A Pleasant Surprise

I had forgotten I'd ordered this herb collection way back in February, until it arrived today!

It was on special offer from Mr Fothergill's when I ordered my strawberry plants and some seeds, and I really got it for the French Tarragon, but the Gold Marjoram and Tricolour Sage will look fab in the herb garden (as long as I can find space), and the rosemary and coriander will certainly not go to waste either. They are all happily potted up now on the kitchen windowsill.

My seedlings seem to be progressing rather slowly. My kingdom for a nice warm greenhouse! They spend their nights on the kitchen floor and their days on the patio, and I wonder if it's still a bit too cold outside for some of them. It's been more than three weeks and still no sign of the chillis or peppers, and the sweet peas are only just coming up. I dunno, maybe I'm just too impatient. The curcubits are doing better, although only two out of three of each variety germinated (except the pumpkins, which all germinated and seem to be growing three times as fast as anything else!) and the Waltham Butternuts (second from the left in the pic) don't look too healthy to me... I will have to pop a few more seeds in, I think.

Mixed results on the salad front too: not a single lettuce seed has germinated in the big planter in my back garden. Bad seeds perhaps? Will have to start again, methinks. But my mustard, garden cress and cultivated rocket seem to be doing fabulously. Just don't ask me which is which - I really must learn to label EVERYTHING...

Spicy Squash Stew

We're down to our very last few squashes from last year now. We grew 'Jack O'Lantern' pumpkins, some F1 butternut whose name I have no record of (and which didn't get very big, as you can see!) and these 'Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato Squash' (try getting all that on a plant label!) - an acorn type from Real Seeds with a meatier texture and earthier flavour than pumpkin or butternut.

Some of the pumpkins suffered from lack of watering over the summer and were dried up inside, and like I say, the butternuts were not very impressive, and a few of the squashes didn't do too well in storage, but boy have we still managed to eat a lot of squash over the autumn and winter! And this is how we've been eating many of them - in a spicy pumpkin, potato and bean stew.

And here's the recipe (serves 2):

• Roughly chop an onion and fry in a little oil with 1 tsp mustard seeds and 1 tsp cumin seeds, until they start to pop.
• Add chopped chilli and garlic, and cook for a minute or two to soften.
• Add 300g bitesize chunks of potato, stir in and cook for 3 minutes.
• Add roughly two-thirds of a pint of stock, plus a tablespoon of lemon juice, a squirt of tomato puree, 1 tsp each of sugar and garam masala, 1/2 tsp each of ginger and mustard, and 1/4 tsp each of turmeric, black pepper, cumin, paprika and coriander (alternatively skip all these and add a tablespoon or two of curry paste, but I find that stuff FAR too salty). Simmer for 5 minutes.
• Add 300g bitesize chunks of any winter squash, and simmer another 20 mins or so, until all the veg are cooked.
• Add a can of black-eyed beans (okay, it's kidney beans in the photo, but black-eyed beans suit this better) and two tomatoes cut into wedges, then heat through, stir in another tablespoon of lemon juice and check seasoning.
• Serve with bread to mop up the juices!

(This makes a great soup too; just add canned tomatoes instead of the wedges, earlier in the cooking process, more stock, and blend until smooth.)

Delish!

Real Raised Beds!

I hope everyone's been enjoying the sunshine! We had a great afternoon at the plot today, despite me feeling sorry for myself after a very long week: Eddie persuaded me to get out of the house, and I'm really glad we did. Some friends came along again, and we even had some entertainment...

The main task of the day was putting up our new raised beds (well, one of them,) from Harrod Horticultural.

Not a masterpiece of carpentry, but a great deal better than the shallow and flimsy ones we threw together a couple of years back, which are virtually in pieces now. We filled the bed with some topsoil from around the place and the end of last year's compost, and we'll top it off with a couple of inches of shop-bought compost, so that it will be weed-seed free and hopefully the salad veg will actually stand a chance! We bought two of these, 180cm by 60cm and 30cm high, for £85 including delivery (and with the discount code they put on all their catalogues and adverts). I haven't convinced myself it'll be worth the money yet, but when I looked at buying the raw materials and making them myself I was pretty shocked at the cost. Hopefully time will tell...

While clearing the ground for the raised beds, Eddie and Brian found this hazelnut tree coming up amongst the docks and nettles - self-seeded from the tree next-allotment! Waste not want not - we decided we'd replant it in a corner near the raspberries. I backfilled the planting hole with some of our compost and a handful of the special fertiliser we bought for the fruit trees, and trod and watered it in well.

And speaking of raspberries, we were pleased to see they're putting up new growth already.

The asparagus is coming along slowly and steadily, although we found one spear felled in the same way our broad beans had been - just chewed off at the bottom and left lying there. What does this?? I must do something about those mice...

Spuds in, first shoots, and a mystery herb

Potatoes planted! Hooray! 30 Kestrel, which always perform fabulously for me, and 30 Maris Piper, which I haven't tried before. I won't bore you with a picture of the bare earth under which they lie...

Instead, look at this!

I was very jealous when I read yesterday that Soilman's asparagus was shooting up already, so I had an extra careful look today and found this little spear just showing its tip.

So spring springs on. The tadpoles have hatched, the fruit trees look fantastic covered in buds, the herbs are coming back to life, and yes, the weeds are starting to grow. And so are the pests...

Something has mown down or pulled up ALL the broad beans, which is a major bummer. Slugs or birds? We strung a loose cage of strings around the plants which I thought would keep the birds off, and considering the number of empty snail shells lying around everywhere, I thought the rodent problem (they keep making nests in our compost heap) was doing a pretty good job of combatting the slug problem. I always put organic slug pellets down too! No fair... I will plant another trayful just as soon as I've written this.

I have a mystery herb growing in my herb patch! I didn't plant it - at least I'm pretty sure I didn't - and I just don't recognise it. It's really aromatic; quite similar to lemon balm but without the lemon, if that makes any kind of sense... Quite like feverfew, but the leaves are fleshier. Anyone got any ideas?

Horseradish

Here is some of our horseradish haul from last week. And our cat, Samson, who seemed fascinated by the stuff:
I'm no big horseradish fan, but I like a touch on my roast beef now and then, so I whipped up a fresh horseradish cream sauce the other day for a big roast dinner.

First I peeled and grated the horseradish root. Open the window if you ever do this - WOW it's pungent stuff! I was surprised how dry the horseradish seemed - no juice at all. It looked more like dessicated coconut then a fresh vegetable.

Then I mixed about 2 tablespoons grated horseradish with half a teaspoon each of salt, sugar and mustard, a big pinch of black pepper, a generous dash of lemon juice (most recipes use white wine vinegar but I only had a strong cheap malt vinegar, which I wasn't too sure about) and 3 or 4 tablespoons double cream. Obviously, all the quantities could be adjusted to taste.

It was delicious! My only complaint might be the texture; the horseradish gave plenty of flavour to the cream, but I didn't think much of the tough strandy bits which remained. I saw one recipe which recommended soaking the horseradish in hot water first - I wonder if this improves it - or perhaps I'll have to find a way of mincing it smaller next time...

Next task is to find a way to preserve the rest of it! Seems to me that with such a low water content, it might freeze well. Anyone have any experience of this? Otherwise it's going to end up in vinegar in jars in the fridge, I think, but I'm not sure how long it'll last there.

The roast dinner also gave us a chance to eat some more of last year's parsnips, which I keep forgetting about and really mustn't - they taste soooo good!