And We're Off!

I don't feel quite right these days when I'm not actively growing things; in winter my green fingers begin to itch, and boredom and frustration creep in, and it's a huge relief when February arrives and I can justify getting a few early seeds started. I used to wait until mid-Feb - Charles Dowding recommends this as there are ten hours of daylight or more from this time and seedlings are less likely to get leggy - but I sometimes feel that my chillies and things are a bit behind, so this year I started sowing slightly earlier; at Imbolc, which marks the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

So here we are; my first (slightly leggy) seedlings are tucked up in the heated propagator, the seed potatoes are chitting, and I've even treated myself to a nice new cloche to get some things started early outside in the raised bed.

Last year I vowed not to bother with peppers and chillies this year and concentrate on plants that would actually crop for me instead; they're a lovely idea but without a polytunnel or greenhouse they just don't seem to be worth it here, and end up a waste of space. Of course, when I actually got round to sowing it was hard to stick to that decision  - I just wanted to sow as many things as I could get away with, and I had to remind myself of those past failures! But I did allow myself two varieties: 'Basket of Fire' chillies, which I'll grow under a bell cloche to see if that helps them along, and some 'Ancho' chillies which I did really well with a couple of years ago. I also started some 'Bonica F1' aubergines, and two each of three early tomato varieties; 'Latah', 'Stupice' and 'Jen's Tangerine'. I'll sow some more when I sow the other tomatoes in March, and see if the early start really made any difference... Germination has been excellent, except from the 'Ancho' chilli seeds which are a bit old. I'll set the seedlings deeper when I pot them up, to counter the legginess.

I've also started some 'Monarch' celeriac, and some 'Golden Spartan' celery - a variety we saw looking particularly impressive at Wisley last autumn. (It's no guarantee we'll be able to replicate the success of the Wisley gardeners, of course!) We've never succeeded with celeriac yet, so let's hope it's third time lucky... These seeds are in an unheated propagator indoors on a windowsill.

Potato varieties chosen this year include 'Pentland Crown' and 'King Edward' which both did well for us previously, plus 'Desiree' on the recommendation of several Twitter friends. I've always steered clear of red-skinned potatoes, mostly due to a memory of eating them weirdly soaked in vinegar at a French friend's house as a child... But they've gotta be worth a try, right? For earlies to grow at home, I really wanted 'Accent' - we grow them at FoodSmiles and they produce extremely well and taste delicious - but couldn't seem to find them except by mail order, with a £5 delivery fee of course! So I settled on 'Home Guard'. Then, at Seedy Sunday in Brighton last weekend, there they were; I picked up not only six 'Accent' but six 'Yukon Gold' to try too! We certainly won't be short of potatoes this summer...

My new cloche is from Harrod Horticultural; a rigid plastic thing that slots together in sections, so I can extend it in future if I want, and it seems very sturdy indeed. It has indentations in the roof to collect rainwater and let it drip through tiny holes to water the plants, so it shouldn't dry out beneath and is easy to water, and it's so much simpler to handle than faffing about with fleece, which I detest. As soon as I've cleared space (the right space) on the raised bed, I'll get it in place, let the soil warm for a week or so, and then start sowing early carrots, spinach, lettuce, radishes, rocket and spring onions under it.

So off we go! Another growing season begins. Isn't it funny how every one is just as exciting as the last? :-)

Seed Sowing!

At last! The day is here! I've been itching to get starting with this season's seeds since, ooooh, about the second of January, but there's really not much point starting that early and seedlings grown when days are short can end up leggy and weak. Instead, I've taken on board a tip from veg-growing guru Charles Dowding, who advises waiting until there are ten hours of daylight each day before sowing seeds. This happens in mid February, and I've certainly noticed the evenings lengthening these last two weeks so hopefully it will make all the difference.

I like a good clear rule like this - it means no umming and aahing about whether or not it's the right time, no 'well I'll do a few now and a few later and see if there's any difference', no worrying.

Setting myself a clear day to get started - and making it a bit later than perhaps I'd like - has also meant I was far more organised than usual beforehand. I'd cleaned and tested the electric propagator in advance. I'd sorted out all my pots, and I've got a big bag of surplus ready to give away. I'd even written out my plant labels - I usually put the seeds in first then find myself writing labels with grubby fingers while trying to remember which pot's which - not clever!

I've also written up a sowing and planting plan for the whole year, which I'll use to keep records of the dates I actually sow as well. I can see at-a-glance what needs to be sown and where each month, so there'll be no forgetting things or puzzling over when to sow things for winter. I'm sure it'll get tweaked a bit along the way, but you can see it here if you like.

I sow all my seeds in peat-free compost - usually New Horizon organic peat-free. Peat-free seems to have a bad rap in the press - they'll tell you it's not suitable for seed-sowing, or that you have to sieve it and add vermiculite and water more, as if it's somehow more complex or more dangerous - but I've never, ever had any trouble with it; it's really very good stuff. And digging up peat is destructive, unsustainable, and totally unnecessary.

So here they all are. Tucked up in the electric propagator are three sweet peppers (Marconi Rossa, Lipstick and Kaibi Round), three chillies (Ancho Grande, Jalapeno and Big Jim Numex), and one aubergine (Bonica F1). They all need a bit of extra warmth to germinate well, so the electric propagator is really helpful, and I hope to be able to pot them up just in time to sow my tomatoes in the same propagator sometime around mid-March. On the windowsill are cape gooseberries, two pots of leeks (Autumn Giant Porvite and Lyon 2 Prizetaker) and some celeriac (Monarch). I've sown these things first as they are all slow-growing crops that need an early start in order to crop in good time, or to reach a good size.

Hooray! Getting these seeds started is a really good feeling and makes the spring feel that much closer. There's nothing else quite like the promise of big beautiful plants and tasty harvests just from putting a seed in the soil.

2014

It's easy to think that winter is a quiet time for gardeners, but there's plenty to be done. Between harvesting winter crops, checking fleeces and stakes, winter digging, construction projects and maintenance, nurturing overwintering plants and looking after little seedlings in the greenhouse, there's also plenty of planning to be done, and it inevitably involves a good look back over the past growing season to see what worked and what didn't.

2014 was a pretty bumper year for us, but there are always lessons to be learned. Our plot was under a couple of feet of floodwater for a week early on in the year, but thankfully it didn't do any real damage or set us back - we just had some extra clearing up to do, and to be patient in waiting for the soil to dry out again. We've settled on a new 'structure' for our plot, with three main beds in a rotation plus a number of perennial areas, and we made several new paths. We failed to cultivate the difficult far corner of the plot or our old strawberry bed, but we did clear them and cover them up to stifle the weeds and make the job easier later. We planted a new perennials bed with asparagus, artichokes, strawberries and herbs - hopefully some perennial kale will go in here too. We built new compost bins in a new area, and grew beans on the super-fertile patch where the old bins were. We also upped our growing game in the garden at home, converting a shrub bed to grow vegetables and adding three raised beds - more on all that in another post.

2013, compost bins. 2014, French beans. 2015 greenhouse!

We tried a new way of adding fertility to our plot; the 'Complete Organic Fertiliser' recommended by Steve Solomon for rebalancing soil nutrients for maximum plant health and nutrition. Though I can't quantify the results or compare to a 'control' area, I have to say everything on the plot just grew better than ever with virtually no problems, and I am quite sure the COF helped that happen. I will be going one step further this year: sending some soil samples off for laboratory analysis and creating a custom mix to balance it even better.

Another thing we trialled was 'Rootgrow' or mycorrhizal fungi, endorsed by the RHS; a mix of natural fungi that forms symbioses with plant roots and gives plants access to more nutrients and water. It's primary recommended use is in planting trees and shrubs, to help them establish quicker and more easily, but it is supposed to help any plant so I used it under every single crop to see what happened. In theory it should drought-proof plants and help fruits and roots to swell more steadily and evenly. In practice, though we had great growth almost everywhere and the new asparagus and artichokes established without a hitch, my container potatoes gave identical yields whether I used the Rootgrow or not, the newly-planted strawberries didn't establish well for some reason, squashes and swedes came in a huge mix of sizes, and my celeriac completely failed to swell, so I'm not entirely convinced...

Potatoes did wonderfully - we managed to grow a kilo for every week of the year. (If only I had somewhere better to store them - they are now sprouting and turning soft). Scab was very bad on our old favourite Kestrel, but we also tried Pentland Crown this year, which makes a much better baked jacket spud, seems to store slightly better, and doesn't suffer as much scab, so we will be growing more of these in 2015! On reflection I wondered if I should have left the lime out of the COF applied to this area, as it probably made it worse.

Carrots were our best ever, even though we couldn't find our enviromesh in time to protect our first sowing so we lost some to carrot fly - our later sowings did brilliantly and they even won a first placing in the allotment association show! We have only succeeded with carrots since we added lime to our soil - perhaps they need the extra calcium.

Pumpkins and squashes did brilliantly too; we brought home 18 lovely fruits and many are still sitting around happily on windowsills and doormats waiting to be eaten. Arguably we might have expected even more squashes from our eight plants - some plants only gave us one or two fruits - but they suffered from quite a lot of weed competition... Turns out it wasn't such a good idea to undersow them with clover; clover actually gets quite big and unruly when it wants to!

Leeks, parsnips, swedes, broad beans and beetroots all got along just fine. Beetroots really are just THE easiest vegetable to grow - nothing seems to stop them. I only wish Eddie liked them better as I'm eating them mostly by myself. The leeks are suffering from some allium leaf miner and I think we should cover them with mesh next year. We only grew one variety of French beans - a local heritage variety called Ryder's Blue Coco - and I sowed them rather late due to a lack of space earlier on. They were delightful - really tender - and we were eating them long after our neighbours' beans had finished, but we couldn't save any seeds from them because they didn't have time to mature before the first frost, which was a great shame. I do have just a few seeds left so I MUST do better at this next year!

Our chard and winter spinach, planted out in late summer, suffered a bit of neglect due to an extremely busy autumn, but though we lost a few to slugs and snails, they grew superbly and we really should have harvested more from them before the winter. We will still be able to pick from them when growth starts again in early spring though. Our first attempt at fennel suffered the same neglect but also grew very well indeed, and again we failed to harvest it in good time. It's certainly one to try again this year though. We also have a few spring cabbages nearly ready which have done really well - a nice compact variety called Pixie which, assuming it tastes good come spring, I will certainly grow again.

2014 was our first year growing both celery and celeriac. The celery did okay, though it was a bit thin and stringy (I don't usually eat it raw much anyway - just use it for soups, stocks and stews - so that doesn't really matter). The celeriac was a huge disappointment; no root to speak of at all, and I'm not sure why or what to do differently next year...

The importance of beneficial insects really, properly hit home to me last spring when scores of ladybirds descended on our blackfly-infested broad beans and cleared the whole lot up for us. I'm pretty sure there were more ladybirds around than before because I'd grown phacelia in the next bed over winter - ladybirds seem to be attracted by lacy foliage and as we cleared it up in the spring there were loads of them among it. I always grow a few flowers here and there, but now I will grow more!

In the home garden, our courgettes and tomatoes were just fabulous and kept me busy finding new ways to use them! The tomatoes succumbed to blight in the late summer, as they always do. We tried a local heritage variety of tomato - 'Ryder's Midday Sun' - but sadly didn't find them up to a good standard; the plants grew slowly, the tomatoes were watery and lacked flavour, and they were first to succumb to blight! Maybe they'd do better in a greenhouse... But while I'm very glad to have had the opportunity to try them, I'm not sure I have the space to persist with them. Cucumbers and salad greens in our new raised beds did not do well at all and I'm sure there was a problem with the soil - more on that in another post... Peppers did okay but gosh, they take so long to ripen! We were disappointed in a new variety we tried - 'Hebar' - which had very thin flesh and not much flavour at all. The seller described it as "particularly sweet and tasty" so I'd love to know what anyone else thinks of them! We have bought a plastic greenhouse to put on the allotment this summer, which should be just big enough to grow a few tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers in. This way we hope to have blight free tomatoes and earlier peppers! We'll still grow some at home too though...

Kaibi Round, Ancho Grande, Hebar, Lipstick

The enviromesh over the kale bed got torn in high winds early in the year, and by late summer caterpillars had stripped the plants as I was too lazy to do anything about it... Thankfully some of the plants made a surprisingly good comeback though! Another mistake I will not repeat next year is planting French beans behind courgette plants. After the courgettes had been growing a month I couldn't reach the beans at all, and had to leave them all to pick for drying instead! The mangetout was great - we could hardly keep up with it - and we were really impressed by variety 'Carouby de Maussane' with giant pods! I have never grown ordinary peas, as frozen British peas are extremely good and convenient, and all the podding seemed like too much of a faff, but last year we did grow a multipurpose mangetout/podding pea - 'Ezeta's Krombek Blauwschokker' - and when they got too big to eat as mangetout I was forced to pod a few... They were so lovely that I might just add a few real podding peas to my garden this year...

Carouby de Maussane mangetout - still gorgeously sweet and tender at this size!

The 'perennial salad mix' from Suffolk Herbs turned out to be a mix of chicories and radicchios, which have grown well but... I just don't really like the taste. Admittedly I should have read the back of the pack more carefully, but this picture is a bit misleading I think!

All in all, we will do much the same this year as last, but here are the things we plan to do differently:

• Grow more flowers - to include a cutting-flower patch!
• Do even more to balance our soil nutrition according to Steve Solomon's great book 'The Intelligent Gardener'
• Add a plastic greenhouse to the allotment to grow a few summer veg under cover.
• Don't plant anything behind courgettes!
• Improve raised bed soil.
• Buy more enviromesh, to replace torn piece and cover leeks too.
• Keep squash bed weed-free - perhaps mulch beneath plants - and grow fewer plants so they don't get so tangled.
• Grow some proper peas, perhaps.
• Try harder with celeriac.
• Grow more Pentland Crown potatoes and less Kestrel - and try another new variety too.
• There are always new varieties to try; this year new ones for us include oyster leaf, beefsteak plant, pink banana squash, skykomish tomatoes (supposed to have some blight resistance), marconi rosso peppers, and we're going to attempt to grow cauliflowers for the first time, since we buy them quite a lot...
• We also plan to plant a new fruit patch on the long-neglected and difficult far corner of the allotment, and clear and replant our overgrown herb bed.

Frosty radicchio

Amazing Green Tomato Chilli!

*Sigh* My blog has been neglected for nearly a month now! Well who wants to read about this growing season? I certainly have little motivation to write about it. And after a summer-so-far of rotting roots, weather damage, poor growth and slug wars, I've now fought and lost the blight battle too.

Since I started growing tomatoes in my home garden instead of the allotment I've had much better results and much less blight - being able to keep a closer eye on them means catching it earlier, and they're less exposed to the elements. Last year, I was fairly convinced blight didn't even matter to my favourite Angelle tomatoes, which suffered lightly all summer - a few brown leaves here and there, and just one or two small patches on the stems which didn't spread - but didn't start losing fruit until right at the end of the season. This year, after holding off through the whole rainy period, as soon as the sun came out three or four weeks ago it struck hard. Is it all down to the endless rain and high humidity, I wonder, or has the fact I've ditched Levington's seaweed-enriched-but-not-peat-free growbags in favour of homemade compost made a difference too? Seaweed is supposed to provide a measure of disease protection after all. I can only speculate. I managed to pick about three handfuls of good tomatoes, but the rest have been blackening before they ripened, and this weekend I gave in and pulled the lot up. A heartbreaking waste.

I saved some of the best-looking green tomatoes and put them on a sunny windowsill to ripen, but my faith in them turning red rather than black was low so I started to look at other options. Last year I made green tomato chutney, which was very tasty, but I don't eat all that much chutney... Then I received a tip via Twitter from Nate at AFK (thanks Nate!) - green tomatoes can be used in place of tomatillos in dishes such as green chilli. (Tomatillos resemble green tomatoes, but are actually more closely related to cape gooseberries, and have a similar papery husk and a slightly citrussy flavour.) It sounded better than chutney to me, so off to Google I went to investigate.

Green chilli, or Chili Verde, is a Mexican/American dish of pork stewed with chillies, peppers and tomatillos. Having never, to my knowledge, had either tomatillos or green chilli before, I didn't really have a clue what the difference would be or what I was in for, but in light of my love for slow-cooked melt-in-your-mouth pork and the enthusiastic reviews of this highly-rated recipe on food.com, I could hardly wait to give it a go. I made quite a few changes to the recipe to suit our tastes and the ingredients I had available, and it seemed right to add beans as well, like in other types of chilli, so here's my version:

Chili Verde
(serves 4)

• Roughly dice 600g-700g pork shoulder (or four pork shoulder steaks) and sear in a little oil, in a large saucepan or stockpot. Remove from the pan and drain all but a tablespoon of the fat.
• Saute one diced onion and gently in the pork fat until soft.
• Add 3 cloves garlic, crushed, to the pan and soften for a few moments, then return the pork to the pan, add 1 tsp cumin and 500ml chicken stock, bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes.
• Add a green pepper, yellow pepper, one jalapeno (or more to taste), all finely chopped, and saute a few minutes until starting to soften.
• Add 500g-600g finely chopped green tomatoes (or tomatillos!) and a tablespoon dried coriander leaf (or 3-4 tablespoons chopped fresh coriander - I'm just not keen on the flavour of fresh).

• Bring to the boil, then simmer for two hours, uncovered, over the lowest heat possible. By this time the veggies should be mushy, the pork should fall apart on contact with a fork, and the stew should be reduced and thick.
• Check seasoning. Don't be shy - I think the slight sourness and acid of the green tomatoes absorbs a little more salt than expected.
• Drain, rinse, and add one can of white beans (pinto, cannellini, etc.).
• Serve in burritos/tacos, over rice, or with tortilla chips. Add other tasty Mexican-style trimmings as you feel led!

It was really, really good - the flavours were lovely, the pork was beautifully fall-apart tender, and the beans went perfectly. It could easily be adapted for vegetarians too, with or without adding extra veggies. I'm very happy to have, at last, a really good use for those green tomatoes that would otherwise go to waste, and I expect salsa verde, with its many uses, could probably be made with green tomatoes too, as well as numerous stews and soups. In fact, I'm a bit gutted I don't have any more green tomatoes until probably this time next year - I wish I'd saved them all, not just the biggest loveliest ones! I might just have to go in search of some tomatillos instead...

Perfect Paella

There's no cuisine quite as summery as Spanish food, packed with spice and summer vegetables such as peppers, green beans and tomatoes, and in my recent - and ongoing - efforts to feel summery no matter what the damn weather's doing, I've been cooking quite a lot of Spanish food lately. I've long been a fan of tapas, but one thing I'd never tried to make before was paella, so I gave it a try.

This is my first attempt. Meat and veggies plus short-grain rice, cooked in stock, with smoked paprika and chilli. What could be wrong? It was nice, but... it wasn't exciting. It was lacking something and I couldn't put my finger on what. So I made it my mission to find out a bit more about making the perfect paella... And three or four paellas later, I think I've cracked it!

The Pan
Paella must be cooked in a wide, flat pan, to make sure the rice cooks in a shallow layer and the stock reduces effectively. But if you don't have a proper paella pan, another large flat pan will do just fine - I made the recipe below in a 28cm saute pan (though a few cm larger would have made life a bit easier).

The Rice
Authentic paella rices are Spanish and include Bomba (the best!), Bahia or Calasparra, but you can use any short grain rice and Arborio - the Italian rice commonly used for risottos - is a pretty good option. (In fact, I preferred Arborio to Sainsbury's 'Paella Rice', the variety of which is unspecified.) These types of rice hold their shape by remaining firm in the middle, whereas long-grain rice goes soft throughout, and they absorb a great deal of flavour as they cook, increasing drastically in size.

The Sofrito
This is simply a paste of chopped onions and tomatoes, cooked down to a dark, rich reduction. It adds so much to the flavour and really transforms the dish - paella isn't paella without it.

The Saffron
I've never been much of a believer in buying massively expensive foodstuffs that don't last very long or go very far... But I was really glad I bought saffron for my paella - there isn't really a substitute for the subtle richness and aroma it adds. (And I hope to be growing my own saffron in the garden starting this autumn - woohoo!) Use it.

The Soccarat
Now here's something I really didn't know, and which many of the recipes you'll find online don't seem to know either; you mustn't stir paella after adding the rice and stock. This is for two reasons. First, stirring encourages rice to release starch, go gooey and lose its shape, and in paella you want each grain to keep its shape. And second, you want the bottom to brown lightly; the crispy browned layer of toasted rice on the bottom is called the soccarat and is considered the best part of the dish - and trust me, it really is good. To get a good soccarat, add the right quantity of liquid (just over one-and-a-half times the volume of the rice) and turn the heat up high for a few minutes after most of the liquid has been absorbed, until you hear a light crackling at the bottom of the pan. After this, the paella should be covered and allowed to rest for five minutes, to allow the rice to soak up the last of the liquid.

The 'Fillings'
A traditional Valencian paella is made with chicken, rabbit, butter beans and green beans, with a seafood mix replacing both meat and veg in coastal towns. But mixed paellas using virtually whatever ingredients are handy have become popular across Spain, and across the world, so while many Spaniards will scoff at the addition of, say, chorizo, if you fancy it I say chuck it in! However, paella is primarily (traditionally) a rice dish, so try not to go so overboard with additions that the rice fades to insignificance! As well as meat, I like to have a green vegetable and a 'meaty' vegetable, such as butter beans or artichoke hearts, plus peppers for that summery sweet flavour. Or of course you could go for a veggie paella with peppers, a variety of beans, peas, fresh tomatoes, aubergines, artichokes, and even some olives. (If you're not going to use chorizo in your paella, I'd recommend adding more garlic, chilli and paprika than in the recipe below, as chorizo adds sso much of these flavours by itself.)

Nome's Perfect Paella
(serves 5-6)

• Heat a little oil in your pan and add 2 or 3 diced chicken breasts. Cook until they're just lightly sealed all over, and stir in 225g chorizo, diced or sliced, and a green and a red pepper, diced. Cook over a high heat for a couple of minutes until the oil starts coming out of the chorizo, then push it all to the outside of the pan or, if you don't have room, remove from the pan and set aside for a few minutes.
• Add a large onion, finely chopped, to the pan, cook a couple of minutes until translucent, then add a 400g can chopped tomatoes, keeping a little of the liquid back. Keep stirring and cooking until it reduces and darkens, but don't let it burn. This is the sofrito and adds loads of flavour to your paella.
• To the sofrito, add 2-3 cloves chopped garlic, 1 tsp mild chilli powder and 1 tsp smoked sweet paprika and stir in. Then stir the chicken/chorizo/pepper mix back in to the pan.
• Add 300g short grain rice (see 'The rice' above) and stir quickly through the contents of the pan. Now put that spoon away - you're not going to be doing any more stirring.
• Add 250ml dry white wine, 500ml light, quality chicken/fish/veg stock and about 1/2 teaspoon saffron threads, soaked in a little hot water. Sprinkle on 200g frozen/fresh peas or chopped green beans. Give the pan a little shake to even things out, and bring to the boil.
• Taste the stock to check the flavour, spice and seasoning. Adjust if necessary, but try not to disturb the rice too much. 
• Reduce to a simmer and leave uncovered to cook. It should take around 20 minutes for all the liquid to absorb/reduce - check at around the 15 minute mark and if it's still very wet, raise the heat, or if it's dry already but the rice isn't tender add a little more stock. 
• When the rice is tender and almost all the liquid is absorbed, arrange 225g cooked king prawns and a can of artichoke hearts or butter beans (or 100g dried butter beans, soaked overnight then simmered 40-60 minutes until tender) on the top of the paella to heat through.
• Raise the heat to brown the bottom. When you hear popping and crackling it's happening - stick a fork down there and keep an eye on it as you want a good layer of brown but no black! When it's done, turn the heat off.
• Cover the pan with a lid, foil or a clean towel, and let the dish rest for five minutes.
• Sprinkle the juice of half a lemon and a couple of good handfuls of chopped fresh parsley over the paella, and serve, remembering to scrape the lovely soccarat off the bottom!

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...

It's National Vegetarian Week...

I'm not a vegetarian, and despite my fussiness about the meat I eat, I don't aspire to be one. I believe we humans are meant to eat meat and animal products - that it is an important part of healthy nutrition. (This account from a young vegan forced to realise that not everybody can survive on a vegan diet is fascinating and eye-opening.) I also believe the replenishment animals provide to the soil is vital to farming; that the healthiest way to produce food is in a polycultural system where animals and plants support and feed off each other, and that a wide variety of produce reduces the need for chemicals and treatments and encourages a healthier, more natural ecosystem where 'good' and 'bad' organisms are in balance.

But I also believe the amount of meat many are accustomed to eating these days is far too much. The amount we eat can be detrimental to our health, and too-often takes the place in our diets of other essentials such as vegetables. The amount we eat forces producers to farm animals intensively, which compromises animal welfare as well as the quality of the meat we eat. The amount we eat necessitates vast monocultures to feed the livestock, which deplete the soil, interfere with natural ecosystems and are detrimental to the planet. The amount we eat is ultimately unsustainable, and if we all ate less meat - perhaps just two or three times a week - the world would undoubtedly be a better place.

So this week, why not try a few meat-free recipes and cut down a little? I don't mean baked potatoes and beans, or macaroni cheese, or a mushroom pizza - vegetarian food can be far more exciting and nutritious than that; if you're stuck for ideas, try here or here for inspiration. Or check out Meat Free Monday - a campaign to get everyone eating meat-free at least once a week, with lots of recipes to tempt you to join in! (I was thinking of feeding my lot meat-free all week this week and seeing if they noticed, but planned badly and have half a pack of mince in my fridge to use up, and I promised I'd do steak one night... but five nights out of seven still ain't bad!)

And here's a simple offering to get your mouth watering; a beanburger recipe I've been working on recently (loosely based on a standard recipe that's all over the internet in various forms) which my family loves. (Not exciting enough for you? You haven't tasted it yet!) It's not quite seasonal right now, I confess, but summer round the corner means burgers on my mind. It's seriously tasty, family-friendly, and couldn't be much healthier either. Give it a try!

Mexican Beanburgers
(makes eight large burgers)

• Finely chop a large onion, a green pepper and a red pepper, and fry gently in a teaspoon of olive or rapeseed oil.
• Peel and chop a large carrot, and steam/boil in a little water until soft. 
• When the onions are translucent and the peppers soft, add a small can sweetcorn (160g), a clove or two chopped garlic, 2 tsp ground cumin, 2 tsp ground ginger, 1 tsp chilli powder (or to taste), 1 tsp dried oregano, 1 tsp dried coriander leaf, a tbsp lemon or lime juice, a good grinding of black pepper and a pinch or two of salt. Stir in and cook for a couple more minutes, then turn off the heat.

• Mash the carrot (or puree in the food processor) and add it to the pan.
• Drain and rinse two cans beans (I use one can cannellini, one can kidney), pulse half in the food processor until finely chopped, then add the rest and pulse until coarsely chopped for texture. Add to the pan.
• Add 100g plain flour. Mix everything together really well.
• Separate the mixture into eight balls and flatten them into patties about 2cm thick. It's messy, but stick with it!
• Place on an oiled and floured baking tray, and bake at 200C for around 20 minutes, turning halfway through, until the burgers are lightly browned and firm.
• Serve in bread rolls, with guacamole (or avocado), salsa (or sliced tomato), salad and a little cheese.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Come on now, this is getting silly. I know we're in a drought situation (whatever that actually means) but we still need sunshine too, and the man on the telly said only winter rain could help us so your efforts are wasted. I swear most of my warm-season plants have just stopped growing - even the ones that didn't get smashed to bits by hail - and a few are just rotting in their pots, including the artichokes I spent good money buying. The slugs and snails are doing so well, in the meantime, that the remaining plants barely stand a chance, and after frost got my first early asparagus spears, the next wave has been so slow to grow without sunshine that most of it's been eaten before it's big enough to cut! Beans sown under fleece have not sprouted yet, and I strongly suspect they're rotten by now. There's a serious amount of weeding to do before I plant my maincrop potatoes and it's such a muddy job when the ground is practically waterlogged. I bought one of those weed wand thingies to burn the weeds but I can't do that when they're soaking wet, can I? Frankly, it's just depressing and uninspiring and motivation-crushing when the skies are grey and gloomy all day every day, and I'm not usually one to complain about the weather, but seriously, we don't usually have three (or is it four?) solid weeks of the same. Enough, okay?

Of course, I try to look on the bright side. The early potatoes and most of the herbs are doing well (except the rosemary which doesn't like to be wet), and the peppers and cucumbers in the relative warmth of the greenhouse are doing okay, if a little slowly.

The strawberries are pretty happy and green, with a few flowers appearing, and a couple I thought I'd lost to vine weevil have suddenly bounced back. The radishes, lettuces and mizuna are doing really well, too, although it's a constant battle keeping the slugs off them.

The tiny pots in which I've sown my brassicas are getting a constant watering where usually it'd be a fight to stop them drying out! And I have now harvested the first of my asparagus, even if it doesn't look very appetising.

Having battled with the allotment weeds for five full years now to virtually no avail, I've given up on digging and bought, as I said, a 'Weed Wand' to kill 'em all with. The environmental (and financial) cost of the gas canisters is not ideal, but as long as I'm economical with them and dispose of them properly, I think it's got to be better than either of the other options, which are using chemicals, or throwing in the towel. The cell-damage to the weeds is supposed to kill the whole plant, so I have high hopes that with this we'll finally be able to gain control, and it's going to be so much easier and less daunting than all that digging! Once the weeds are dry enough to start, anyway...

I'm also delighted to report the arrival of the year's most awaited seedling! After the hail killed all my ancho peppers - the ones I was most excited about growing - I sowed the last few seeds I had to replace them. And I waited... and I waited... and everything else I sowed came up but them. Finally, one has arrived! I hope more will still follow in the coming days.

At this time of year I'm usually starting to think about the likelihood of any further frosts and looking forward to planting things out, but everything's so far behind this year! So come on, rain. Enough!

Overwintered Peppers

As temperatures dropped last autumn, I brought my favourite pepper plant and my only chilli plant indoors to see how they'd last. A friend of mine kept peppers all winter in a south-facing attic under a velux window and they did great - I only have an ordinary south-eastish-facing windowsill, but I figured it couldn't hurt to try.

The chilli did fine for about six weeks and produced a new flush of flowers, then suffered some ailment and dropped lots of its leaves as Christmas approached - but it has pulled through, put on some new growth, and given me occasional fruits throughout the winter, which has been really nice. (I had to hand-pollinate the flowers, of course - as easy as dusting the centres with a soft paintbrush.) As you can see, it's looking a bit spindly (and one-sided) from less-than-ideal light levels and the dropping of its leaves, but it's doing fine now and producing more and more flowers. If you look closely, you'll see three little chillies on its branches. Let's see how long I can keep it going...

The pepper, however - the 'Dedo de Mocha' sweet Aji type which was wonderful when it finally fruited early autumn - has not enjoyed being indoors one bit. The fruits remaining on it ripened to red in the warmth of the house, which was nice as they'd showed no sign of it outdoors, but when the days got shorter, the plant got taller and taller, reaching for light that I just couldn't provide, and the thing ended up crawling over my curtain rail, producing long spindly branches which it couldn't support, and finally getting very unhappy indeed.

Ah well; you win some, you lose some. If I had a heated greenhouse or conservatory I'm sure I'd have got much better results. I think it's certainly worth overwintering more chillies in future. But the pepper plant has gone in the compost bin now, to make way for this year's new subjects!

Kale and pepper update

Remember my perennial kale, that drooped in the snowy weather? Despite lots of care, it didn't get better - the leaves went dry and crispy and I thought it had died. I was pretty miffed - it cost £5 plus £5 postage and it really should have withstood the cold weather better. Today, however, I spotted these new shoots coming from the base of the stem, so it looks like all is not lost after all! Hooray!

Sowing begins today - I'm planning a trough of mangetout, a tray of peas for shoots, two pots of parsley, a few early Swiss chard seeds in the greenhouse as an experiment, short rows of carrots, radishes, spinach and lettuce, and tomatoes and celery in the heated propagator. Really must get my broad bean seeds in at the plot soon too...

And to make space in the heated propagator, I've potted-on all my early chillies, peppers and aubergines. They're doing great and many are on their third pairs of leaves. I'm making a few extra sowings though, as one variety gave me zero germination (from seeds bought just last year!) and the ancho/poblano chillies, which I was really looking forward to, have only given me one seedling from ten seeds. Rubbish!

I'll leave these pots on the windowsill for now, to get used to not being heated from underneath, but as soon as we get some decent March sunshine I'll get them out into the greenhouse during the days and bring them in at night.