Allotment colours

Okay, I’m showing off a bit. The last of the sweetpeas were needing to be picked and having picked them, I couldn’t resist harvesting a twilight purple kohlrabi to set alongside them and then the green table begged to be a setting … very arty, I hope you agree.

So, back to the adventures with kohlrabi – I wasn’t thrilled by the flavour in a casserole, so I tried it in a coleslaw, as suggested by plot-holder Duncan. That was better but still not exactly thrilling, so finally I cut this kohlrabi into chunks, sprinkled it with garlic, herbes de provence and salt and roasted it in olive oil with carrots, potatoes and peppers: superb! Since then we’ve also tried kohlrabi oven chips (like potato chips but oven roasted, well sprinkled with black pepper and chili flakes) which were just as good.

As I’m spending most of my weekends digging over the bottom of the allotment so that we can use it for root crops this year (we have no idea when it was last planted, it has turned into a impressive jungle of weeds and even a weekly digging only reduces it to a wasteland, rather than an outright jungle) I’ve got a healthy appetite for the vegetables we harvest. This weekend I’ve got to deal with two giant courgettes – very nearly marrow sized – and they are not my favourite vegetable but I’m determined to find a similarly superb recipe to make them a family favourite. Tonight I’m trying the first one in a coconut milk curry with chickpeas … I wonder if that is going to be the answer?

Labels: allotment-courgettes, allotment-kohlrabi, allotment-sweet-peas

So what did you get?

I didn’t find a shredder in my Christmas stocking, sadly. Nor did I get a tree house. But I did get:

A heritage seed collection with twelve varieties including purple and yellow climbing beans, sweet peppers, tomatoes, carrots and what they call tatsoi but I call rosette bok choy and which I ate when I was in china – very tasty. The pack came from www.realseeds.co.uk whom I’ve never purchased from myself, so I hope they’re as good as my usual heritage seed suppliers, Chiltern seeds at www.chilternseeds.co.uk/

Some plasticised sweet pea rings, so there’s no excuse for me not growing sweet peas as good as Ron’s!

And I’ve got some wonderful sweet pea seeds on order: Queen of the Isles, which is red and white striped and has a very good fragrance and Black Knight, which is solid maroon and has a gorgeous scent too.

And my sympathies go out to gardeners on plots near Jubilee Road and Dunraven Business Park, Bridgend, Wales, who are unable to eat their Christmas Brussels Sprouts and parsnips as a “precautionary measure” while the soil on their allotment site undergoes tests for contamination, following the discovery, way back in August that two plots, relocated from the ASDA store site on Coychurch Road, contained polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Allotment holders were told a report was due before Christmas with a risk assessment to be completed in January – but it seems it hasn’t turned up so far.

Labels: allotment-christmas, allotment-gifts, allotment-news, allotment-sweet-peas