Salad Beds Sown

A gorgeous afternoon at the allotment today, and the raised beds are finally built, filled, and sown.

We filled them with compost from our own pile and topsoil from the plot, and topped them off with 100 litres each of Homebase's organic compost (4 x 50l bags for £15 at the moment - not bad!) so we know it will be weed-free. The right-hand bed is filled with spinach (Medania) and lettuce (I always love Little Gem - it grows so easily and can be harvested early or left in the ground for ages, as long as you keep it well-watered). The left-hand bed has rows of red and white spring onions, beetroot (Boltardy), radish (Scarlet Globe), Lollo Rossa, and a couple of 'head' lettuces (Balmoral and Webb's Wonderful). No mustardy leaves or oriental veg here - the flea-beetle problem is far too great - but I may try them in the autumn after the lettuces have bolted and the flea-beetles have gone dormant, or whatever it is they do. With the radishes I'm just hoping for the best - after all, it's not the leaves I want...

The two patches at the ends of the beds, in the foreground of the photo, are sown with coriander as I find it tends to keep aphids away, and there's also a double row of Swiss chard (Bright Lights) at the far end, between the beds and the paving stones.

I know it's a bit of a risk direct-sowing all these, especially in such fabulous weather, but I just don't have space for the seedlings at home. I'll have to keep them well-watered over the next week or so to make sure they get a good start.

Even More Herbs...

On a "must...grow...saffron" reverie this evening, I've stumbled across a new favourite website! The Green Chronicle Shop sells all kinds of garden products, but what really caught my attention was its selection of seeds. Organic veg and herb seeds are mostly around £1 a packet, and they have loads of unusual varieties I haven't seen elsewhere. And sensible P&P costs too! I bought myself some purslane, chervil, sweet cicely and wild garlic! Exciting!

The Green Chronicle main website has loads of great gardening info and news too, as well as big sections on food, recipes and health. Well worth a look.

Then I got carried away and went to Victoriana Nursery for some samphire and chamomile, since the ones I bought last year didn't survive the winter, some winter savory, and an 'Eau de Cologne' plant, just for fun. Sounds fascinating...

Still didn't get any saffron - it's out of season. Will try again in the summer...

(Photograph from Wikimedia Commons, taken by KENPEI)

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...