Harvesting preparing freezing storing eating..

These past few weeks I’ve been eating the fruits of my labour and very lapse  on taking photos of what I’ve grown..

Most of my beetroot has been harvested – A favourite of mine is to roast it and have with goats cheese.

The cauliflowers are now blanched and in the freezer..

I’m cutting Swiss chard “yellow lights” weekly and and using this as an alternative to stuffed vine leaves.

Broad beans – of which I have plenty still in the freezer make a delicious  Moroccan stir fry..

Marrow – will have to post my north African stuffed veg recipe!

Swede – now all eaten along with my carrots and sante potatoes. I still have rooster and golden wonder..

Fennel – will grow more next year as 5 was not enough..

Tomatoes – we’ve been picking the cherry toms for a few weeks now and the plum toms are ripening nicely..

I’ve been trying to come up with some different ideas for cooking my mini pumpkins  ” savoury fillings” not sweet  Any ideas?

Finally…  I’ve been busy knitting

And

Visiting here here and here

With

She’s back to school next week.The following week I’m away for a short holiday.. Yeah

I’ve racked it for the second time, its clearing well and should be ready in around 5 months time..

Note to self

Store somewhere other than bedroom when making wine in future..

After 3 sleepiness nights thinking I had a leaky tap in bathroom. I  realised at 3 in the morning it was the air lock bubbling away keeping me awake! Doh…  drove me mad!

Rhubarb Wine

1 Chop up your rhubarb stalks and freeze them in plastic bags for a few days before you make the wine. I really don’t understand why. Apparently it does make a difference…

2 You have to have patience. Rhubarb wine can taste pretty unappetising at eight months and really good at ten months. You have to let it mellow.

Ingredients:

3 pounds rhubarb
3 pounds white granulated sugar
1 tsp. yeast nutrient
4.55 litres /1 gallon hot water (doesn’t have to be boiling) that’s uk gallon
wine yeast
1 can of white grape concentrate

Procedure:

Using the frozen cut up rhubarb. Put it in the fermenting bucket along with the sugar. Cover and let stand for 24 hours. Add the hot water, mix everything together and then strain out the rhubarb . Put the liquid back in the fermenting bucket and when the liquid has cooled and is luke-warm add the rest of the ingredients. Cover and leave it to ferment for three or four days. Then syphon the liquid into demi-johns with fermentation locks and let it bubble away There will be a fair amount of sediment at the bottom of the demi-john, so when the wine settles a bit (about a month) you will want to rack it. Using a syphon, syphon the wine into another demi-john making sure you keep the tube above the sediment- you don’t want to transfer that. If some of the sediment gets through you can rack again in a few weeks time when it has settled again.
Then leave in a cool room to clear

My cauliflowers have now all been harvested and soon I’ll be planting out some spring cauliflowers / cabbage that I sowed a few weeks back..

Mini pumpkins have gone mad this year. I’ve had 11 so far with more to follow from two plants.

Runner beans are driving me nuts. I cant pick um/eat um quick enough! Chutney me thinks!

A few of my Roma toms had blossom end rot due to the lack of rain along with irregular watering from me. They seem to be fine now after i cut back on their feed,watered more and put more compost around their roots they are looking really healthy and are starting to ripen nicely.

The potatoes in the photo are sante and are delish, definitely growing these next year and I’ve still got a row to dig up along with 2 rows of rooster and 2 of golden wonder..

Failures so far have been my…

Celeriac – about the size of golf balls

Aubergines-they haven’t even flowered yet ” Unbelievable” you would think they would be thriving with the summer we’ve had..

And my red onions – again the size of golf balls. The brown and white onions are great and are hanging up in my kitchen..

The grassy areas need strimming, though I did manage to do a little weeding before I collapsed with heat stroke while trying to avoid falling through the huge cracks that have appeared in my heavy clay soil through lack of rain..  Lol. Funny how this heat hasn’t stopped the weeds !

I have some casualties too.. My lettuce has bolted. There were only four left which succumbed to the heat over the weekend despite my efforts to try and shade them. Some of my second sowing of peas has pea moth – not sure how that happened as I usually manage to avoid them, it’s never been a problem in the past.. Also.. My plot has been invaded by black ants, zillions of the little sods..  I can cope with black fly even slugs but ants crawling over my veg really gives me the willies. My plot is one big ant hill at the moment..

And on a brighter note. Ta Da..

I have finally managed to grow fennel. Third time lucky!

This is colossus  a bolt resistant variety from real seeds..

Yep.. I would agree with that, its doing really well despite the heat and lack of rain were having at the moment. I’m not counting the two minutes of drizzle we had yesterday..

I started these off in pots in April then planted out in June. In the past I sowed direct as per instructions and got nothing, zilch..

I thought I had 2 Mini Pumpkin plants growing away nicely at my plot , though, one is now looking suspiciously like a courgette plant. I planted them around the base of my sweetcorn where I thought they would sprawl gracefully  along the ground. One of these is getting taller and wider by the day !

Hmm. Ok who switched labels ?  Not guilty came the reply!

I grow verde di milano courgettes every year, only one, as they are so prolific.. This year my one and only courgette was killed by a beastie trampling on it and breaking the stem, though now I’m more inclined to think it was a size 10 boot taking a short cut over my plot.. Only time will tell just what I have planted next to my sweetcorn , did I sow two courgettes or could it be a Patti pan. I vaguely remember getting the seeds out then changing my mind..

I’m ignoring the fact that my Roma tomatoes that are growing up the black pole  probably think its a bit too close for comfort..

Senior moment number two!

What the hell is this?

I’ve grown romanesco cauliflowers before so this year I thought I would try a new variety – Only three, then if they got the thumbs up from my family I would grow more next year..

Grown in 2007/2008

I’ve scrutinised the seed packet looked through my gardening books and googled images. Its supposed to be similar in size to a normal cauliflower low growing with similar planting distances – just like the one in the photo. So.. how come I’m growing a triffid ! They are planted with my cauliflowers with netting to keep the cabbage whites off – towering over my cauliflower’s and are at risk of breaking through the netting. Whatever they are, they will have to stay confined as I’m not risking having cauli’s infested with caterpillars – lord knows what I’ve sown

Senior moment number three

I haven’t grown these for a few years. I used to grow a couple of plants in hanging baskets at home. So why on earth did I sow and plant these out on my plot.? They are tumbler. Yep, they tumble down, they are not interested in climbing up the pole I put in for them. Hubs is not impressed as he was looking forward to the sweet million cherry tomatoes. He pointed out while watering that they were sprawling across the ground and not climbing the pole – whoops..

I’m off for a lay down now !!

Edited…

Doh..silly me… blushing… of course they are sunflowers..

My brain just didn’t make the connection.  Sunflowers in my brassica bed was the last place I’d expect to see them.  I’ve moved them to the back of my plot next to the two I have  growing, though I’m not sure they will survive being transplanted. I usually pop a seed in the ground and water like Jack and the beanstalk – these now have a major sulk on after being moved..

Still.. its a mystery how they got there in the first place ?

Schnapps is excellent – if you use the small stems from champagne rhubarb, even better..

It’s  super easy – fill a Kilner or similar a third full of chopped young pink rhubarb, add a couple of tablespoons of sugar and top up with vodka; leave 3 months or longer, giving it a good shake every so often.[A nice gift to give around crimbo time] I also make pies, yogurts crumbles.. etc.. and freeze some stalks for later in the year. This year I’m trying my hand at some rhubarb wine – more on that later!

When the stalks get older  it’s time for jam and chutney. Rhubarb and ginger is a good one.. For the past few weeks I’ve been pulling and freezing in readiness for some jam making

The time to stop pulling it is when the first gooseberries are ready, around  the end of  June/July, this is when the acid is beginning to concentrate in the plant, leaving it bitter and unpalatable.
I use the leaves too – boil them up in water, strain, and use as a spray against black fly on broad beans and nasturtiums. Of coarse, they’re put on my compost heap too.

If your in need of some inspiration for recipes – Look here The frozen yoghurt’s divine!

See… such a versatile plant!

Lollo Rosso

And Cos

And not much else really..

My carrots that were sown in April are almost ready and my peas and broad beans are in flower -not long now!  We also picked our first strawberries this weekend..

My belle de fontenay potatoes that I planted out in March  are ready too but I’m resisting the urge to dig some up just yet as I want to wait for the carrots and peas ..

Over the past seven to ten days I’ve been living and sleeping lettuce.. well.. that’s what it certainly feels like..  having forty to chomp through..

I’m now developing a nose twitch along with a spring in my step.. Lol

Thankfully this site has given me  some ideas..

Things have come on leaps and bounds since these photos were taken..

To the left of the enviromesh under the green tunnel  I have beetroot parsnips, swede,celeriac, fennel – and just in front of these a carrot bed.The tunnel has been removed now and they are all doing well, though the jury is still out concerning my celeriac.Time will tell… I just need to sow some more carrots [ I sow a couple of rows a few weeks apart] and put in the rest of my fennel..

In the middle bed there’s cauliflower cabbage and romanesco, and my strawberries to the right of the brassicas have teeny fruits.

My peas after the shock of the cold spell are now starting to spring into action and gaps are filling in – I thought I would need to sow some more but its not necessary now..

The smaller tunnel near the peas is now home to my peppers and aubergines that I put out over the weekend when we had an impromptu bbq at the plot Saturday evening..

In between eating/drinking  I  also planted out my tomatoes,”you can see the poles for my tomato bed in front of the peas” along with cucumber, squash, courgettes, pumpkin, runner beans, asparagus beans and french beans.. Hick!

Ever tried constructing a wigwam after a few glasses of wine?

Now, it’s never been a bright pink, more green with pink stripes/splashes of pink but this year its totally green and frankly it’s no use to me with a family who point blank refuses to eat green rhubarb.

So off I went on the rhubarb trail trying to find out why this year its green.

The rhubarb I grow is Victoria and comes in all shades from fuchsia pink to green. Some varieties never go pink.

“I never knew that! I thought all rhubarb was pink.. oh what a sheltered life I’ve led.”

Still, it didn’t explain why mine was pink and is now green, though it still tastes the same if not slightly sweeter..

If only I could convince my family that its safe to eat and I’m not trying to poison them.. Lol

Anyway.. after a lot of time spent on google I came across a site that suggested the ph of the soil could be the reason and I should fork wood ash around the crown at the end of the season then next spring my rhubarb will be pink again..  Brilliant!!

Hope it works or it will be there solely for the compost bin

No one else will eat it apart from me!

Can you see her?

She’s a frequent visitor

She was sat watching me, 4 plots away for around 20 minutes

She thought i couldn’t see her!!

Oh yes I could!!

I managed to get this shaky photo with the zoom then she scarpered when i tried to tip toe closer..