Purple-sprouting broccoli update

So here’s a picture that I really don’t understand. Pigeons eat our broccoli – that I understand. They denude the entire leaves of the plant right down to the ribs, like feathery caterpillars – that I understand. But not eating the glorious purple florets – that I simply do not understand at all!

But there it is – having eaten the leaves, the pigeons appear to have buggered off and left the broccoli itself to us. This is the unprotected broccoli which I genuinely thought would not produce a crop at all – the broccoli in the cage is about five to seven days behind this stuff, and has all its leaves. Anyway, I’m grateful to the pigeons for leaving us this delicious feast.

And I was also wrong about the parsnips – we hadn’t eaten them all, we had two monsters lurking in the raised bed, so we lifted them yesterday and today we’re having them as part of a lamb stew cooked in the slow cooker – what a bonanza! And so, we're harvesting the last of the parsnips in the same week that I'm digging manure into the bed in which I'll be planting this year's parsnip seed - isn't that wonderful?

The ground is frozen though, so I don’t think we’ll get our spuds in until the weekend.

Labels: allotment-broccoli, allotment-crops, allotment-harvest-march, allotment-parsnips

Purple sprouting broccoli in January

We just, just, just managed to pick enough broccoli on 31st January to make a meal out of. The pigeons have obviously done better than we have from our overflow plants, but now the secondary shoots are appearing and the pesky birds seem to be leaving them alone (at least for now).

We also harvested a monster parsnip. I’m not sure how we managed to overlook this goliath and he’s got his shoulders a bit nipped, possibly by the frost that preceded the snow, but even so there’s enough on this baby to make a very good soup, which is great, as the weather’s turned cold again.

What we didn’t manage to do was get any shallots planted. This made it all the more galling to do our monthly tour and discover that many of our neighbours already have the fine green shoots of shallot growth poking out of the frozen ground. On the other hand, Peter-from-two plots-up found that he’d had a whole tray of apples and a bag of shallots nibbled by rodents, so at least our shallots are still whole, and still in their bag, rather than inside a rat!

Speaking of wildlife, as we were heading for the gate we saw a large dog fox mooching around an apple tree on a plot, obviously finding rotten windfalls that were tastier than anything else around. What made it remarkable was that less than three yards away was the plot owner, digging in some manure! She said that the fox often came to within a couple of feet of her and she thought it was because she works shifts and is sometimes the only person on the site early in the morning or late in the evening, so he’d got used to her presence. I wish I’d had my camera handy.

Labels: allotment-parsnips, allotment-purple-sprouting-broccoli, allotment-rodents, allotment-shallots, allotment-wildlife

Parsnip Curry

One of my fellow allotmenteers was moaning about not knowing what to do with all his parsnips, so I suggested parsnip curry. Apparently he’d never thought of this, but I assured him it’s very tasty. And it is.

This hit and miss recipe serves two hearty eaters or four polite ones:

• Around five large parsnips, peeled and cubed – if they are very woody, remove the hard core by slicing the parsnips in quarters lengthways and cutting diagonally across the right angle to remove the woody bit
• 2 chopped onions
• 1 tablespoon oil
• Garam masala (garam means hot, masala means blend, and garam masala is the standard mix of hot spices used in many Southern Indian curries)
• Chilli flakes or powder (if you like a mild curry, leave them out entirely, but we like the extra kick from some pure chilli flavour)
• Vegetable stock
• Coconut milk or cooking coconut (sold as a brick of coconut solids that you slice in specialist Indian stores)
• Chopped nuts

Choose a big saucepan and fry the onions in the oil until golden, before adding the spices to taste and cooking for one minute. Because parsnips are sweet and coconut milk is mild, you may want more curry flavouring than you would use for an ordinary curry.

Add parsnips, and enough stock to cover them, stir and bring to a boil before lowering the temperature and adding about a cup of coconut milk or an inch of coconut solids and then simmering for 20 to 30 minutes until the parsnips are tender and the sauce has thickened.

We garnish it with toasted cashews and eat it with naan bread, but it’s just as good garnished with thinly sliced pepper and served with plain white rice. If you have leftovers, you can add some extra water and liquidise them to make a tasty spicy parsnip soup!

Labels: allotment-parsnips, allotment-recipes

Still snow – still no work on the plot

We’ve been to the plot to harvest some parsnips from the raised bed which were only a bit frozen in, and to collect some of the leeks that had been heeled into a sheltered corner of the plot in expectation of the rotten weather, but we really hadn’t expected rottenness of this duration! Some of the purple-sprouting broccoli has flowered nicely, but as it’s also frozen solid, we left it in place, hoping to get up as soon as there is a thaw and harvest the lot.

It feels very strange not to be able to do anything vegetable-growing wise – we wandered around and I managed to take a few atmospheric photographs of the sun going down over the snowy site.

I peered at my broad beans which are poking through the snow and seem to be fine, but who knows? Snowdrops have a special enzyme in their cells that allows them to survive minus temperatures without damage, but I’m not sure that broad beans do and I’m bracing myself to discover that when the snow goes, so do the broad beans. It would be a tragedy if they do, but as snow acts as an insulator, removing it at this point would be more likely to damage the seedlings than help them.

The bed in which we should have been planting our shallots is under six inches of snow, as it turns out to be in an area where a drift has built up. The shallots themselves are in a cupboard under the stairs – who knows when they will eventually get into the soil?

Labels: allotment-broad-beans, allotment-leeks, allotment-parsnips, allotment-shallots, allotment-snow

Jerusalem Artichokes, brassicas and parsnips

These are our ‘overflow’ parsnips – we didn’t have enough space to plant all the parsnips we wanted, so we stuck in a row along the front of our runner beans, knowing that the soil wasn’t ideal (nor was the position, the leaves went over the path and got walked on a lot, and they were a nuisance to step over to get to the beans – most of the bean pods we failed to harvest were low growing ones we couldn’t find amongst the parsnip leaves) and they have come up rather forked but we’re still happy with them, as we haven’t even begun to harvest the ‘real’ parsnips in their properly prepared bed. Hope they are a bit straighter!

Steve Godley emailed thus: I have a block of brassicas containing brussels sprouts, cabbages, cauliflowers and curly kale. It is netted with ½” mesh netting against the pigeons but everything is covered with whitefly. At home in the garden I watch the bluetits and their friends searching through the treetops for similar insects I have just set some 2” wire mesh on two sides of the enclosure in the hope that smaller birds (bluetits and the like) will get in and feast on the whitefly. Has anyone already tried this? Or is there another way to get rid of whitefly?

Well, the only remedy I’ve found for whitefly is soapy water sprayed on at regular intervals. I know that all the gardening books say that whitefly does little or no harm to a plant, but a proper infestation will definitely stop the brassica growing properly, and it is horrible to have to wash thousands of flies (and eggs) off the convoluted leaves of something like curly kale. What we need is a good frost to kill the little blighters off, but no sign of that so far.

Jerusalem artichokes – the jury is still out, but the jury foreperson (me) is inclining towards a ‘guilty’ verdict. They definitely to induce wind, which is rather embarrassing if you spend all day with the public, as Himself does, but also, we weren’t thrilled by the flavour. I cooked three or four in a beef casserole and the results were truly flatulent. We’ll try twice more and if we don’t like them any better the third time, we will not be eating them again!

Labels: allotment-brassicas, allotment-jerusalem-artichokes, allotment-parsnips, allotment-whitefly

Allotment haul 7 September 2009

The weather is definitely Indian summery – torrid wouldn’t be strong a word for it – although it will break very soon. As we have seedling swede and freshly-sown mooli, I am having to head up to the plot every second day to water.
I’ve also spent an entire Sunday doing the most disgusting thing in the world: squashing caterpillars. It is really gross – but if you want to be organic (or as organic as you can be) in your gardening habits, the only way to deal with cabbage whites is to pull on your gloves hunt down every crawler and squeeze them swiftly and firmly so that they expire instantly.

And because I am a wimp, I always let things get too bad before I intervene. I try to find all the eggs and squash them instead of the poor bugs, but one always misses a few (or a lot, when it’s that time of year when so much needs to be picked and weeded and mowed and pruned) and those few seem to multiply until you are left with lacy brassicas.

We cut some sunflowers, leaving plenty for the birds to harvest, and pulled the first celeriac (just tennis ball sized) and the first parsnip, to test their growth. Both were very good roasted in tinfoil with Chioggia beetroot, fresh rosemary and a sprinkle of balsamic vinegar. Which more or less made up for the brassica destruction and the caterpillar destruction that followed. It’s a ruthless business, this allotment lark.

Labels: allotment-brassicas, allotment-celeriac, allotment-parsnips, allotment-sunflowers

And the winner is … (allotment competitions)

We had twelve entrants for the sunflower competition, although when we visited some of the plots, no sunflowers were to be seen! All the entrants had to be children, which ruled out some overly competitive types (Himself for a start!) who were ineligible through age!

Our tallest sunflower was grown by Hannah, and it was 9’ 9” tall – see how staunchly Imperial we still are? The sunflower with the biggest face was grown by Brendan, and it was a whopping 18” exactly across.

The onion competition had fewer entrants, which was a little disappointing, especially as the first prize was substantial (£50!) However, all the entries were very good in terms of weight, shape and condition, so we decided to give marks for three criteria: weight, size and appearance. Our winner was grown by an adult, who just pipped a twelve-year old onion-grower to the top spot by one point! We were encouraged that the second-place onion was not only grown by a younger horticulturalist, but was grown organically.

So that’s the good stuff. The bad stuff is that having spent a lot of Bank Holiday Monday on 201, I stopped and looked back just before we left and it was as if we hadn’t been there. The only change I could see was the raised bed that I cleared out of bolting pak choi and lettuce to sow some mooli (probably too late but fingers are crossed) and the weed heap being taller than when we arrived. We have a serious weed problem, believe me! But the parsnips are looking good …

Labels: allotment-competitions, allotment-onions, allotment-parsnips, allotment-sunflowers, organic-allotment

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