Harvest Monday - nettle soup and a touch of colour

It's been quite a sunny week but windy at times. I haven't had too much time at the plot but have been chipping away a little bit at all the things that need doing (a looong list). Good news is I've spotted quite a few berry flowers - gooseberries, redcurrants and black currants. It's not looking promising on the plum front with only 3 flowers though!

Looking back, I've picked quite a lot this week:

Perpetual spinach from the plot, that I had under a small plastic tunnel. This is from one plant, which has really come back to life

I added it to a cauliflower & butter bean curry

Tonight I picked some chard from a small tub in the front yard and some purple sprouting broccoli yesterday from the plot. That's all the PSB for now but some more might come if I'm able to leave the plants in for long enough before needing to plant the next crop in that bed:

I've picked mint a few times from a tub in the front yard too, nice in a lemony drink (simply lemon juice and water)

The less-glamorous tub of mint (the tub's getting quite old, I made it from scrap wood years ago)

Some rocket that overwintered in the back garden

My splash of colour : Overwintered rainbow chard (hooray) from the plot

Some curly kale re-shoots. I cut the top off the plant and picked all the side leaves a while back and this is the re-growth

I was especially pleased as I managed to make a funny face :D

Some lambs lettuce (the green leaves) from the last ones left on the plot. I can't remember when I picked this but it took a few meals to get through it because I picked a whole load at once as it was startling to bolt and the stems were getting tougher. I've left a couple of plants to go to flower and to seed around for more plants this year or next. We had a chopped up home-grown gherkin too.

Nettle soup

Ive never made this before but thought I'd have a go as the small nettle patch on my plot had some nice leaves growing.

So the recipe I looked up in my book Wild Food by Roger Phillips was basically: onion, garlic, stock, cream, nettles (2 gloved handfuls).

For the potatoes I defrosted some home grown ones that I mashed recently, with some carrot and leek

The washed nettles - I had to keep stopping myself swoosh them around with bare hands. A glove is essential for picking and washing these!

I held the End of the stems (without gloves, ooh risky) and snipped the leaves off straight into the pan

It didn't take too long, because the potatoes were already cooked, just a few minutes really. I whizzed it up and added a swirl of goats yogurt instead of cream (as that's what was in the fridge).

All I can say is YUM! I might make this again tomorrow :)

Linking in to Daphne's Dandelions for Harvest Monday

 

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Seedling update

Wow, scorchio here in Norwich this week! I had yesterday off work - my big news is that I've just gone down to working 4 days a week, so will have more time for fun stuff like allotmenting (and chores and errands, not such fun). I'll usually have Wednesdays off but can change it if I need to.

My seeds are coming along quite well, the only casualties have been a few basils which look like they've succumbed to damping off (with a pinch of neglect) but as they were old packs of seeds I had sown quite thickly as I wasn't expecting a great germination. Plus the early basils I sowed last year didn't germinate at all if remember rightly, so I wasn't holding out much for them. I like the cute tiny new leaves.

Most of these photos are from the weekend, so a few days have passed since:

Basil - green and purple - There's a flopped one at the front where you can just see its thin shrivelled stem, likely from 'damping off'

The sweetcorn (sweet nugget F1) has germinated well, this photo after only a week. I put them in the lean-to covered all round in bubble wrap. It gets really warm in there when it's sunny, so the bubble wrap then keeps the heat in over night.

Here they are when covered over. There is a radiator behind them but that doesn't work (or at least, I've never tried it, I think it would burst water everywhere!)

The tomatoes are fine, a little bit of yellowing on the seedling leaves that could be due to the cold at night (I've been rather neglecting and not checking night time temps, just hoping for the best as I know it won't get frost in there). But on the whole I'm happy with them.

The squashes are ok too, I germinated them inside and then moved to the lean-to. I've runout of shelf space already (due to messiness) so have put them on the floor on upturned trays until I sort the shelves out, so they're not right at cold ground level. There's a chance I might have access to a bit of land at someone's house but it's quite far away, so I thought I could try planting loads of squashes there and they'd just ramble around the place

The squashes - I have another trayful too, far too many for just my allotment so we'll see if this bit of land works out. If not I'll be giving lots away.

I potted on my one chilli seedling, and 5 aubergines (more than one had germinated in each module so I carefully split them apart)

I've sown some more things this week like dill, runner and climbing beans (in loo roll tubes). I also made my own little seed mix up of old seeds of dill, radish and salad leaves. In the back garden I'd like to have more of a mixed / natural/ self seeding couple of beds so thought I'd start with this and just give it a go and see what happens. It was a tad windy though and I lost some seeds, who knows they might pop up somewhere!

The large flat seeds are dill, small round ones are radish, thin ones are salad

Jan's been asking me to sort out the patchy grass in the back garden so I thought I'd try chamomile and just bought a small pack to see what happened. I sowed the pack across two trays on Saturday and by yesterday (Weds) they'd already germinated in the warm lean to!

Chamomile tiny seedlings yesterday

My main challenge with most of my seedlings now is to make sure they either don't frazzle in the heat in the lean-to and that I don't over water them... hmmm, it could go either way! I do tend to be a bit haphazard and not check on things enough. We'll see what happens in the next few weeks!

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Harvest Monday - greeny #3

Phewee we've had another windy weekend. In places my soil is actually cracking, despite the rain, because the wind dries everything out so much. One bed that I'd mulched with leafmold had all blown away, so that was a bit of a waste of time! I need to either set up a wind break or weigh the mulch down....another job for this week.

Harvests this week have been more purple sprouting broccoli and kale sproutings from the allotment

Perfect with bangers (quorn sausages) and fried potatoes from the freezer for a Friday night tea.

I've picked a lot more corn salad from the allotment, here's some of it. I'll be picking a lot more this week as it's starting to bolt now.

Mizuna from the tub in my lean-to. This is almost the last of it now, unless the snipped plants grow some more leaves (which they may do)

And a nice surprise, some over wintered rocket from the back garden. A couple of years ago we were given (from a friend) a Mediterranean collection of plug plants from Rocket Gardens, which was really kind. The rocket plugs have lasted all this time, I cut all the leaves of each of them in turn and they keep growing back! I covered them with a plastic tunnel over the winter.

Here's one of the rocket clumps I've just cut (foreground) plus an overwintered chard. I covered it recently with a bottle when I realised the wood pigeons had started tucking in to it, which actually really brought it on. Good for some early leaves.

Which are here, plus some smaller ones from the tub I front yard. I love the stems :)

I added the chard to a recipe from here, which comes with the pack of dried fava beans. The drawings are really lovely.

I made the Egyptian ful medames, a first for me :) though actually added some other bits like the chard that needed using up too (Sorry about the angle, couldn't avoid my shadow!). I also missed out some ingredients that we didn't have (or I forgot to put in, like the sugar) And just used a tin of tomatoes instead of passata

it was delicious but looked like gloop! (Hence no piccie)

And to finish, a cute little hoverfly that landed on the flower of some oriental greens in the lean to, awww.

Linking in with Harvest Monday on Daphne's Dandelions.

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Back garden overview

I thought it was about time I did a non- Harvest Monday post! So because it's difficult for me to get pics from the allotment, I've decided to just do a quick overview of my garden, which includes a couple of small veggie beds.

It's quite a small garden, with a greenhouse- lean -to attached to the back of the house too. When we first moved in, apart from the lean- to the garden was just grass with the Laburnum tree in the middle.

I can't find the photo from when we moved in though, darn.

So the first winter 2006/7 ( we moved in November) we put in an old solid plastic pond at the back donated from jan's folks (it's behind the bench), I made the two raised veggie beds (nearest the house, where it gets the most sun) and I got some seedling trees and shrubs from a friend's garden, where they'd sown themselves around - A hazel, an elder, a holly and dogwood, which we planted up at the back of the garden (which is actually the southern end but is the most shady because of a building and huge Holme oak in the alley behind.

The holm oak (home to a noisey pair of magpies)

The soil is only a spade deep as there were Victorian terraces here before, which is why I decided to make raised beds for the veggies. The fence sits on a concrete base so I make sure I don't go any higher than that to avoid rotting the bottom of the fence.

Behind the pond there's also two dalek compost bins, screened off a bit with a home made hazel / twiggy thing (Which is very old now, I have to keep weaving in new dogwood prunings every couple of years). It has a honeysuckle and sweet peas that grow up it too)

(Spot the wood pigeon in the raised bed trying to break off a twig from my hazel trimmings - which are protecting the beds from cats)

The stepping stones in the 'lawn' (patchy grass) are off cuts of decking I got from a skip. The raised beds are made from scrap wood from skips etc too and over the years I've collected bricks and small paving slabs to make stepping stones around and in the raised beds.

The shrubs have all done well, and the elder especially has grown rather large. I trim the lower branches but generally leave the rest of it. Because it's at the shady end, the berries ripen quite late so I go foraging around the neighbourhood for earlier berries too. I coppiced the hazel last year as it was getting a bit big for the space and shading the raised bed near it. The trimmings have been good as anti-cat protectors!

Minxie was checking out the pigeon.

This week I've weeded the veggie beds and transplanted some self sown forget-me-knots from the beds to the main garden (under the laburnum and the elder). I've left a feverfew as it's in flower so is good for the early bees. There's some rocket still growing from last year that I had covered in a small plastic tunnel and small chard plants too. I've also spotted some parsley and chard seedlings popping up aswell. I'll take some close-ups and report further another time, especially as it's chucking it down with rain now!

This week I also spread some old compost from last year's tomato pots onto the beds but other than that I won't add any more.

So what will I be growing out here?

Runner beans and climbing french beans up the fences and a wigwam (Climbing beans do badly at my allotment but do well here) chard, rocket, other salad leaves, maybe a squash or two climbing up and along the fence, which worked well last year (but not courgette, they've done badly here the last couple of years, I will just have these on the allotment instead). Maybe some beetroot and peas? The pea plants all got eaten young by slugs and snails last year though.

In the lean to I'll have tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and basil.

You can see my water butt here, attached to the lean to gutter. I also connected an old dustbin a couple of weeks ago as an overflow. I used a bit of pipe I already had and then part of an old bike inner tube as a seal.It's a little bit leaky but works ok. Ideally I would connect up to the main building drain pipe which has so much more water but that belongs to the council and I don't want to mess with it. You can see one of the neighbourhood cats too! It was just passing through.

You can also just see in the pic above, my tomato seedlings on the shelf in the lean to (I made the shelves from scrap wood and a pallet, not very well mind you, it was a long while back and I'd do a better job these days).

And one pic of our small north facing front yard, (in the rain) which gets even less sun because we're a four storey block, hence mainly just some tubs of perennial herbs (Rosemary, mint etc) and a tub of chard that's overwintered quite well. The two bags are horse poo from my recent trip to the countryside that I'll use for me toms in the lean to (it's really well rotted). Against the wall is a buddliea that appeared as a tiny seedling a few years back that I let grow. I pollard it every spring so it doesn't get too big and the straight poles are handy in the back garden.

Ok, that's enough waffling for now!

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Harvest Monday - greeny #2

Well, we've had a much calmer week weather-wise. After the incredible storms and wind for several days last week I was relieved to find minimal damage on my plot. A few things turned up that needed returning to their owners though!

I had a good day and a half on the plot this weekend, what with having two bank holidays, making 4 days off! I planted out the rest of my potatoes and sowed some beetroot and RainbowChard in between two rows of autumn broad beans. I also sowed some spring broad beans too. Plus, lots and lots of weeding (mainly couch grass, urgh).

At home, in pots and loo rolls I had a good sowing session on Friday - sweet corn (in the loo rolls for their long roots*), winter and summer squashes. I have a load of seeds on the sofa waiting to be sown too but haven't had chance yet.

*just to add that when growing in the ground, the corn roots are shallow, just below the soil. But I find if I grow them in pots the roots poke through the bottom quite quickly, and as they're not meant to like being disturbed when planted out, I can plant the whole loo roll out too because it will break down in the soil.

I've picked quite a lot of corn salad this week, it's growing quite fast now so I'm taking a whole plant at a time rather than just picking the biggest leaves off. Here's some with my homegrown fermented gherkins.

And some with homemade coleslaw (red &. White cabbage, grated carrot and vegan Mayo and cider vinegar) - (not homegrown coleslaw though)

I've picked more oriental greens (to go in noodle soup)

And forked out the rest of my leeks. These last ones weren't that big but as there's quite a few it added up to a reasonable amount to go in a soup.

I've left a few tiny ones in situ to flower and seed around. Though if you're properly saving seed I think it's good to leave your best as they'll then be more likely to produce quality seed too.

We treated ourselves to veggie curry pie from a local takeaway this weekend and to be healthy (ish) I added some purple sprouting broccoli on the side! Should still have a fair amount of PSB to come.

And I just realised there were a couple of non-green things too:

I used some sweetcorn from the freezer to add to a savoury pancake filling plus also a tub of tomato and courgette sauce. I tried to take a photo but it just looked like brown gloop (very tasty gloop though, with added kidney beans from a tin).

When saving my corn, i do it a bit long-winded and prise out each kernal with my fingers (after blanching and cooling rapidly) because my technique for cutting it off the cob is rubbish and I end up wasting lots otherwise.

And we used up the last tub of fruit concoction for the freezer. I'm gutted at this because I usually have a huge dollop on my museli every morning. I think I might just get some cooking apples and add a jar of one of my preserves to make a slightly less healthy version (because of the sugar in the preserve).

That's me for the week, back to work tomorrow, hope you've all enjoyed the holidays!

Linking in with HarvestMonday on Daphne's Dandelions

 

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