Fair Potatoes

I’m giving Seedy Sunday in Brighton a miss this year and decided to start the gardening year by stocking up on seed potatoes closer to home, at the London Potato Fair.

Little by little I am learning not to over-experiment, so bagged a few of the well-tested and always appreciated Charlotte, alongside varieties new to the plot: Shetland Black, chosen as it resembles my favourite Skerry Blue, which I haven’t been able to find for a couple of years; and Peach Bloom, which I’ve never encountered and does indeed look a bit peachy.

On the subject of tubers, the Jerusalem artichokes are still on the go, if smaller in size – due to the dry autumn, I think – and lesser in quantity than previous seasons. Frankly, this is hardly a problem, for, good as they are, who needs over 30 kilos of them? Everyone, even the gas man (appropriately enough), got some last year, and friends and colleagues began to hide whenever they saw me approaching with a muddy carrier bag in hand…

(Above picture taken in December)

Not much else is happening at the allotment, though the winter has been mild enough to allow the grass and some weeds to thrive, which is my excuse for the plot looking even messier than it usually does off season.

Floridor Yellow Courgette

Floridor are marketed as round courgettes, whereas their shape appears slightly oval to me. Flavour and texture are both excellent.

These constitute the first courgette crop of the season, late as they are (too many seedlings lost to marauding snails this year).

Summer Snapshot

In view: cherry trees, gooseberries, greengages, plums, raspberries, globe artichokes, onions,  runner beans. Picture taken 17 July 2011.

Harvest 2010, Report #1: Tromba di Albenga Squash

2010 was the best year yet for this crookneck Italian squash, grown from seeds bought from a market in Italy a few years back. The picture above was taken earlier this month when, seven months after harvest, I decided I’d better start eating it! (Two-thirds of it are still in the fridge, some six or seven meals later.)

Small Tromba di Albenga squash on the vine.

Nearing harvest time.

A big one, if not the biggest.

Winner of the first prize in the ‘Strangest-looking vegetable’ category of a produce contest.

Harvest 2010, Report #0

A recent commenter has prompted me to start updating C&F again. I never intentionally abandoned it. Every spare moment in the 2010 growing season was spent gardening and add to that a hand injury (ongoing) that makes typing painful, the oft-intended next post never appeared. Until now.

The new growing season is certainly underway. Since I have gigabytes-worth of photographs of last year’s produce and some actual 2010 fruit and veg still lurking in fridge and freezer, let alone preserved in multiple jars of jam and chutney, perhaps backdating alongside updating the blog is long overdue.

The above view, from early September, shows squash (Crown Prince, Marina di Chioggia, butternut, Tromba di Albenga) growing along willow frames, with bicolour sweetcorn in the background and netted fruit bushes beyond.

Relocating Rhubarb, Giant Jerusalem Artichoke

The least productive rhubarb in southern England is approaching three years of age. Dire warnings of massive gluts have been received rather wistfully over the past three seasons. Hopes of testing The Rhubarb Compendium’s weirdest recipes were dashed. I’ve been lucky to scrape together one minuscule rhubarb crumble per season.

After neighbouring plotholders extolled the benefits of moving their rhubarb further up the plot to a sunnier spot, I decide to rehome mine. Its hitherto residence, shaded by a cherry tree, shared a space with several woody herb bushes that was infested with the dreaded spaghetti-like couch grass.

Its new home was to be a perfectly circular bed, shaped like so (by my chief engineer):

Nobody warned me that shifting the plant might require heavy lifting gear.

What a beast!

I’d planned to divide it into three.  Not a hope without power tools. It moved as one big lump.

Generously manured and resettled, a tiny pink shoot is just visible (possibly not unless you know where it is, just right of centre):

This was one of several beds newly prepared for the season. (No downtime for us this winter.) Here are the potato and onion beds, with recently pruned currant bushes and pear trees in the background:

From the laziest rhubarb to what’s certainly the biggest Jerusalem artichoke I’ve seen this year, dug up on Valentine’s Day:

Hardly romantic, but offer an allotment enthusiast two carrier bags of muddy, flatulence-inducing root veg on 14 February or a few cut roses and I bet there wouldn’t be much dithering.

Autumn into Winter: Squash and Jerusalem Artichokes

There’s snow on the ground and I’m still eating food grown in the allotment or garden almost daily. The plot keeps producing chard, turnips and herbs: rosemary, thyme, sage and what’s left of the oregano. There are jars of chutney in the cupboard, pots of red and white currant jelly, blackcurrants and redcurrants in the freezer, and baby onions in the airing cupboard that I’m mostly too lazy to peel.

Half the last bag of climbing French beans from the freezer went into a Thai-style curry last night, alongside my two stars of the 2009 season in the productivity stakes, squash (tromba di Albenga, a chunk of the last one) and Jerusalem artichokes.

The tromba is an Italian variety of crookneck squash, grown from seeds bought in a market in Italy a few years ago. It’s both a summer and winter squash, depending on whether it’s eaten young like a courgette or left to ripen. These were picked in November, the last of the harvest:

Matured, it acquires the texture and colour of a butternut squash, with a slightly funnier shape. This big one gradually turned gold and provided a source of amusement to house guests from harvest time in September until I started tucking into it last week (three meals and counting):

Still intact are a few acorn squash, grown from seed swapped at Seedy Sunday last February. The resulting seedlings looked feeble and I took a chance on planting them out, which paid off when the two plants flourished and produced fine dark green squashes:

The remaining acorn squash have ripened to a beautiful peachy orange colour with a superb, not-too-sweet flavour. I’m not surprised that Monty Don (in the October issue of BBC Gardeners’ World magazine) suggests it’s the squash to grow if you only have room for one sort.

Another squash success from about August to October was the patty pan, a summer squash – seeds bought at Lidl.

Jerusalem artichokes have been an experiment this year and one to be repeated whether I choose to or not – it’s notoriously difficult to find them all before the new growing season starts. The plant is a relative of the sunflower and it showed at flowering time:

So far I’ve dug up at least 15 kilos of them, with a couple of plants still untouched in the ground! The roots taste like potato crossed with celeriac, with a hint of leek, and what Nigel Slater calls a slight “disinfectant note” in his latest book Tender, in a comprehensive section on artichokes (illustrated with a photo of a tornado, ha ha – see earlier post):

It’s been a good year for sunflowers too, not just their relatives. Success at last, in my third year of trying:

his latest book,

Chutney Blog

Take plums, not too ripe:

A big bendy squash (this one’s a Tromba di Albenga):

Small onions, stunted by the shade of a cherry tree:

A selection of spices (looking disproportionately large) and some muslin or cheesecloth:

Now, chop up the fruit and vegetables, put all the ingredients into a pan and — chutney!

This excursion into the world of chutney-making was long overdue. There’s a jar of plum jam from 2007 in the cupboard. As a first-timer I let Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s ‘Glutney’ recipe be my guide, in spirit and in proportion of fruit and veg to vinegar and sugar. I would have used more onions if mine were bigger and the task of peeling minuscule bulbs barely larger than the onion sets I planted was less tedious.

I can’t vouch for the chutney’s flavour until it’s had a few weeks to mellow. But it looks like chutney and certainly smelt like it during the cooking process.

Plum and Summer Squash Chutney

(these quantities made three and a half jars)

800g plums, stoned weight, diced

450g squash, diced

150g onions, diced

175g light brown soft sugar

350ml white wine vinegar

½ teaspoon chilli flakes

1 teaspoon salt

Spice bag:

small piece of fresh ginger, bruised

6 black peppercorns

1 blade mace

½ teaspoon coriander seed

½ star anise

½ teaspoon yellow mustard seed

Method:

1. Chop the fruit and veg into small dice.

2. Put all the ingredients into a large pan, tie up the spices in a square of muslin and put the spice bag into the mixture.

3. Bring to the boil slowly, stirring from time to time.

4. Simmer, stirring often.

5. When the mixture is thick and reduced, it’s ready (this took 2½ hours).

6. Pour into warm sterilised jars.

7. Seal and photograph.

Sunny Veg

An August Bank Holiday weekend harvest: Cherokee Trail of Tears climbing French beans, and patty pan squash.

Rain and Redcurrant Jelly

I have a vague memory of a mini heatwave in the south of England in the early summer (did I imagine this?). Soggier times followed and I gave up waiting for a dry day to harvest currants for making jelly, as various recipes had suggested. As with the practice of gardening according to the phases of the moon, such ideals may apply in a stable climate, but not if your only window in a fortnight for gathering currants happens to be a wet Saturday afternoon.

Three kindly friends accompanied me to the plot, bags and boxes (and waterproof clothing) at the ready. Here’s the rain glistening on a small sample of my bumper crop:

Some hours later, we arrived home with around five kilos of mostly red and a few white currants: