Allotment harvest and winter fruit

Okay, it’s a bit late, but this is the first chance I’ve had to get round to showing what we took off the plot the day we went to plant strawberries. There are celeriac, parsnips, leek, kale and a summer cabbage (the last of them, and very slug damaged on the outside) which we took home. The celeriac we made into soup and a celeriac and potato mash to go with sausages, the parsnips were also souped, the leek we had in a stir fry with the kale and the cabbage is going into puff pastry to become a lovely pie (better than it sounds, I promise you).

One thing this haul made clear to me is that Britain is not a great place for winter fruit. I really want to get more late season and early season fruits onto the plot so we can have fresh fruit all year round, so I’ve been browsing James McIntyre for ideas. I think gooseberries and craneberries sound great, and at least I can get them into the freezer for use in the fruit-free months.

What do you grow as winter fruit, I wonder?

Labels: allotment-fruit, allotment-harvest

Brilliant Borlotti – allotment beans

I’ve just been up to look at my beans.

It’s not impressive at first sight, I agree, but this is my Borlotti bean pyramid and those are lots of beautiful borlotti beans drying in the pod, on the plant. I didn’t think we’d get away with it in the UK, and maybe next year we won’t but a good 9/10s of the pods are dry and the beans inside are too.

They are gorgeous! There’s something very special, very Jack and the Beanstalk about growing your own beans for drying (as opposed to growing them and failing to harvest them so they end up being dried beans by accident) and Borlotti’s rehydrate so beautifully to make a big, meaty, juicy bean that’s ideal in robust Italian cooking (particularly good with lamb, I think). It’s all gone so wonderfully well that I find it hard to believe this is the first year we’ve grown drying beans. And borlottis are as wholesome and pretty as a speckled hen's egg.

But to be on the safe side, I harvested all the dry pods and just left the ones that are still a bit soft on the plant – if it rains I could lose the whole crop and whenever the weather forecasters say ‘sunny weekend’ I think of Michael Fish saying ‘there is no hurricane’ and I go and bring in the washing – or in this case, the beans!

Labels: allotment-beans, allotment-borlotti-beans, allotment-drying-beans, allotment-harvest

Seed Saving on Allotments

This is the first year we’re trying to save our own seed. And I’ll be honest – so far, we’ve been totally rubbish at it!

What we were going to save:

Peas
Broad beans
Runner beans
French beans
Borlotti beans
Rocket
Tomatoes

What we’ve actually managed to harvest seed from so far:

Runner beans
Rocket
Tomatoes

The runner beans are gorgeous as they dry and the rocket went to seed so fast that we only got two meals from it, so there was no problem harvesting seed from that crop! The tomato seed has already been tucked away in envelopes for next year – we are very happy with our greenhouse tomato crop which is still harvesting well.

The broad beans were a total seed-harvest fail. On 235 we planned to harvest, but the pods we were leaving got picked (that’s the risk of co-working) and on 201 the crop, which wasn’t overwintered, was destroyed by blackfly, so there was barely enough of a crop to eat a meal from, let alone leave to set pods for harvesting.

French beans – we’ve left some pods to get big – we’ll see if we are actually organised enough to do the harvesting bit in a week or so.

Borlotti beans – we’re leaving these to dry on the vine, so some will just be used for food and others for sowing next year … that’s the theory anyway!

Labels: allotment-beans, allotment-broad-beans, allotment-crops, allotment-harvest, allotment-seed-saving, allotment-tomatoes

Parsnips – and how to grow them

Not my parsnips – Christina’s parsnips – aren’t they fantastic? Christina is a neighbour of ours on 235 and she was kind enough to donate these to the needy co-workers! If you can see the toothmarks on the largest root, it’s not giant rats, it’s Rebus the Cairn Terrier, (pictured up to his oxters in mud, below) who has a bit of a fetish for parsnips and managed to nip a bite off the end of that one as I was carrying it back to be photographed. He’s a good allotment dog, apart from this one foible.

So, why are parsnips considered difficult? Partly because the germination is so erratic. You must make sure your seed is less than 12 months old and even then it’s a bit hit and miss as to how many seedlings you’ll get.

To prepare the soil, dig in some well rotted organic matter in winter, and turn the topsoil over before planting seed. Sow in mid to late spring when the soil is warming and if you can, tread the soil gently (not sixteen stones of hobnailed boots) after planting. I have a scaffold plank that I lay over the row and walk along, but you can obviously only do this on a dry day or you’ll find the soil (plus seeds) is stuck to the underside of the plank when you lift it!

Seedlings should appear between 15 and 20 days and will need thinning when the first true leaves appear, to about four inches apart. If you have module plants or grew them in trays, transplant to the same distance and space the rows about 18 inches apart. I make the rows 2 feet apart and sow quick crops in between them because parsnips are in the ground for sooooo long.

If the weather becomes dry, water weekly and hoe carefully to remove weeds. Now, the best time to harvest is after a week of frosts or near frosts – so in my area that’s sowing in April and harvesting in late November, see what I mean about a long time in the ground (not that we have any in the ground this year, but next year we will!) and that’s why planting catch crops in between stops me losing the will to live while the parsnips mature. Extreme cold allows the starch in the parsnip to become a sugar compound, massively increasing the sweet and nutty flavour of the roots.

Labels: allotment-harvest, allotment-parsnips, allotment-root-crops

Curing Squash

A couple of people on the plot asked what we were doing to cure our pumpkins, as a result of my last post. The thing is, we don’t have anywhere that we can easily and securely cure pumpkins so we have to take them off site.

‘Curing’ a pumpkin begins with harvesting – pumpkins and gourds should not be picked while they are still soft. Green or immature fruits only keep for a few weeks before they begin to shrivel. They should be bright in whatever if their normal colour – orange for pumpkins, anything from pure white to deep yellow for various other forms of squash and gourd and – most crucially – have a fairly hard rind.

So harvesting should be done after the vines have withered and the stems have actually turned brown and begun to dry – of course if your weather turns inclement (for which read rainy) you may have to harvest early and know that your pumpkins won’t lass as long.

Use a sharp knife or pruning shears to cut the fruit from the vine. Wash the fruits in warm, soapy water to remove any traces of soil. After wiping off any excess moisture, spread the fruit out on layers of newspaper in a place that offers good air circulation and a temperature of at least 21 degrees C – much warmer than most people think is necessary! Leave them for a week or two to toughen their skin and heal surface cuts, making them impervious to outside infection, rot or damage, then you can store them in whatever place you have that is dry , has good circulation of air, and doesn’t drop below 7 degrees C. Alternatively – make lots of pumpkin soup in the days after you harvest and freeze it for the months ahead!

Labels: allotment-gourds, allotment-harvest, allotment-pumpkins

Celery stories

As I said many months ago, Maurice was kind enough to give us some celery seedlings when we first got our plot, but he didn’t know if they were self-blanching or not. As a result, after I planted them, I didn’t know if I needed to blanch them or not!

I only lost one of the nine, to slugs, so I was left with eight quite vigorous celery plants and a decision to make. To blanch or not to blanch? I decided to hedge my bets and blanch three. Unblanched celery has a deeper green colour and a stronger flavour than blanched celery, and it's higher in vitamins and minerals, but a lot of people prefer the taste of blanched celery which is softer and sweeter. There are a number of ways to blanch – you can rest boards along each side of the row to block the light: which is easy but can lead to slug infestation and we have far too many slugs to take the risk. Or you can raise up soil or mulch around the plant to block out the sun: I didn’t fancy this, as I was sure it would make the stalks difficult to clean – I remember my mum complaining about having to scrub celery when I was a kiddie - and also there’s a risk of rotting when plants are blanched with soil.

So I went with the easiest option: cutting the tops and bottoms off plastic bottles and cartons and using them as collars. I cover three plants about a week ago and apparently after a week to 10 days the stalks will lighten because the compression of the collar has excluded the sun from all the inner layers, and their flavour will become milder. So I shall go up before the weekend and do a comparison …

Labels: allotment-celery, allotment-crops, allotment-harvest

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

What’s coming up on the allotment?

Garlic – yes, even the stuff that went in this spring is showing beautifully. It’s something of an annoyance to me that Maurice grows better garlic than I ever have, although not because of Maurice – he’s very generous about sharing his produce and his garlic is just wonderful: strong but sweet, full of flavour and not fibrous. The reason I get so annoyed is that I grew up on the Isle of Wight, the home of UK garlic production, and a place that actually has a Garlic Queen every year (go figure!) and so surely I ought to be able to grow it really well? My garlic is okay but I think Maurice’s soil is better than mine, or something.

One problem is that, as you can see in the picture, garlic casts no shade and so it gets swallowed up very fast by weeds because it doesn’t shade its own roots to keep them clear of lower weed growth. The RHS recommends growing it through opaque mulching film but Maurice doesn’t, so neither do I.

On the plus side, it doesn’t need watering and only suffers from virtually not problems. A lot of people don’t realise you can cut the green leaves to use in a salad (or on top of a hearty omelette, very tasty!) but really you get the joy when the leaves turn yellow and you lift the bulbs, carefully, with a hand fork, before laying them out to dry in an airy place, ensuring no bulb touches another. Once they begin to make that rustling sound you can move them to a ventilated container or plait the stems and hang the plait in an airy but not too warm place.

Labels: allotment-crops, allotment-garlic, allotment-harvest