November 11, 2011

FIRST EVER BEETROOT RELISH

http://www.city-smallholder.co.ukWhat is there to do when the weather’s turned cold, it hasn’t stopped raining for days and the garden’s gone into hibernation? How do you fill your spare time – however little it may be – now that the growing season is practically over?  Some people read more, others go shopping or redecorate their home. Whilst we do all these to some extent, there is no competition for the top spot on our list of preferred pastime activities. In the winter, it’s all about cooking! Although a busy place all year round, it is at this time of the year that our kitchen fully comes into its own, becoming a place of discovery and opportunities for experimenting with taste and flavours.

As you already know, this was the first year we’ve grown more than enough beetroot. Therefore, it will come as no surprise that our first cooking experiment had something to do with the beautiful beets waiting patiently in a sand box tucked away in the garage. We made beetroot relish!  Since it was the first time, we decided to not be too ambitious and keep it as simple  as possible. We dug out a non-fancy relish recipe that we’d been dying to try for years and gave it a go. It worked a treat! The cooking process was simple and nowhere as time-consuming as when making chutney and the final product is one of the best tasting, best looking preserves I’ve ever come across.  (Didi)

For the recipe – which we adapted in order to use up the last of our glut of garden tomatoes – click here.

Leave a Comment

Filed under RECIPES

Tagged as , , , , , ,

November 8, 2011

MAGIC MUSHROOMS

http://www.city-smallholder.co.ukOne of our obsessions is to never throw anything away that can be composted.  This stems from the fact that our gardens are small and as a consequence don’t produce enough waste to make all of the compost we need.  We therefore take every opportunity to collect leaves, or even seaweed – as well as make sure that all of our kitchen peelings end up on the compost pile.

This obsession has led to a number of surprises.  In the first instance we discovered that potatoes can grow from partially composted potato peelings, and as a result we ended up with various “surprises” around the garden.  In recent years, we’ve discovered what we call “guerilla” tomatoes – which we assume resulted from seeds in the compost.  This provided dozens of sturdy self-seeded plants that kept us nicely stocked over the summer and early autumn.  All for free.  We just simply never throw anything anyway that may indirectly produce something edible in the garden.

Compost purists amongst you will no doubt say that our composting bin is obviously inefficient if our potato peelings and tomato seeds are not being sufficiently broken down.  However, we generally don’t mind this since it’s good to let Nature take its course rather than try to control and  neatly cultivate every square inch of space.  As with everything in our garden, we don’t have enough space (or material) to produce a compost pile large enough to generate heat.  Our small pile produces something more akin to the decomposing waste in our bean trench.  But regardless of this the fertility of the garden and structure of the soil has improved from when we first began.

Our current surprise is what we call “magic” mushrooms.  Not the magic variety that some people obsess about.  Our mushrooms are magic simply because they were provided for free from – you’ve guessed it – the mushroom scraps and peelings from our kitchen.  These have been thrown on the compost pile for several years and the recent spell of damp autumnal weather has led to a healthy colony right outside our kitchen window.

We were cautious about eating these at first.  After all, there are many scare stories about the ill effects of wild mushroom picking.  But after careful consideration we concluded that they most likely originated from our compost and must therefore be edible.  A quick test in an omlette proved successful, so last night they made it to the family dinner table.  All for free.  All because we never throw anything away that might give something back.  This is what we like about gardening.  It provides opportunities to re-use and recycle and helps to to play a small part in treading a little lighter upon this planet. (David)

Leave a Comment

Filed under NEWS

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

October 18, 2011

WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?

www.city-smallholder.co.ukEarlier in the year, whilst Didi was away visiting her parents, I took the decisive step of digging potato trenches in the front garden. We’d been talking about it for a while, but turning our “talk” into “action” felt a little odd at first. After all, it’s not standard practice to use your front garden this way – but, in the search for extra growing space, we decided to be creative.

As the year progressed, we discovered that the decision to grow potatoes was one of the best things we did in the vegetable garden this year.  They are incredibly easy to grow and require hardly any maintenance.  This is because the large plants cover the ground well and therefore shade-out any weeds before they take hold.  All we needed to do was make sure they were “earthed up”  and watered sufficiently during the somewhat dry summer we experienced (just like last year).  But apart from that, the potato plants just sat happily at the front of our bungalow, quietly producing the crop we would savour this autumn.

We waited until September to start digging them up and since then have not needed to buy any potatoes from the shops.  We’ve been amazed at the quantity a small potato bed can produce and wish we’d measured the yield.  The bed measures about 3 metres x 3 metres, and we must have had a least four crates full like the one in the photo above.

This weekend we lifted the remaining crop to store in the garage.  It looks like we won’t be buying potatoes for a while.  So who’s laughing now?

The front garden potatoes have been a turning point in our city vegetable gardening.  From now on we might not put so much effort into making the front garden a neat companion planted mix of flowers and veg.  It might take on more of an allotment feel.  It is our best growing space after all. (David)

Leave a Comment

Filed under GROW VEGETABLES

Tagged as , , , , , ,

October 13, 2011

COLLECTING CHIVE SEEDS

http://www.city-smallholder.co.uk/blog/Remember when we wrote about the lovely chives reigning in our front garden? How they’ve put up a beautiful display of purple for months, from spring until mid-September?  How they flowered not once, but twice? Well, those days of glory are now over.

There are a lot of transformations taking place as the grey season takes hold of our garden. The sun is fading away, the nights are colder and the wind is blowing stronger and harsher. Our plants have, of course, sensed the changes and decided to retire from the spotlight and rest for a while. But, before they could do that, they still had some unfinished business to attend to: making seed from which the next generation can emerge.

Our chives have been as brilliant at performing this last task and they were at flowering in the summer. For the past 3-4 weeks, I’ve watched the purple fade away and be replaced by straw-yellow. The flowers have dried nicely in the mild autumn sun and, by the end of last week, they were ready to share their treasure of small, black seeds.

http://www.city-smallholder.co.uk/blog/

Two days ago, we decided it was time to harvest the seeds and put them into storage for next year. It was a lovely, dry and sunny day, the kind of weather one can only wish for when planning such an activity. It is well known that wet seeds do not keep well, so dry weather is a must if you are to have any chance of using them successfully the following season.

Collecting seeds is not as difficult as one may think – especially when the seeds are not too tiny and the conditions are right – and can be very rewarding. Not only does it save you money, but it also gives you a feeling of satisfaction to know that you’ve ‘raised’ next year’s crop yourself. It feels like you’re directly involved in the cycle of life.

All I needed was a clean, dry plastic tub from the kitchen. I gently bent each flower over the tub and slowly rubbed it between my fingers to encourage it to release its precious gems. A little tap on the head seemed to help, too. That’s all there was to it, really.

http://www.city-smallholder.co.uk/blog/

Within minutes, we had more than enough seeds for next year. Since they were already dry, we split them between several brown paper envelopes, which we then sealed tightly and tucked away in a cool place away from any damp. Not keeping all of the seeds together will help preserve them better and ensure that we have enough viable ones to sow next spring. And, as an added bonus, a few of the precious brown-paper packets will make great Christmas presents for the right people.  (Didi)

 

2 Comments

Filed under GROW VEGETABLES

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

October 10, 2011

STORING BEETROOT

www.city-smallholder.co.ukThis year we’ve seen a big increases in yield for many of the vegetables we grow. We’d like to think this is because we’re so much more experienced than when we first started, but in reality it’s probably because we were brave enough to grow vegetables in the front garden (i.e.the one overlooked by the neighbours and the street) in addition to the more private rear and side gardens we were using previously.

It made sense to use the front garden for three reasons. Firstly, it is at least as big as the garden at the rear of our bungalow so it would be a shame to waste the space. Secondly, it is south-facing and has much better light than the other gardens. And, thirdly, growing vegetables at the front of the house is regarded as slighly eccentric in the UK and we like this. In fact we’re actively trying to increase our gardening eccentricity and have been dreaming up bigger and braver plans for the new year. I can’t say too much at this stage, but is might involve a scarecrow…

So the results from the front garden have been impressive, especially for beetroot. In the past our beetroot bed produced an ample supply of golf ball sized roots, but in the front garden the growth was much more rapid and quickly reached tennis ball size and beyond. Many people say that beetroot go woody if they get too large but this doesn’t seem to be the case for the Boltardy cultivar. We’ve been eating tasty roots for months and now that the nights are getting cooler we thought it was time to pull the remaining crop and put it into winter storage.

We’ve never had enough beetroot to store before so this is the first time we’ve used the sandbox technique.  This involves placing the beetroot in a crate with damp sand, building up a layer of sand and layer of beetroot consecutively until crate is full. Prior to this we twisted off the beetroot leaves by hand but now wish we’d done this higher up the stem.  A number of websites with articles on how to store beetroot say that they store better if a short section of stem is left attached to the root. Apparently it’s the same for pumpkins. We’ll have to see how it goes and may modify the way we store them next year.

Does anyone know how long beetroot stores in sand? We’ll keep the sandbox in the garage, so it will be cool but also protected from frosts over the winter months. It would be nice if we had a supply until spring. This would be another step towards being self-sufficient.

Above is a photo of our “heavy” crop.  The ones on top were the smaller roots (we’ll eat these soon).  The monster ones lie waiting beneath.  (David)

Leave a Comment

Filed under GROW VEGETABLES

Tagged as , , , , , , ,