Allotment tasks – gluts
There’s one thing that I always forget about allotments and vegetable gardening generally: growing the lovely veg is one thing – preserving it is quite another! And why does everything decide to be ripe and ready at once?After a week away (and a tour of a French allotment site – I’ll be reporting on that in a few days!) I’ve come back to find:
1. French beans like broad beans
2. Broad beans like bullets
3. Lettuce like the Eiffel tower
4. Courgettes like marrows
Not much can be done for any of those: 1,2 and 4 will go in the stockpot to be reduced into vegetable stock for soups and casserole bases, but 3 goes straight onto the compost heap.
I’ve rescued some peas (blanched one minute and frozen) and the smaller and less leathery broad beans (blanched three minutes and frozen) and picked the last of the redcurrants and the first of the blackberries (picked over and frozen) and it’s not much of a surprise, after a day in a steamy kitchen, to find that I’m gazing with warm approval at the only harvested veg that doesn’t require me to fiddle around with pans and trays and freezer bags: these glorious peppery radishes!
Labels: allotment-blanching, allotment-crops, allotment-gluts, allotment-harvest
Posted by The Allotment Blogger on Wednesday, July 30, 2008
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3 Comments:
Those raddishes look wonderful!
I find that with my raddishes that a sewing is never all ready together. Puzzles me that how I can plant a short row at the same time and they mature anything up to three or four weeks apart. Any ideas on this?
Interesting. One or two things occur to me:
1 - one end of your row is much more shaded than the other and that end is slower to mature
2 - one end is much drier or wetter than the other and that speeds up or retards maturation.
Do they germinate equally along the length of the row?
I must admit, this has got me a bit puzzled.
I think you're right, it probably is a shade issue. They seem to mature in patches along the row. I under estimated how bushy my broad beans would become and I think some of my raddishes were well shaded for a time. That's the trouble in the early years I'm finding - you don't always know what to expect! I end up with some things too close together and some things too far apart.
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