Do you remember the mouse in the Tale of Peter Rabbit who had a pea in her mouth? She wanted to get it to her babies in the wood for their supper and so she couldn’t tell Peter the way out.
Every day I have been picking, scrubbing and coming up with different ways to enjoy the freshness of the young carrots, the spinach, the broad beans, peas and courgettes. We have had salad too, loads of it and I love to mix veg in with it. I love taking photos of the Patch - the best time is either early morning or evening when the light is so soft and filters through the leaves and all the different colours of the plants. Look at these beetroot leaves next to the feathery lime green carrot tops.....!
I did not know that the flower of a potato plant was so beautiful!
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My two kittens, Ballo and Ninja, watch from their favourite hiding place - a pile of wooden pallets! |
The green leaves of the onions have folded over and so one fine morning I dug up the onion harvest - red baron and sturon. Enough to hang in bunches in the shed for the whole winter. Very satisfying.
These three were the biggest. They deserve a prize.....
Every day there is a new harvest - the first of the King Edwards maincrop potatoes and plenty more to come!
Courgettes/Zucchini of different shapes and colours. There are so many every day and so I softened garlic in olive oil and fried matchsticks of zucchini in it with oregano and salt and pepper. When the zucchini were soft I cooled bowlfuls of it, separated it into freezer bags and popped them into the freezer. It's absolutely delicious tossed through pasta with parmesan, as a bruschetta topping, on pizza, in stews....endless possibilities. You can't have too many of them and they freeze beautifully like this with their flavour intact.
My other favourite vegetable and just as useful. Florence fennel. Here you can see the bulbs are just beginning to swell and the aniseed smelling fronds can be picked for salads and to flavour soups and sauces. I froze these too just sliced thinly in freezer bags and use them in a thousand ways.
What a wonderful July! Lush green and abundant - I have loved it.
Well I found the mouse hole. Under the courgettes which were like a green cathedral over the top of them the little creatures had dug a hole....right next to my precious row of Kelvedon Wonder peas. A pile of new earth gave it away on the straw.! I had wondered what the neat little piles of pea pods were and so searched through the dense foliage of the zucchini and found the perfect mouse hole. What a wonderful place to live - out of the sight of the barn owl and fenced in from big predators like foxes and badgers - the little family lived in complete safety in their green domed palace. Tell tale pea pods lay scattered at the entrance - a home with a constant supply of tasty nutritious green peas. A little trek every now and then through the green wilderness to the red sweet strawberry patch and home past the new mangetout dragging the seed pods and mouths stuffed with whole pea seeds. A good reason for our two kittens. We had lots of peas, but we would have had so many more and I love them, I think they are one of the most worthwhile veg to grow as they taste so different to ones bought in the shops. I made several risottos before they got stolen and we often had them in salad with young courgettes and a few french beans....mmmm!
Thank goodness no-one stole the broad beans! Masterpiece Green Longpod - they were fantastic, tall, bushy and absolutely laden...lovely long pods of even sized beans. I stuffed the freezer with them.
