Spade Work : From Plot to Plate

Chilli Christmas

I'm delighted with this Christmas wreath made by clients of  Thrive using chilli peppers, or as heatniks across the water would have it, chili.

And when the festive season is over there will be no shortage of chillis to spice up leftover turkey curry or a warming chilli con carne.

Anyone in London just before Christmas and looking for something to jazz up the home can stop by Chelsea Car Park, Battersea Park (access from Chelsea Bridge) on December 22 when Thrive will be selling wreaths (£8) like these and decorations as a fund raiser.

I'm told the pepper is Johnny Cash or Japenese flag. I wonder?

As I'll probably be off air until after Christmas, have a good one and don't eat like my brother!

Merry Christmas and all the best for 2008.

Advent Gardening

With not a lot happening on the vegetable front (save to report that my garlic varieties Prim, Colorado Black and Uzbek Turban, have all come up) we were able to get some gardening done at the Friary in the run up to Christmas.

On a bitterly cold morning we kept warm by spreading 400 litres of bark mulch, having weeded first, though you'll see we weren't so careful in removing all the leaf debris.....time...time....if only we had more.

Starting on the eastern-most side of the border we'll work our way along it in thirds. If we get down there on both days this weekend we should be finished by Christmas.

The new planting is beginning to establish despite the rabbits; the bay tree to the left was already there and is hitting its stride; the other bay and the magnolia are coming on but the existing roses (Peace) are struggling. A case of wrong plant, wrong place and nobody with enough time to mulch, manure and prune them properly.

Now that the Friary is home to several postulants (wannabe Friars) we'll try and enlist them as upaid muscle. Nothing like a bit of hard labour to help discern your intention and commitment to living in community. That'll sort the men from the boys (eh...isn't that the problem I hear some say).

Are You in a Blogger Ghetto?

No comments? Thinking you're a Johnny-no-mates? Your address red lined? Then maybe you are in a Blogger ghetto.

I've posted before about the obstacles to commenting on Blogger (read it here).

In their typical ballsy and humorous fashion this is how Garden Rant have weighed in (read it here).

If my comments on your Blogger account have stopped now you know why!

The Vegetable Song

I kid you not but did you know there is a song called The Purple Sprouting Brocoli song. To hear a clip by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band go to BBC Radio 4  Listen Again page and click on Midweek programme for 12/12/2007 and fast forward to minute 40 or try this link PSB Song.

Anyone else have vegetable songs? I've the lyrics to Guy Clark's, Homegrown Tomatoes, and there's one I heard ages ago which went something like 'There's Bud the Spud from the bright red mud going down the highway smiling...'

I suppose if I searched YouTube I'd find some clips.............................

There's Life & Boxty Revisited

The (very!) early gutter sown peas have come up already (two weeks after sowing) and amongst the fallen leaves the first of the broad beans, Aquadulce Claudia, have broken the surface (three and a half weeks after sowing). Not much leggy growth so fingers crossed they'll make it through the frosts forecast for this week.

I'm a little worried that I've not seen any garlic yet but there is time.

Now that I have a greenhouse I'm thinking of starting off some winter salads - corn salad, lambs lettuce/claytonia/Vit, that type of thing. I'll sow them in trays indoors, harden them off in the lean too and then put them out in the unheated greenhouse. Any advice? Is a potting compost/seedling mix a suitable growing medium? Right now the greenhouse has gravel over landscape fabric on one side and sand over landscape fabric on the other.

So the new gardening season is under way!

The wintry weekend mornings were just perfect for a side of boxty to go with the poached eggs and baked beans. I quickly realised though that the boxty recipe needs fine tuning (eggs to bind rather than more flour). The cakes, reheated from frozen in the microwave were very doughy - a bit like eating a warmed up brown bap. They'd lost their crispy crust as well but how I'm going to solve that I'm not sure. Finish them off under the grill or in the toaster perhaps?

Beyond Mash To Boxty

I don't know the reason but on my morning dog walk I found myself thinking of an elderly neighbour, now passed on, who introduced herself as 'from Donegal where they eat spuds skin and all' and then followed that with a rhyme which went;

Boxty in the griddle, Boxty in the pan, If you can't make boxty you'll never keep a man.

So it had to be boxty to go with supper - basically baked potato cakes. The recipe I had called for 2lbs of grated potatoes, a generous handful of flour, salt and pepper to taste. This is mixed and pressed into rounds and baked in the oven on an oiled pizza tray, 200C for 45-50 minutes until golden.

Next time I'll add chive and parsley to the mix and squeeze more water out of the potatoes to see if they bind using less flour (I've seen recipes calling for a 50/50 mix of grated potatoes and mashed potatoes). They were good though, a nice crunchy crust giving way to a soft centre.

I'll try them cold with a yoghurt dip to see if they make good picnic food and over the weekend I'll reheat them topped with a fried egg. I've also frozen some to see how early potatoes cooked in this way store when they would otherwise be starting to soften and go off around now.

Comments

Do Blogspot blogs only allow comments from Blogger/Goggle accounts? 

That seems to be what's happpening. Yet more passwords to remember.......

Before and After

I'd put off tidying up the garden vegetable plot until I could bear the sight of the mess no more. I'd ignored it since mid September and so it had got fairly weedy and ragged. The tomatoes were long over, killed by frost and blight and the beans were gone too. All the potatoes had been harvested and the peas were out months before.

Salad season was over and the rocket was long gone to seed. The only things in season were the kales, BPs, grelos, and the rosemary bush which continues to thrive in the dryness of the blue spruce, and the PSB should produce next spring.

I don't dig over the vegetable plot because it is hard work; I feel I'm creating the ideal seed bed for weeds while compacting the soil I work on and I want to protect my back. So I spot weed as I take crops out but it was so weedy this year that it looks like I've dug over every inch.

There's a lot of bare earth and I know some swear by green manures but I'm reluctant to go down that route; I don't want to introduce weeds or be a slave to digging it in at the right time.

Instead the plot will get a covering of manure over the next few weeks and then I'll mark out the beds for next year. Unlike the allotment we never put in raised beds - a big mistake as there is so much more to weed. Maybe we'll change that this winter. But it does mean that I can get 30 foot rows of potatoes in!