Salad thrift

The very first thing I grew as a child was salad. I think most of us did. Remember sowing mustard and cress onto paper towels? I still grow it. Have some on the window sill now.

The first crop I grew as an adult? You guessed it, salad! I urge you, if you don't grow your own yet give it a try. You don't need much space, you can even get results on a window sill.

My first house I lived in by myself was a small Victorian terrace, it had a tiny conservatory extension and I turned it into a greenhouse.
The rent was high and my wages low. Everything I did had to be on the cheap.
I managed to obtain some wooden veg boxes from the market and some old flower buckets. The first thing I grew was a cut and come again salad crop called saladisi.
http://www.seedsbypost.co.uk/shop/5882/saladisi/
Amazing stuff, just keeps giving and worked really well in the shallow boxes.

Nowadays I've an allotment and a polytunnel. I still grow cut and come again salad. There are many more varieties nowadays, spicy leaves, oriental, lettuce so many. I've 3 pots in the polytunnel and a few rows just germinating on the allotment. Would grow just as well in a plant pot in the kitchen window too.
If you grow nothing else give it a go! Scatter the seeds thinly and a packet will last you through several sowings.
Have you seen the price of bagged salad in the supermarket? 1 pack of seeds is sa similar price and will give you months of leaves that are tastier too.

Even simpler to grow are sprouted seeds. I love alfalfa sprouts, tasty and very nutritious. I've a seed sprouter but they grow just as well in a jam jar!
Soak the seeds overnight. Drain and wait. Everyday you need to water and drain. A piece of muslin or old tights over the top of the jar lets you do this easily. Alfalfa are the easiest but you can get all sorts, grow mung beans for your own Chinese beansprouts. I'm playing with dried marrowfat peas at the moment and growing my own peashoots.

Other salad crops that are easy to grow in pots outside or into the ground if you've more space are spring onions and radishes. Radishes are always the first thing I sow outside every year. They can be ready in under a month and grow well in pots of good compost. Remember to sow thinly though or else they won't have space to fill out. Use a similar method for spring onions. They take quite a bit longer but still very easy to grow.

Let me know if you grow your own salad, what do you grow? If you need help with suggestions feel free to get in touch but please give it a try it really is simple.

Boing!

Spring has finally sprung. Can honestly say I've never been happier to see weeds grow.

This has been the coldest Spring creating the longest Winter following the wettest year ever. A nightmare to work out when to plant.

I always try to watch nature. Wait for the signs, she's good like that Old Ma Nature, giving us little pointers. The birds seem to know when to get a bit frisky. The frogs start to spawn. Ladybirds appear and everything starts to wake. This year it all took longer than usual but the signs still arrived. The most exciting being that weed seeds started to germinate meaning it was time to plant.

I decided with the cold to start more off in pots than usual. I've now got a polytunnel and kitchen full of seedlings and plants. Several varieties of tomatoes for indoor and allotment. I'm hoping for a warm summer. Optimistic maybe. Figuring a cold spring equals warm summer. I've cucumbers, lemon cucumbers. Several kinds of basil, melon, squash, courgettes, tagetes, chillies and peppers all in the kitchen window waiting for more warmth and space in the polytunnel.

The polytunnel is crammed full of trays of allotment seedlings. Climbing peas, sweet peas, broad beans, chickpeas ( experiment, first time grown) multiple varieties of brassicas and salad, sweetcorn and multi coloured popping corn, shallots and more. Slowly hardening plants off to transplant outside.

Meanwhile on the allotment I'm finally sowing into the ground. The soil feels nicely warmed. Aided by use of cloches and polythene.
Today I sowed parsnip, as always I sow quick growing radish in the same row as a marker with the parsnips sown in stations of 3 every 10cm or so along the row. I also sowed leeks and dill.
Also transplanted peas, Chinese artichokes, divided and moved globe artichokes and herbs and drank some Red Stripe.

This season is going to be a hectic one. Best stock up on more beer.

Rum and Raisins

Today I used the end of last Christmases Rum and Raisin jar in a loaf of Banana Bread.
My Rum Shack hibernates in the Northern Winter but rum is just as lovely at this time of year.
If you don't cook or bake much this is one recipe, if it can even be called a recipe that is, that I can recommend you all make ready for Christmas.
The sooner you make it the better, it keeps pretty much indefinitely too.

All you need is a jam jar or kilner jar depending on how much you wish to make, raisins or sultanas or both, sugar and rum!
This year I used a 500g packet of raisins and the same of sultanas. Cheap is fine, ideal for the value supermarket range fruit.
Make sure the jar is clean and sterilised, you can do this by washing it on a high setting in a dishwasher.
Fill the jar with alternate layers of fruit and sugar, I like mine quite syrupy so I do equal quantities of fruit to sugar. Pour over Rum of choice to fill the jar and seal.
I used Appleton's Jamaican rum, try to use a golden or dark rum rather than a light one as they have more flavour.
Shake to mix and store in a dark cupboard. I give the jar a shake every week or so until the sugar has fully dissolved.

Use in all sorts of things. It's especially good poured over vanilla ice cream. The syrup is great in cocktails too. I made a brilliant cheesecake with it last Christmas too.

Miss Lambert's Toffee

We had a teacher at primary school who used to make this and sell it in the playground. It was so popular she drafted in the parents to help and the recipe was shared at special evening classes. This toffee is the stuff of legends!

8oz sugar
3oz butter
2 desertspoons treacle or syrup depending on how you wish the toffee to taste
1 desertspoon vinegar.
glass of ice cold water.

Melt the butter and syrup, add the sugar and dissolve very slowly. When no granules left bring to the boil. When boiling add vinegar. and continue to boil testing a few drops in the water regularly to test when ready. When It is ready it forms hard crunchy blobs in the water. Pour into lightly buttered small square tin and leave to set. Break into pieces

Autumn

Following on from my summer post about the dire weather things didn't improve massively this year weather wise. However the plants seem to have adjusted somehow.
We've ended up with a surprisingly large Autumn haul.

I grew marrows for the first time this year. Made the mistake of going away on holiday and came back to a monster that would have won any show. Maybe I'll give it a go one year though the idea of produce shows terrifies me. Winning would be more dangerous than the time I won the Christmas raffle at Groves WMC on my first ever visit.

The courgettes have continued to fruit until last week. I planted three sowings. One in May, one in June and one at the end of July. The last has been the most successful, not quite giving us the over abundant supplies of 2 years ago but providing plenty. One lot of plants I kept half surrounded with a cold frame. Think this has helped tons too.

Other successes this year have been Sweetcorn with at least two huge cobs per plant.
Beetroot and parsnips are the only  roots that've done well but they've made up for the carrot and radish failure big time and I'm not even confessing to planting Celeriac. One day I'll work out how to grow it. Tips gratefully received. I think I've just got the wrong type of soil.
Brassicas have been good too, I've a fab bed full of winter cabbage and the sprouting broccoli has sprouted well. Not so sure about the Sprouts. We'll have some but not as many as usual.
I've finally figured out how to grow leeks too I think. Well they look and taste amazing.

So kind of sorted for winter veg, more so than in the past, I've Shallots, Cabbage, Broccoli, Sprouts, Parsnips, Leeks and tons of Jerusalem Artichokes.

Now its the wonderful time of year of planning and seed catalogues. Just planted garlic and some overwintering broad beans. The first part of next years harvest. Need to find some interesting and new plants to try. Any ideas?

English Summer Weather

This year has definitely been the worst weatherise we've had on the allotment.
I keep joking we should have sown rice. However not only has it been wet, it's also been cool.

Most things are stunted, delayed growth, shivering their way to fruition.
I've had fabulous success previous years with courgettes and squash, sweetcorn, tomatoes and climbing beans. All things that enjoy the full sun the allotment provides. Usually.

This year the green beans are only just beginning to climb. I didn't think they would at all. The courgettes flower, form and rot. The squash are not sprawling crazily across any space the can find. The sweetcorn is supping up the water, hopefully will form ears soon but will have to wait and see. I haven't dared plant out tomatoes yet. Just taken the spares down there. Going to plant them surrounded by cold frames. Hopefully will get some crop.

However. The strawberries have gone crazy! They grew, they flowered, boy did they flower, absolutely covered in blossom. All the blossom surprisingly set. I have bunches and bunches of fruit. Some ripe, some ripening and others still growing.
Picked the first few yesterday and weighed out 650 grams worth. I'll have kilos of fruit to harvest.

Maybe there's a lesson to be learnt. Nothing sums up an English summer than Strawberries and Cream. There's obviously a reason for this. The berries love our weather. They like cool, wet and slightly warm conditions. They soak up the water to form juicy fruits. Strawberries from other countries never have the same taste.

My strawberry bed is huge. I nearly dug it up this year as the past couple of years crops hadn't been good. So glad I let them stay. Mainly due to laziness as I didn't quite get around to it. Think I'm going to be making lots of jam in the next few weeks.

I need to find lots of uses for Strawberries I think. Any ideas for strawberry recipes I should try?

Easy allotment clearing for the lazy

I don't like digging. It's hard work, it wrecks the soil by killing insects, worms and disturbing all the lovely life within and it's time consuming.

Our first half plot seemed daunting. 90ft long and 15 wide, overgrown, full of weeds as I mentioned previously. Clearing involved digging and then sifting out huge bucketfuls of thick spaghetti like weed roots. If only they tasted like pasta. We aimed for at least a yard a weekend but wanted to plant immediately. It wasn't going to work.

We got our plot in April so slap bang in the middle of planting season. I like growing in beds so figured if I created a couple to get sowing in and then carried on clearing I'd at least get some crops.

The last house I lived in also had a stupidly overgrown garden. I cleared that by covering in carpet, the following year I used potatoes to break the ground. I devised a method using a variation on this to allow me some quick and easy planting.

First I got plants growing from seed inside to bring on  in my cheapy plastic greenhouse, tomatoes, squash, courgettes and sweetcorn. Plants are too expensive to buy.

Second I joined freecycle. I scanned the site daily for carpets and flagstones, I put requests on there for them as often as possible. The Bank Holiday weekends were excellent for picking up DIYers cast offs, saved them the cost of a skip.

Thirdly I got dirty! The allotment has manure delivered regularly, we barrowed as much as possible and dumped it over the half of the plot I knew we wouldn't have the time to clear.

Then I carpeted it. I covered as much of the plot as I could, making sure there was a nice mound of manure underneath, aimed for at least 6 inches. The logic being that it would both fertilize the soil and suffocate the weeds. The old guys hated me for it. They despise people who use carpets. Granted there are tons of unused plots covered in the stuff, all with weeds growing through as the carpet rots and they look a mess. This wasn't the plan though.

Now traditionally with using carpet/mulch/weedliner/plastic you are supposed to leave it for  months to a year to die down. I really didn't want to do that, what a waste of allotment rent?

This is where my plants in the greenhouse came in. After leaving the manure and carpet for about 6-8 weeks I divided the space into 3, and began planting through the carpet. The manure had begun to break down. the weeds had begun to die back and under the carpet was a vaguely workable surface.
Armed with a Stanley knife and trowel I made crosses in the carpet, peeled it back enough to use the trowel to dig a hole and dumped the plants in, watered thoroughly and folded back the carpet over the ground.

I did a third squash and courgettes, a third sweetcorn and the rest tomatoes. All grew better than I thought.

My logic was that any crop at all was better than leaving the soil empty. I was staggered at how well things grew without any digging or clearing. The courgettes went crazy, we had so many we did a deal with a local takeaway. Bartered them for curry. The sweetcorn grew tall and strong with several cobs to a plant, the tomatoes sprawled everywhere, I had gluts of the things, enough to make copious jars of relish.

What I hadn't thought of was that the squash plants sprawled and trailed and added an extra weight and mulch to the area. Bonus. The plants were so vigorous that the carpet that was moaned about was totally covered and I managed to use pretty much all of the half plot I'd been given in the first year.

At the end of the season I left the carpet in place to help with the weed killing and watched the neighbouring allotmenteers digging and moaning about how hard it was.

The next spring I removed and disposed of the carpet to find lovely fairly friable soil and minimal sign of weed roots. More worms than weeds. I proceeded with my old plan and planted potatoes across the whole area.

Potatoes are great, so many varieties and they dig the soil for you. As they grow and the tubers get sent down the soil breaks up. They are big plants so do a good job of suppressing the weeds too. The soil was still really fertile from the manure too so the plants went crazy, huge crops of new potatoes and nice large main crop ones as well.

After harvesting the potatoes we than started to create the permanent vegetable beds in the area.
Most of the work had been done for us by Mother Nature though so little digging was needed. I used a hand fork mainly to turn over the soil and sift out any remaining bind weed, couch grass and horseradish roots but there were hardly any compared to the first beds we made.
So by the third year I had perfectly fertile, weeded vegetable beds all ready to plant in, 2 years of crops and no back ache and wonderful healthy soil teeming with worms to do the digging for me!

I've used the same method now on the second half of the plot with equally excellent results. Had the potato crop planted last year so now I'm at the bed forming stage. Really don't think I could have managed the whole plot without this method. Especially on the new half of the plot, it was pure Ground Elder on half of the plot. Most of which is no more.

The bonus to this is that now I have a whole allotment fashioned into 13ft by 4 foot beds that are so easy to maintain. I mulch regularly with free council compost, I compost all my weeds and garden waste with our chicken litter and manure and add in manure from the allotment. As long as the relevant beds get a good winter dressing of manure rich compost the worms do all the hard work for me.

Second half of plot post carpet just before potatoes planted, see how clear the soil looks?

First half of plot, beds created

Full plot this year most beds created

Courgettes planted through carpet