Seedlings Update

When I first started growing things, March was the month of frenzied seed-sowing, but now, having had a few years experience, I've chilled out a bit and a lot more happens in April. That way I don't have so much trouble looking after young plants and protecting them from frost, and plants don't get pot-bound and unhappy in their containers. So yes, with those digging and structural tasks out of the way, April has been largely about seed-sowing and caring for baby plants.

At home I have several trays of tomato, pepper, squash and cucumber plants to look after. They live outside on sunny days and all over the kitchen table and floor overnight. It's a bit of a chore but hardens the plants off thoroughly and allows them all the light they desire, and it's only for a few weeks.

The raised bed is looking great, full of salad veg seedlings including lettuce, mustard, spinach, watercress, komatsuna, kohlrabi, carrots, radish, turnips and spring onions - it'll be a salad bar all summer, and there'll be space for pepper plants here too. Despite my fears and the poor performance last year, I'm seeing no growth problems at all so far - hooray!

The plastic greenhouse is full of seedlings too; chard and perpetual spinach, kale and cauliflowers, dill, leaf celery, achillea, cerinthe, stock, snapdragons, cosmos and marigolds.

The cerinthe seedlings are so pretty!

On the plot, parsnips, beetroots and turnips have germinated and I gave them a good hoeing between the rows yesterday to keep the weeds down. Soon I'll sow swedes and calabrese in this bed too, and plant out young celeriac, leeks and cauliflowers.

The bindweed in this bed and our perennials bed is bad, but all I can do now is keep pulling it and hope it gives up eventually! You can see below there are a few gaps among the broad beans. Not sure why... But I think I'll resow them next time I'm down there - it's not too late! I'm a bit ashamed to say I forgot to put insect-proof mesh over my carrots again, having failed last year too. I couldn't bear to see the carrots split and deformed from carrot fly again, and carrot fly are no doubt laying eggs by now, especially thanks to this mild spell! So I've hoed out all the seedlings and will resow them in a new location at the weekend and put the mesh in place straight away!

We've sown the flower bed with hardy annuals now too (cornflowers, vipers bugloss, ammi majus, bupleurum), though loads of tiny weed seedlings are coming up too and it's going to be a job to know which seedlings to weed out and which to keep!

April has rushed by but I'm glad it's nearly May - the month of planting-out! By the end of May the house will be seedling-free again and I should be able to stop worrying about cold nights and spring hailstorms!

Autumn Vegetable Tagine

While I don't really want this to turn into a food blog, there's nothing like a great recipe to pull me out of blogging apathy and get me posting again, and this one, which began as a half-hearted attempt to use up some aging veg from the fridge while Eddie was working late last night and ended up one of the tastiest dishes I've cooked all year, is a cracker.

The onions and garlic are in and drying, the courgette plants are fruiting their last, and, even though my own crop failed completely, the shops are full of gorgeous pumpkins. (I find it so strange how they sell 'carving pumpkins' cheaper than the pumpkins in the vegetable aisle, don't you? They're just as good to eat! I love how you can get so many meals out of a £1.50 pumpkin!) With all these plus sweet potatoes and dried fruit, this Moroccan-influenced dish is absolutely seasonal, it's awesomely healthy, it's quick and easy to make, and the flavours... the flavours are aromatic, sweet and wonderful. Enjoy as a midweek family supper or posh it up for something more special. If you don't have harissa paste, flavour the couscous simply with lemon juice and seasoning, or add cumin, garlic, paprika and chilli to taste as a substitute.

Autumn Vegetable Tagine with harissa couscous
(serves four)

• Fry one large chopped onion in a little oil until soft. Add 2-3 cloves chopped garlic and a tablespoon grated ginger, and soften for a minute or two.
• Add a teaspoon each of cumin, ground coriander and cinnamon, then stir in two sweet potatoes, diced (approx 300g), and around 300g pumpkin or winter squash, diced.
• Add four chopped tomatoes, a handful of sultanas (chopped dried apricots would also work nicely) and just enough vegetable stock to cover, and simmer around five minutes.
• Add a courgette, diced, and simmer another ten minutes or so until all the veg are soft.
• Meanwhile, put 200g couscous in a heatproof bowl. Mix a heaped tablespoon harissa paste with 400ml hot water, pour it over the couscous, and cover.
• Toast a handful of flaked almonds in a dry frying pan until they're just turning golden brown here and there. Set aside.
• Add a can of chickpeas, rinsed and drained, to the veg. Cook another couple of minutes to heat through. Check seasoning.
• Sprinkle some lemon juice over the couscous and fluff up with a fork.
• Serve the tagine with the harissa couscous, and topped with the almonds and some chopped parsley.

Looking On the Bright Side

There goes May...

I've been pretty busy these last two weeks and neglecting my poor blog again, but with June (and some sunshine!) here now it's got to be time for at least a little update on things in the garden.

The early potatoes are loving their grow sacks and their sheltered spot by the house. No sign of any flowers yet, which will mean time to start harvesting spuds, but it won't be long.

The tomatoes and peppers are all settled into their pots and tubs and planters. There's a lot of em! In the picture below you can also see lettuces and radishes, kailan, mangetout, strawberries, various herbs and a courgette.

The tomatoes are starting to flower.

The French beans I planted during the wet, cold weather a few weeks back never germinated, but a new sowing is now popping up, both below left and in another big planter. And I've planted up a lot of smaller pots with Swiss chard and perpetual spinach, and sown salad burnet in others. Hate to see pots empty!

The first courgettes are on their way...

The mangetout is flowering, and beautiful!

The aubergines and West Indian gherkins (pictured) are planted permanently in the plastic greenhouse for a little extra warmth and shelter. I've never managed to grow an aubergine yet - I'm hoping this is the year!

And the herb garden is flourishing and wonderful! I am actually remembering to sow successional crops of spring onions (tucked at the back there), and getting loads of use out of the herbs. Wooo!

I also have beetroots growing in a window box, cucumbers in a grow bag and various pots of poached-egg plant, poppies and marigolds on their way.

At the allotment I'm afraid it's another story. The weeks of rain really helped the grass to run riot and kept us away for the most part, and we're still catching up. The maincrop potatoes are planted and just shooting up now, the asparagus is plodding along despite less-than-ideal conditions, and we've got some garlic and onions doing fabulously well, but the strawberries are under a jungle of weeds and we still have to clear room for our pumpkins and squashes, artichokes, a new batch of perennial brassicas and some cabbages and calabrese. Oh, and some kohlrabi, celery and celeriac... Not exactly sure where I'm gonna put those... I haven't sown any parsnips and I guess it's probably too late now. But more on that another day...

Pickling

I've had another tentative go at pickling this year; first, sliced beetroots from the allotment, and then some of the more diminutive specimens from my onion and shallot harvests.

Pickling beetroot is really easy - just cook the beets in their skins, peel, and cover with vinegar. It's important not to cut or pierce the beets in any way before cooking - cut the stalks to a couple of centimetres and wash them gently, then boil or roast until just soft. (I boiled mine, but I think I'll roast them next time as a lot of colour and aroma seemed to escape into the water even with their skins intact.) Allow them to cool enough to handle comfortably, then rub the soft skins away. Have plenty of paper towel at hand - this is a messy job! Slice the beetroots (or you could leave them whole if they're small) and pack into sterilised jars. Bring the vinegar to the boil with a few spoonfuls of sugar and some pickling spices (mustard seeds, allspice berries, peppercorns, mace, coriander, cloves, etc. to taste) and then pour into the jars, to cover the beets, and seal. I won't share my recipe here because I'm not quite happy with it - less spice, more sugar next time, for me. But I'm enjoying my beetroots all the same, usually in sandwiches with ham, mayo and lettuce. Yum!

Pickling onions and shallots takes a bit longer - they must be marinated in a handful or three of sea salt (or a strong salt solution) overnight first. They'll smell just like pickled onions after marinating! Then they are packed into sterilised jars and covered with vinegar in just the same way. Again, these are a bit punchy for my taste, and I'll use more sugar next time, but Dad loves them so they're still going to good use!

I'm rather sad I didn't get to pickle some courgettes too - I really enjoyed these last year - but the courgettes haven't been up to much this year and the usual glut never happened. Ah well, maybe I can get some more beetroot chutney made with the winter crop soon...

Courgette Loaf

Courgette Loaf
(makes one large loaf, or two small ones)

• Grate 400g courgettes, unpeeled, and place on a clean towel to drain a little. You can use courgettes that are slightly past it - just don't include any overdeveloped seeds!
• Whisk 200ml vegetable oil with 3 eggs until smooth and custardy-looking. 
• Add 225g sugar and 2 tsps good vanilla extract and beat.
• Mix in the courgette.
• In a separate bowl, mix 400g flour, 2 tsps baking powder, 1 tsp allspice, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp nutmeg, and 1/2 tsp salt. (If you wish, add up to 100g mixed chopped nuts and/or dried fruit too.)
• Combine the wet and dry ingredients and fold together thoroughly.
• Pour into a greased 1kg loaf tin and bake for 95 minutes (or until a skewer or knife comes out dry) at 160C, covering the top with foil after an hour if it looks like it might get too brown. (Alternatively, divide between two smaller loaf tins and bake 60 minutes.)

A tasty, mildly spiced teatime treat which looks rather curious flecked with green! This freezes very well - a good way perhaps to store some of the courgette glut until a time of year when courgettes are long forgotten!

Signs of Trouble

I've been spotting a few problems arising in some of the plants in the garden during the last month or so. It always seems to happen as summer hits us - I guess warm, humid weather is the best time for pests and disease to thrive.

The sorrel is full of leaf-miners - you can see three wormy grubs inside the left here on the right. Apparently the parent - a flying insect of some sort - lays its eggs on the edge of the leaf, and the grubs burrow straight inside to feed.

It's not a problem I've had before, and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do except pick and destroy the affected leaves (or net the whole plants, but that ain't gonna happen). Any tips, anyone?

The French beans are well on their way now - I'll be picking the first this week - but several plants have discoloured leaves and I really have no idea what it is. Some look like this...

And some look like this...

The plants seem to be in great health otherwise, but it's hard to know whether this is the start of something bad, or nothing to worry about!

Some of the courgette leaves are yellowing badly - another problem I've never seen like this before.

And the 'Hundreds and Thousands' tomato plants have some very yellow leaves in the middle too, and some black spots. We surely haven't had the right conditions for blight yet. I'm thinking maybe it's some kind of leaf-spot...?

Can anyone can help identify any of these problems?

Posh Courgette Pasta

And so courgette season is upon us. I know we're not exactly in desperate times yet (they'll come, they'll come), but in the never-ending search for great ways to use courgettes, I poshed-up this Jamie Oliver recipe using Boursin with garlic (which was on special offer at Tesco) and adding some mushrooms, to make a really quick and easy supper that Eddie said he'd have been happy to pay for at a restaurant! The rich creaminess and the bacon go so well with the courgettes!

Courgette Boursin Pasta
(serves two)

• Put pasta on to boil. A flattish shape, such as farfalle, works best.
• Slice a courgette and four or five mushrooms, and cut four rashers of bacon into roughly 2cm pieces.
• Fry off the bacon, then add the veggies and fry gently until soft.
• Add the Boursin (about half a pack or 75g) and lots of freshly ground black pepper. Lower the heat and stir gently until the cheese is completely melted. (Of course, any other soft garlic/herb cheese would work too.)
• Drain the pasta, stir into the sauce, and serve! Great with crusty bread...

Mangetout Stirfry with Baked Sesame Salmon

As promised, we harvested the first of the mangetout yesterday - 'Golden Sweet' yellow-podded mangetout from Real Seeds. I couldn't resist munching on a few raw - they're so sweet and lovely, and completely untouched by pea-moths and their ghastly offspring (the curse of allotment peas!). Think I'll have a few more with lunch today. And if I manage to stay organised over summer (ha!) I think I'll try a second sowing for an autumn crop too...

After a quick whiz round the garden for some other bits, we were ready for a stir-fry! We added some salsola, a couple of baby courgettes that seemed to be struggling (they're still having a hard time getting going) and some spring onions. Check out those onions! For some reason I always struggle with spring onions but this 'Eiffel' variety, grown on the doorstep in a big pot, are doing me proud! (The mushrooms were not grown by us. Sadly.)

I used to have trouble knowing how to flavour stir-fried veg. I wanted something to spice them up a bit, but I'm not keen on some of the common Chinese flavourings such as five-spice powder, and if I keep fancy stuff like fish sauce and rice wine in my cupboards, most of it will go out of date before I use it up (while sherry never sticks around long enough!). But I've found the perfect combination of flavourings - it gives that oriental feel and a bit of punch but doesn't drown out the flavours of the vegetables. Just a little soy sauce and red wine vinegar, and a dash of white pepper. Garlic, chilli and ginger can all be used to taste, too, but I don't tend to use them with a fish dish like this - I prefer to let the pea, salmon and sesame flavours rule.

Mangetout Stirfry with Baked Sesame Salmon
(serves two)

• Slather two salmon fillets in a little olive oil and soy sauce. Place on a baking tray and sprinkle generously with sesame seeds. Then pop in the oven at 180C for around 15-18 minutes (when it is just opaque in the middle, it's done).
• Wash your vegetables and slice bigger ones thinly. You'll need a big handful per person and you can use pretty much anything; mangetout, babycorn, peppers, courgettes, asparagus, mushrooms, carrots, greens, broccoli, pak choi, beansprouts... but I recommend a heavy emphasis on the mangetout!
• Put some rice or noodles on to boil.
• Put a wok or large saucepan on a high heat, add a little oil and let it get hot. Chuck all the veg in, with 2 tsps soy sauce, 2 tsps red wine vinegar and a dash of white pepper, and stir gently.
• The veg will only need a few minutes, depending on how crunchy (or not) you like them. Three to five minutes should be plenty for most veg. If at any stage the pan seems too dry or things are starting to brown, add a tablespoon or two of water.
• If you're using noodles, toss them in a little sesame oil.
• Serve rice or noodles and stir-fried veg with the baked salmon on top.

Doh! I forgot to put the salsola in! Guess I'll have that for lunch too. I was too busy getting excited about the leftover asparagus I remembered in the fridge and throwing that in! Next time...

Pruning Tomatoes

Pruning tomatoes began as quite a mystery to me, but it's easy when you figure it out. Not all tomato varieties need pruning, of course; bush or tumbling types (determinate, producing their crop all at once) can be left to their own devices, but to keep cordon or vining types (indeterminate, producing throughout the season until first frosts) in check and to focus their energy on fruit production rather than leaf production, a little help is needed.

At each point where a leaf branch grows out from the main stem, another shoot will grow, usually at about a 45 degree angle. Like this:

If you let these extra shoots, or suckers, grow, you end up with a sprawling and unwieldy plant requiring elaborate staking (trust me, I know this from experience!), and far more leaf than the plant really needs. So just pinch each extra shoot off at the base, and you'll have a much tidier plant, not to mention more, bigger fruit!

Easy. In fact, you can make new tomato plants by replanting these! If you want to do this, let them grow a few inches long before removing them, cut them off carefully so as not to damage the hairs on the stem (which will turn into roots), plant them with their stems deep in good compost, and take good care of them for a few days while they get settled.

We had quite a wet bank holiday weekend here (hurrah!) but that didn't stop me pruning the tomatoes and getting down to the plot to plant out the sweetcorn and some squashes. In fact, drizzly weather's ideal for planting out, as the roots don't get dried out or exposed to sun and the young plants settle in quicker to damp soil.

I planted out fifteen sweetcorn plants (Double Standard Bicolour from Real Seeds) in a block of 3x5 to assist pollination, plus two Baby Bear pumpkins, two Astia F1 courgettes, two Crown Prince squash (highly recommended to me many times but this is the first time I've tried them), one F1 butternut, one Waltham butternut, one Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato squash and one Sweet Dumpling! Phew! As usual I've planted them closer together than I probably should have, so I'll have to be careful to keep the plants in check and give them plenty of food and water. Now there's just the Atlantic Giant pumpkin to go, when I manage to dig over that last patch... Oh, and the brassicas, late as usual...

Can you believe we've harvested very nearly 2kg of strawberries already, and it's only the first of June?! I wasn't too impressed with this one though.

Anyone know what these beasties are? They look like earthworms but since when did earthworms eat strawberries? They're eating their way in, not out, right? Right?? If I ever bit into a fresh juicy strawberry and found that I think I'd be put off for life!

Ickle Courgette

So, remember how one of our tiny courgette plants started producing, and we popped it in a tub, fed it and hoped for an early courgette harvest?

More than a week later, it had barely increased in size, and the plant itself hadn't put on any growth either. It seemed the plant had a bit too much on its plate, what with growing up, settling into a new home and producing fruit at the same time, so we decided to pick the courgette and let the plant focus on growth.

But waste not want not. I still chopped it up and threw it in my pasta sauce!

Home Garden Tour

I took advantage of a couple of free days last week to get lots of things sorted in the garden. I planted out the tomatoes and peppers and gave the rest of the potted plants a bit of TLC and a tidy up.

As you know, I share a garden with my parents, and their ideas on gardening and mine are not really the same... So I try to keep my pots under control and squeeze them into as small a corner as I can! This is our little bit of patio:

On the lefthand side of the door is our 'herb garden', with flat-leaf parsley, curly parsley, basil, thai basil, red basil, sage, oregano, thyme, rosemary, chives, garlic chives, and some rather sickly and pot-bound lovage. Ooh, and a jalapeno pepper.

And on the right of the door, our salad bar!

Here we have, at the back, 'pizzo' mustard, mizuna, and little gem lettuce, and at the front, the last of our winter gems, purslane, the much more vigorous and highly recommended winter purslane (aka claytonia, aka miner's lettuce), chervil (not going down too well as a salad leaf, with its thin dry texture and aniseed flavour, but I think I'll try cutting and drying some to use as a herb), spring onions, and saltwort.

The saltwort's a funny thing. It's not at all salty - I wonder if I'm supposed to give it salt, as with samphire... And the plants are very small, with rather insubstantial narrow leaves. A quick bit of research shows that I'm supposed to pick the whole plant at once. Doh! I should have sown LOADS more!

Here are our tomatoes, planted out in their growbags. I've been a bit daring and planted six to a bag instead of the recommended three. As I've said before, these 'Angelle' plants are not very vigorous or leafy, so I think they'll get on fine like this.

And here are our peppers - four in a big trough, and four in individual pots, dotted around the place.

Some sorrel, grown from seed this spring, and French tarragon, bought from the garden centre on Saturday!

A lone strawberry plant, 'Eau de Cologne' mint, cat mint, and our 'Hundreds and Thousands' tomato plant (from saved seed). There's also a 'Sub-Arctic Plenty' tomato hiding in the background.

Wedged next to the bike shed is our potted courgette plant, some feverfew, and another pepper, with a growbag stuffed down the back and supports ready for our cucumber plants...

But the cucumbers have to get a bit bigger first - and I'm crossing my fingers they even get that far! A villainous mollusc climbed right to the top of our greenhouse to get at this one the other night:

Luckily the growing tip doesn't seem to be damaged, so hopefully it'll make a full recovery.

And on top of the shed are our leek and brassica seedlings and some back-up tomatoes! I'm wondering if I can keep them long enough for a late-season crop, or if they'll get too pot-bound while they wait...

I've been a bit anxious about the leek seedlings. Despite a late Feb sowing and a couple of doses of feed, they still seem so tiny! But I put a ruler to them today and actually, most of them are about six inches now - big enough to be planted out. I'll try to do that today...

Elsewhere in the garden we've got another tub of strawberries, a little behind compared to the ones on the allotment...

...and a column of mangetout! There are two varieties here; a golden-podded one and a giant-podded one! They seem to be struggling a bit to climb, but they're getting there.

Next to the greenhouse, our French beans are doing pretty well. (Why is it the ones in the corners are always smaller?)

And inside the greenhouse we have a couple of spare peppers and tomatoes, all our squashes waiting to be planted out, and a tray of pea-shoots.

Gosh! I've been starting to wonder if we still really need the allotment, with all this going on! Then I remember that without it, we wouldn't have room for potatoes, onions, leeks, root veg, brassicas, and my beloved pumpkins and winter squashes. We've been busy there over the weekend too, but I think that's enough for today. Allotment round-up tomorrow!