Showing posts with label turnip. Show all posts
Showing posts with label turnip. Show all posts

Monday 24 July 2023

Blowin in the Wind

This beauty was on our butterfly bush at home along with two others, a white and a couple of peacocks! I’ll be lucky to see that many when I do my Big Butterfly Count on the allotment later this week.

It’s late July but the weather really isn’t playing fair! It’s been extremely windy and wet, so it’s not great for gardening but it’s good growing weather. 

I’m pleased to report that the only victims of the wind were a nasturtium and part of a bean plant - amazed (and relieved) that our sunflowers were still standing. Luckily most of the Yin-Yang dwarf beans are protected and I’ve secured them with string now that the beans are developing.

The courgettes are coming thick and fast now. They’re featuring in most meals - mainly just sliced and fried in chilli oil. They’re delicious eaten hot or cold. I may get the spiraliser out for our gnocchi meal this evening.
We had left a couple to get a bit bigger (honestly, it was a plan!) for stuffed courgettes with grated carrot, nuts, garlic and mature cheddar cheese yesterday - so delicious. 
The chantenay carrots have grown well. The mangetout and asparagus peas accompany nearly every meal even sandwiches for most of this month! They’ve been prolific this year. The asparagus pea are a pretty plant. The Cornell’s squash (I thought it was a bush variety) is going to swamp them soon though.
Winged peas
I’ve started harvesting the Florence fennel. I’ve kept it under netting in an attempt to stop it going to seed but some of the bulbs are beginning to elongate rather than bulb more.
They’re so tasty and the smell -mmm, delicious! I made this meal from a trugful of goodies the other night.
Frying the courgette chopped tiny like that was a nice addition and the courgette was almost hidden in the passata sauce 🤭
Not satisfied with just our own veg, we’ve also enjoyed some of plot neighbour, Neal’s. The turnips are a lovely peppery addition fried, roasted or raw. I may sow a row myself.
And Ivan’s fruit bushes have given me a little job to do this morning, until the rain stops.
The song title is brought to us by Peter, Paul and Mary - a blast from the past.

Friday 15 July 2022

I’m Free

I have more than a week off work - Yippee! And the weather is good - Hooray! 

Little Fluffy Clouds Scudding
Actually the weather has been beautiful continuously since my last post. The photo above was from last Sunday when the clouds put on a marvellous display throughout the day. And look at these beauties.
Clouds
We spent most of the weekend on the plot, but needed the shade of the brolly at times. The daily watering continues.
Gladioli
Our one gladioli 
We spent much of the time potting up flower troughs and pots of begonia, lobelia and fuchsia - some of these will go on our shady doorstep, but we’ll let them enjoy a bit of sunshine for a while. Talking of flowers, our beans (runners, borlotti, French and Gigantes) are all on their way.
Runner bean flower
The Gigantes is winning (of course it’s a race) and there’s only one plant so I hope it produces a lot of beans!
Bean Wigwams
The race is also on in the squash tunnel. The Butternut is definitely winning. In fact, some of the plants look more like bush varieties, but I hope that isn’t the case… Look how dry it gets between watering, but we have the bottle waterers so the roots are reaching water and the plants should be fine when there’s a bit more foliage.
Squash tunnel
A lesson learned this year: don’t write labels with stupid pink pen! They’ve all faded so I need to re-do them, or just wait and see what develops - Yes, that’s what I’ll do.
Squash varieties
Ivan let me pick some of his blackcurrants so I made a sauce with added lavender. It was so delicious on ice cream or vanilla soya yogurt and look how pretty it was pre-cooking.
Blackcurrant and Lavender
The broad beans are over now. I had the last, rather gnarly, ones fried into ‘falafel’ the other night. They were very tasty made of broad beans, mangetout, onion, garlic, cumin - all ground together and fried. I couldn’t get them to hold together so fried them in metal pastry cutters. I had them with a grain mix and a tiny courgette and tiny patty pan. And, I successfully microwaved a couple of beets ☺️ 
Neal gave us beets, turnip and lettuce yesterday. It made for a tasty lunch. The thinly-sliced raw turnip was nicely peppery. I had the remainder boiled with dinner, very tasty but no longer peppery. I must grow some again next year.
The wildlife plot is doing its job attracting pollinators. The bumblebees love the evening primrose flowers.
Evening primrose
They also spend ages on the teasel flowers - the plants are over 8ft now!
Teasel flower
This mallow is stunning, but doesn’t seem to attract as much wildlife as I thought it would. I’ll keep an eye on it over the next week as there are loads of butterflies about now.
Mallow
So that’s me caught up before the holiday-on-the-plot begins. Great song by The Soup Dragons

Sunday 6 January 2019

We Started Nothing

Back to work last Wednesday for me. I was glad that it was a short week; it was such a struggle getting up early. The weather finally turned cold with some frost and I thought today was going to be awful, but it was actually quite pleasant on the plot this afternoon - though I didn't stay long.
Altocumulus clouds

I only visited to show a new plotholder around and pick a few carrots. The sun didn't show itself, but as you can see, the clouds were interesting and there were quite a few plotholders busying themselves with clearing and tidying their plots. I found this in the greenhouse - some little mouse or vole showing off to a prospective mate, perhaps? I know they like to pull leaves down to conceal the entrance, but this feather isn't a very good concealer!

Our plots look a mess, but it's nice to see some new growth - our Spring bulbs are pushing through in all the pots.
The garlic is looking happy.
The broad beans are much taller than we intended them to be at this stage - the weather has been so mild that they've just kept on growing in their mesh cage.
One of the rhubarb plants is showing signs of life but the other two are still in hibernation.
Meanwhile the weeds and grass are continuing to grow...


I did a tiny bit of clearing and put some kitchen waste and dried out stems into the compost bins. At least two of the bins have tunnels leading in through the bottom; presumably for rats, though I stirred the contents up a bit and nothing leaped out at me - thank goodness!
I brought the Honeyboat squash home as I may use that later in the week. I thought I'd check whether the black-skinned turnips are still edible - they look good on the outside, but...

No good for eating - so that's a shame. They'll be more rat-food, I mean, compost.
The song title is by The Ting Tings and it's true, but we really must start soon!
Happy New Year and thank you for reading - this is our 10th year on the allotment, so I hope it's a good one!

Tuesday 17 July 2018

All These Things That I've Done

It's been a busy July, what with Open Day preparations, the World Cup and such hot weather that it feels like I should be on holiday, not working. Lunches are getting more varied; the peppery turnips were a very tasty addition - I blanched them before adding to salads. But they, like the radishes, have not lasted well in the ground, I may try another sowing.
This has been our largest harvest so far, with our first courgette and the shallots, which have grown very well this year.
And we're very happy with our first aubergine! The plant in the greenhouse has plenty more fruits to come; the outdoor plants are slower, but I think we'll get something from them.
The ladybirds are making a show now, but too late for most of our broad beans - we've only managed a few meals from them this year because of the blackfly.
It seems that all the cabbage whites have emerged at the same time too. Everywhere you look they're flitting about or supping up the minerals where we've watered.
Another England win at the World Cup (this time 2-0 against Sweden) - AMAZING - meant another late night barbecue on the plot for Jamie and me last week. And we listened to Croatia beating Russia (on penalties) on the radio.
Kate's leek flowers are a fabulous display.
Now the World Cup is over and France won. The hot Summer weather continues to amaze - we're just not used to waking up to blue skies every morning! We had one afternoon with just about enough rain that we only needed to water the greenhouse...
 ... otherwise we're watering everything each evening as the ground is so dry.
We're leaving the lettuces under their cover as they seem happy under there.. these are the plants that looked so sad on 3rd July- great recovery ability!

And I found time to pickle some garlic in red wine vinegar, with mustard seeds, pepper, a little salt and a little sugar. I used these tiny Kilner jars which are so cute! It should be ready to eat in a couple of weeks and can keep for up to a year, apparently.
I used 3 remaining cloves to make garlic salt - the sea salt and garlic were ground together and then dried in the oven at 80° until it had formed a dry crust. I'm looking forward to having that on chips - it smells very strong so maybe not on a week-night!
Hmm, now what song to use for this summary of the last couple of weeks.... Ahh, The Killers  - please think of it as 'things that we've done'!


Tuesday 3 July 2018

Little Things

Still no rain and as everything is growing it's getting thirstier. Small fruits are appearing in the greenhouse: a couple of cute aubergines
Each of the pepper plants have multiple peppers on them - all green at the moment, but we should have yellow, red and orange.
We're so pleased that we finally have some carrot seeds that have germinated - they took a long time coming but we can just see them in a couple of rows now. Much more speedy to grow were the Pink/Purple Sun radishes - these were only sowed a week ago.
And our little salad turnips are coming along nicely - I'll let them get a bit bigger.
Unfortunately the rows of radishes which looked so great a week ago have mostly got too big and are no longer tasty so they're destined for the compost bin. Fellow-plotholder, Neal, let me have some of his lettuce seedlings so I've put them in the ground - they look pretty dead, but they usually recover...
They're filling the gap between our carrots and our Brussels sprout plants - our three plants had become two after some beastie got into our nursery plot, so we had to fill the gap with one of Ivan's spare seedlings. We've also planted up some runners from our strawberry plants - they were delicious but rather short-lived - not sure whether it was the weather or the variety. We need some plants which will provide delicious fruit later in the season.
We bit the bullet and bought some chemicals to spray the broad bean plants which look like they may survive the aphid attack to produce full beans... We bought the pesticide because we noticed blackfly moving onto the leaves of some of our other beans and it doesn't seem like the natural deterrents are working...
These are our Edamame (soya) beans. And at last the Asparagus Pea plants are getting slightly bigger, but they're usually quicker to grow than this.
This is the structure for our Rocky cucumbers to climb up - one chicken wire door each. I wonder if the cucumbers will hang down like we want them to...
But I still haven't worked out the climbing frame for the squashes.... how long have I been talking about this?!
So lots of things are growing, but most are pretty small at the moment which is why they need so much water. But these clouds that were building towards each other just dissipated and brought us not a drop...
If you're in the area - come and visit us!
Here's a track about all these little things, which will hopefully not take too much longer to be big things! (from Danny Elfman)