some tasty harvests have been the PSB, which basically was a bonus crop as the plant had been going a couple of years
The garlic was also really good - I chopped it up with scrambled egg and other leftover veggies. Dave used some green garlic last week on his blog (link below) and as I was out of dried garlic I thought I'd try some too. I used the whole length of it except any yellowy bits of leaf. It was interesting to see that the clove shape had completely gone. I harvested alternate plants from the row so that it would give the others more space to grow. (I haven't used the leeks up yet, they're in the fridge).
But the best 'harvest' from the week was the strawberries I defrosted from the freezer. Yum. Before freezing strawbs, I heat them a little in a pan which releases some of the juices. (And I did add milk to my breakfast, I can't imagine dried muesli is very nice on its own).
A trip to South Yorkshire
We're visiting Jan's folks at the moment....how nice of them to arrange the Tour de Yorkshire to pass by whilst we're here. It literally went past a few metres from their house so it would have been daft not to watch.
 
Women's race in the morning
Men's stage 2 in the afternoon. We even managed to get on TV for a fraction of a second (I shan't be signing autographs)
We've been for some lovely walks, dipping into other nearby counties too
 
Down by the river for an evening stroll, where we heard our first yellowhammer of the year in the farmland nearby (their characteristic call of 'a little bit of bread and no cheeeeeese') and saw incredibly cute ducklings on an adjacent dyke. Skylarks trilled away and lapwings peewited.
As is tradition, we went to Clumber Park but tried a new route this time (where we heard our first cuckoo of the year, hurray)
And we visited the village of Laxton, which still has a traditional medieval field system (you can just make out some of the field strips here, which was the view from the top of the site of a motte and baily castle).
It's a nice place to walk around, with three main route options.

It's been very cold at times over the weekend but jan's mum risked putting out her peas and beans (protected by fleece) and they've been ok so far. Apparently it's going to get warmer aswell so I might direct-sow my runner beans when I get back. It does feel like spring though....the bright green leaves are pushing through on the tips of branches, and we've been treated to some beautiful bluebells (pic by Jan).

Back in Norwich, before we came up here, we'd also seen our first swifts of the year (whizzing around over the broad at Whitlingham Country Park on the 28th April, the earliest I've ever seen them I think), along with swallows and house martins, vacuuming up all the little insects to refuel after their long migration. So, yes, I think spring is properly here at last.

 

Thanks for reading this week. I'm linking up with Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres

 

 

12 comments:

  1. The bitterness of the greens does sound over the top. In our area they add vinegar to cut the bitterness.

    Your garlic shanks are getting nice and big, and your broccoli looks wonderfully tender. I have really high hopes for our container grown garlic.

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    1. Hi phoung, Ah thanks for the tip on vinegar, I'll look into that.

      Good luck with your garlic...mine seems to grow ok but then doesn't store very well. I think it maybe gets too hot when I dry it out in the lean-to.

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  2. A lovely area for a walk, as always. And how great to see the cycling event so close!

    When you first mentioned plantain, I had to look it up as I immediately thought of the banana-like tropical vegetable. So it seems it's an edible wild plant - definitely have never seen that around here. I'm a bit leery of picking wild veggies to eat just because I don't know enough about what's edible. I should really pick up a book on local foraging options.

    PSB looks great!

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    1. Thanks Susie, the men's cycling group had a lot more entrants and took up more of the road, so came very very close!

      Yes the plantain is an edible wild plant rather than the tropical veg (sorry I should have said before). We get it a lot over here but I haven't seen the broadleaf one for a while (or just haven't noticed it anyway). I'm reasonably ok with plant ID but if I wasn't sure I def wouldn't pick something, just in case. Habitat can help with ID, some things are adapted to certain environments etc. although sometimes a plant will still grow in non-ideal locations but might have stunted growth etc. Also have to bear in mind where things are growing e.g. Avoiding picking from next to roads or where dogs have been walked of course, yuk.

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  3. Your PSB has been going for a couple of years?! Those are very fine shoots for such an old plant. I'm growing a cultivated variety of plantain this year, "Buck's Horn", which has a very slender leaf with projecting prongs. It's still quite young and I've only nibbled a few sample leaves but they've been quite tasty. I'm not really tempted to try the wild ones (weeds) growing around here. I LOVE green garlic, which is good since none of my garlic is going to make it to a more mature state because of a nasty severe rust infection.

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    1. Hi Michelle, yes I cut the PSB back to the main stalk about 30cm from the ground after it cropped last spring, and then it put out about 5 new stems from there. I didn't need the spot for anything else so thought it was worth a try.

      Ah I didn't know you could get cultivated plantain. Will keep an eye out and see if they sell it over here. I probably used too many leaves at once which didn't help. But there is so much of it on my plot it's a shame it's not very nice! I could try sneaking one or two leaves in with something else cooking, seeing as it's meant to be so good for you.

      This is the first time I've had green garlic, I might plant extra cloves this autumn just so I can harvest more next spring, yum.

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  4. We always seem to just miss one another at Clumber Park. I posted a couple of times about our visit last week

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    1. Oh that's a shame sue, I always say to Jan ' keep an eye out for Sue Garrett '! Great, I'll have a read of your posts. We saw a couple of nuthatches again near the church, which is a treat as usual. We found a few geocaches there too.

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  5. We have a lot of the broad leaf plantain here and while I've used it a lot to make salves, I've never tried eating it. I do like the green garlic though, and it's one of my favorite spring treats. Your breakfast looks a lot like my typical one - muesli with fruit on top.

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    1. Hi Dave, I was looking at salves too, interesting healing properties. I think if I see any broadleaf plantain I might give it another go at cooking. Also the cooking water had an amazing colour, I reckon it would make a good liquid feed once cooled down.

      PS. Our cat has just been drinking the end of my red bush tea...weird. Reminds me of yours drinking water from a glass.

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  6. Your experiment with Plantain demonstrates clearly why some plants have been "adopted" by humans and cultivated, and some haven't! A lot of foraged foods are not very nice, to be honest.

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    1. Yep, there are definitely some wild foods that are nicer than others Mark! I've read you can eat cleavers / goose grass but that really doesn't appeal. Though useful to know if we ever have a zombie apocalypse and have to forage more ;)

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