These are the first potatoes out of the garden this season. I'd be lying if I pretended they were early earlies - I don't expect to be eating my Home Guard much before end of May or early June.
These were left overs I missed from last years harvest (quite how you can miss fairly large spuds is a mystery) and they stored in the ground pretty well until I dug over the soil this weekend.
Back from a very enjoyable ride from Seville to Salamanca, averaging 40 miles a day with the longest being 60 miles.
The Spanish really do like their meats (had some mouth watering secreto iberico, along with the chorizo, chuletons....) so it was something of a relief to get home to a bowl of home grown.
If you've only space for one variety of rhubarb then I'd go for Victoria. It's one of the most popular and deservedly so. Thick reddish pink sticks and flavour wise it beats the Timperley Early and Champagne that I've got growing on the allotment. I don't stew it with sugar, instead I drizzle some runny honey in the bowl and serve with low/no fat yoghurt.
This is one of the first winter vegetable harvests of the season - good old Brussels sprouts. I've already had some leeks off the allotment and snuck a parsnip earlier in the month but they go with colder weather than we are having at the moment. I think this is Seven Hills but I'll need to check. Some of the buttons are a bit small, others slightly blown but I'm looking forward to them.
BPs are one of my favourite vegetables despite my mother boiling them to death in ham water. I'm surprised I wasn't put off for life.
Now it's 5-6 minutes in boiling water, drain and serve plain (a knob of butter and some salt if you're allowed). Cooked this way they'll retain their colour and bite. They'll join some baked leeks this evening and roast Charlotte potatoes to go with grilled chicken breasts. I sense good things about to happen.
I've several plants of Red Rubine in the ground as well but they are taking a long time to develop. Will they retain their colour when cooked?
I wonder if these butternut squash will ripen like the green San Marzano tomotoes I ripened on the window sill?
They are not at all like the buttery shop varieties. The books I've read all talk about letting the squashes ripen in the sun on the vine. What are the chances of these unripe looking fruits ripening indoors?
I'm growing loads more San Marzano next year and will get them out earlier so they have a chance of ripening on the vine.
These ripened quickly on the windowsill and I was able to roast a small tray and turn them into a rich passata.
All the recipes I read said to sieve out the skins but I didn't think it worthwhile as I'd such a small amount. Even if I'd had pounds I still think I'd skip that stage. I just blitz them well in a food processor. The skin bits I don't mind - they'll remind me that this intense sauce is homemade.
I got a couple of servings out of my small harvest. Next year with a greenhouse.........
Naturally we are all ready to trumpet our successes but we can learn from our failures as well, even if it's to say 'never again'. The vegetable beds were at their most productive this year, with lots of interplanting, careful succession sowing and plenty of water thanks to the rains but very little heat to bring things on.
Parsnip Hollow Crown - 100% germination failure! The wet spring wasn't kind to them but the Tender & True, sown at the same time in the same bed, came through. I've tried one already, long, creamy colour, no canker like last year but again a fairly woody core. The first frost is predicted so hopefully they'll get even sweeter.
Windsor Broad Bean - the ultimate aphid hotel. Never again! Stick to Aquadulce Claudia, earlier, tasty and hardly touched by aphids.
Celeriac - 28 planted as plugs. When I got back to the allotment a week later all had been eaten. Slugs or mice I reckon.
Sweet Corn - 85% germination and I did get about two weeks worth of eating but the ears were small and not as sweet as last year. I blame the wet summer and lack of heat.
Butternut Squash - well I have (tiny) fruits but they're hardly going to ripen at this time of year. This was the first year trying them and I sowed the seed in situ. I think next year I'll bring them on in pots and plugs and try getting them in the ground a little earlier.
Grellos / Turnip Tops - a hit and miss affair. Poor germination on the allotment and those that did soon became slug food. The garden sown seeds did fine (sown around mid August). I should have sown more in September but with half a mind to the end of the season I never got around to it. A pity really as there is a lot of ground that could have been used for spring greens. But then there is only so much spring greens you can take.
And for next year? More, lots more peas, Norli and Alderman especially. More interplanting, worked well this year squeezing more productivity out of the same space, more parsley as I'm now enjoying the frozen blocks of pesto. Wild rocket in preference to the hotter cultivated rocket. More onions (everything we cook seems to start with an onion and some garlic (of which I'll have plenty thanks to Bifuracted Carrots). And dare I say it, a few less potatoes but some early varieties to start the season off.
New crops? Well because I may have less veg space I'll try shallots for their multiplier effect, bush beans and I'd like to try blueberries in pots.And if I remember I'll sow more greens at the back end of the season and overwinter crops like chard/perpetual spinach.
Patrick of Bifurcated Carrots
posted recently on his harvest of Mr Little's Yetholm Gypsy Potato and it reminded me that I put a reasonable crop of Golden Wonder in store.
Grown from tubers given to me by an allotment neighbour they are said to be an excellent fryer and there is even a crisp (potato chip for North American readers) named after the variety.
I don't have a deep fat fryer so I'll quick roast them instead.
I was happy with the yield and the size of tuber. They were a bit scabby but this is because I ran short of fresh grass clippings with which to line the trench when I was planting. It'll do no harm to the taste and I could even skin them if it bothered me.
As for the taste. Well that will have to wait as I've read they benefit from storing into the new year. I'll keep you posted!
With temperatures dropping it won't be long until the first killing frost strikes so the windowsills are being filled with plants I've brought in.
The chillies here stand no chance of ripening red outside so I'll baby them a few days on a south facing windowsill and then place them in the lean to at the back of the house. With luck, I've read, they'll continue to flower and fruit providing fresh chillies throughout the year.
Anyone had success with this? I may be better off putting them in a warm room and treating them like a house plant than an unheated lean to.
All of the rooms in the house are threatened with becoming 'garden' rooms and here I'm hoping to ripen up a bunch of San Marzano tomatoes which I planted ridiculously late in the year so they had no chance of ripening on the vine. I did this last year with Illdi and they ripened a treat from hard green marbles to juicy yellow fruits in a few weeks.
I finally put the Lumper potatoes out of their misery yesterday. The haulm never looked strong and all the leaf had keeled over in the last week.
There was no sign of blight but I couldn't really think that this straggly foliage which was slowly decaying was going to add anything to the harvest.
So out they came to make way for a sowing of turnip top greens.
If this was the potato that the Irish survived on before the Famine in the 1850s then I'm surprised they survived until then. Whilst the tubers were sizeable and irregular in shape, the yield per seed potato was low. And even though I pulled them a bit early there was no evidence that any more tubers would have grown on if I'd left the plants in the ground for longer.
The flesh was pale, very starchy and made a delicious mash, skin and all but I didn't have enough to compare them roasted or boiled. Perhaps I'll track them down through Seed Savers' Exchange again this year and grow some on for chipping.
It's that time of year - gluts of produce and people start avoiding you.
This is the mornings harvest of climbing beans and there'll probably be more by this evening. At any rate we'll be harvesting daily for the next few weeks, blanching and freezing as we go.
My favourites are the yellow climbing beans, Rapid,bought in Spain and doing really well. It's the first to flower (creamy white blosoms) and the first to produce long, flat, yellow pods which retain their colour. Great on their own or dressed with balsamic vinegar and garlic or chopped in a curry to pad it out.
New to me this year are Kew Blue (top right). They're prolific (I know it sounds like catalogue speak but they really are at the moment). There's not much foliage so the crop is easy to see and pick and fewer chances the leaves will irritate your skin. They are slim, tender (we'll see as they get on a bit) and stringless.
On the left is Blauhilde, slightly behind the rest but still doing well. It was one of my favourites last year for cropping and length of season and stayed stringless throughout. But there's a lot of foliage so this makes picking a little more difficult. Some have tended to curl a bit (and I wonder if this is because they are twineing around the foliage) so you don't get the profile that Kew Blue gives - of course it makes not a jot of difference to the taste.
It's a good eater, quite meaty, but this year it's getting a run for its money from Kew Blue.
