Spring is sprouting everywhere!

I can't resist taking photographs in Spring! There are new shoots everywhere I look and the sunshine lately has made working in the Patch such a pleasure. Even the rosemary is covered in tiny blue flowers....

The blueberry bushes are in pots (they love an acid soil but seem to be thriving in pots of ericaceous compost in the Patch) and are so beautiful on a spring morning with the dew still clinging to them.

I have been enjoying the fresh green of baby sage seedlings (below) emerging in the greenhouse - I have sown green and purple sage, green and purple basil and Giant of Napoli parsley and loads of coriander this month. The main crop of basil I will sow in April to plant amongst the tomatoes and aubergines and peppers in the greenhouse. Oh the smell when you water on a warm day!

I am pleased with how much we are still eating as we come into the 'vegetable gap' months of April and May - the purple sprouting broccoli Red Arrow is now coming into its own and we can hardly keep up with the three plants which are continually covered with shoots. It has a delicious flavour and I could eat it most days lightly steamed with a dollop of butter and maybe some garlic or lemon juice sometimes to ring the changes.....

Last week I dug up the Summer Purple sprouting broccoli as the Red Arrow above has come into harvest. I can't believe how we have had a supply of delicious broccoli from four plants since last August right through the winter until now. What a wonderful variety it is! Slightly smaller florets of broccoli than the above but just as delicious and easy to gather in the winter. As you can see from the photo below it was still covered in purple shoots when I dug it up, though these had become much smaller and sparser...we still had a good meal off them though before I composted the giant stalks!

Look at the size of the Musselborough leeks! Having stood all winter in the Patch they are still a vital part of my harvest. I use them in everything and dig them up most days. This one was a corker and became the base for a sweet potato, fennel and leek bake!

There is another star of the winter/spring veg patch - kale. Cavallo Nero, Red Russian and Red Bor are all still being picked though the Cavallo Nero is now beginning to flower and will be over soon. I have decided to wait until August to sow all three varieties again for the winter...I have so much else to eat in the summer and they are invaluable for winter eating with their robust flavour. And they look wonderful standing up out of the snow!

I love picking all three and adding them to garlic, chilli, fresh grated ginger and red peppers for a wonderful deep flavoured stir fry. This dish is perfectly delicious frozen and reheated too and keeps its flavour. Kale is also great wilted down with garlic and olive oil, salt and black pepper - With all the varieties I strip the curly leaves from their tough central stems and then they will wilt down in seconds. 

We ate this a few days ago followed by walnut and raisin bread made with wholemeal flour, spelt flour, yeast, a handful of raisins and walnuts and a few glugs of walnut oil.. with a slab of raschera cheese from our trip to Piemonte.....so good! 

Diggers, Terraces and Artichokes

Mmm! Do you like artichokes? I love them. Whenever I go to Italy, which is usually about once a year, I love those first Carciofi all Romana, young artichokes slowly cooked in garlic and olive oil and wine and soft as butter with parsley scattered over and good bread. I could eat it every day. I want to grow them - you can't find them easily in the uk and they are such wonderful things to eat. 
So this year I am growing three different varieties. The best way to propogate them is to find a good plant and divide a bit of the root and put it in a pot over the winter and plant out in the spring - that way you know its going to have good fruit because you have seen it on the parent plant. Sowing from seed is more risky, some of the plants might not bear fruit. But I am sowing six of three varieties and I figure some of them will be ok. In the autumn I will take a bit of the root from the good ones and pot them up for the winter and plant them out next spring. That way I will be developing a good 'orchard' of artichokes! I am going for an Italian purple variety called Violetta di Chioggia which is an early variety and you can eat the globes whole when they are young and then wait until later in the summer for a second crop. In between I will have Green Globe improved which has been bred from Green Globe and which is very fruitful. I have also found an old French variety called Gros Vert de Laon which has beautiful fat globes with a wonderful flavour. I have grown two to a 3" pot, three of each variety and will pot them up and not plant them out until all risk of frost is over. I can't wait to see them grow...they are just appearing now.....

The first signs of a baby artichoke seedling - amazing to think it will grow to be four foot tall!

Hm...eighteen plants will take up so much room. Fortunately these thistle like plants should be safe from rabbits and so don't need to go into the Patch with its rabbit proof fence. I plan to put some amongst the fruit trees against the sheltered bank at the back of the barn. But I need more space for the others. Then, just at the right time, a friend lent us his digger for an afternoon and we dug a long strip all along the bank beside the Patch. This has almost doubled the size of our plot and made two lovely terraced beds. I want to plant the zucchini in one of these and artichokes in the other.  We scooped back the grass and nettles (which I had already sprayed to kill the roots) and formed a bank with the mass of roots. Then we turned the topsoil over with the digger to start the process of forming a good tilth. This makes it so much easier to work the soil with a spade! We had it all done in under an hour - the bliss of machinery. The following morning I got up early and moved twelve barrow loads of precious well rotted cow manure donated in the autumn by our friendly farming neighbour onto the terraces. I will leave them alone for a couple of weeks and hope that the spring rain will soak in the goodness of the manure, softening the earth and then I will dig them over ready for planting in May. 

Oh wow! I can just see those artichokes standing proudly and picking those wonderful buds, slurping them with hollandaise or melted butter and then handing round white plates with carciofi alla Romana for lunch, glistening with rich green olive oil...a cool glass of white wine... Bon appetito!

Scrumptious Summer Salad

Last year I grew quite a lot of salad but made all the mistakes of having a glut and then none for months and seeing lettuces bolting and getting eaten by slugs.....it's not as easy as it seems!

So I made it a project to learn how to grow salad so that there would be enough interesting lettuce and leaves for as much of the year as possible.

In August last year I sowed salad for the winter to have in the greenhouse and made sure that I grew cut and come again plants so that they would last through. I sowed some really great varieties and was thrilled that we have only just finished harvesting from those original plants now in March. The varieties were Black Seeded Simpson, Green oak leaf, Cocarde, Salad Rocket and Mustard Green Streaks. These are all loose leaf cut and come again plants which mean’t that I could go into the greenhouse and take a handful of leaves from each variety and mix them into a great salad. There was something magical about having fresh green leaves all winter whenever we wanted them and they were flavourful and peppery which mean’t that they could take a warm veg or chicken topping easily. They were such a success that I will repeat those same varieties this August for next winter. I also grew some Valdor which are eaten as a whole lettuce and can stand outside in the Patch all winter, coming into their own in spring. 

Valdor lettuce - it will stand happily all winter

Mustard green streaks - hot and peppery- perfect in warm winter salads

Black Seeded Simpson - a wonderful crunchy loose leafed lettuce

For the summer I have decided to grow more of the loose leaf varieties together with Mizuna, Rocket  and Sorrel for salads - I love being able to cut a few leaves whenever I want and watch them grow back in no time! I will be adding two Batavian varieties which are loose leafed too, Rosemoor and Noisette, and Danyelle a red oak leafed variety. I will sow all these varieties four times, once in February for the greenhouse beds before the tomatoes and aubergines take over. Second sowing in April for the beds in the Patch, third sowing in June for outside to take us into the autumn and fourth sowing in August/ September for the greenhouse beds all through the winter. 

Cocarde lettuce and Winter Density a cos type lettuce

Salad Rocket and Cocarde lettuce growing all winter in the greenhouse - I must have picked it hundreds of times a few leaves at a time. 

Then there are the whole lettuces that I love which are harvested in one go - Tom Thumb (a tiny hearted lettuce good for small spaces in the Patch like in between the parsnip plants. By the time the parnsips are maturing you will have eaten all the lettuce!) Lobjoits Cos, Freckles Romaine (green freckled with red), Roxy Butterhead (red) and Suzan Butterhead (green).  I will grow a very few of each of these whole lettuces at a time (perhaps about five) but will re-sow each month so that we have a continuous supply. I will also sow Pak Choi in the same way - I love it for stir fries.  This way I can taylor the production and type of salad to what we want at different times in the summer.  That’s the plan and I will report back as to how it goes! It feels like a lot of planning but I think it will be worth it and hopefully there will be no waste. 


I was upset to find that I had whitefly in the greenhouse at the end of the winter and some of the Valdor were demolished into a browny goo by the little blighters. I bought a sulphur candle called DeadFast and emptied the greenhouse one night, lit it and watched the place fill with acrid smoke. The next morning I ventilated it for a few hours before putting all the seed trays back in. Now at least I know that it is 'clean' for the new season. I will hang sticky fly papers in there over the summer just in case they return. Luckily we were right at the end of the salad. It had done so well standing all winter without a problem. So if you suspect something is eating your greenhouse plants check out a sulphur candle - you can get them on line. 

A good tip - when sowing lettuces in the height of summer sow them in the afternoon/evening so that it is a little cooler than in the daytime while they are germinating and lay a dampened piece of newspaper over them until they have germinated. This worked a treat for me last August! Lettuces don't like heat - annoying as when its hot all we want to eat is salad!

If you have ever eaten lettuce grown in a garden and cut and washed just before a meal you will know that nothing in this world beats a home grown salad.

Peas in the Gutter!

I love peas! Last year I grew Kelvedon Wonder dwarf peas very successfully in the Patch. We harvested lots and enjoyed their sweetness, delicious both raw  and cooked with mint. Then one day I discovered neat little piles of chewed pods all along the row on the ground. The plants were stripped. I realised that mice had been having a feast from our peas, discarding the pods! They had made themselves a nest under the courgette leaves next to the peas. Safe from the foxes inside the rabbit proof fence and shaded from the gaze of the barn owl by the umbrella-like leaves of the courgettes,  they were living in mouse heaven with a full larder to hand!
This year we have the cats with us and I am hoping that the mouse population is sufficiently low to enable us to harvest lots of peas and will keep my eye on them to make sure they are not stolen. I want to grow three lots of peas this year. Douce de Provence, followed by a maincrop of Hurst Green Longshaft  and then a final crop of the early (and quick to mature) dwarf pea Kelvedon Wonder sown in July to get in just before the frosts. I have started with Douce de Provence, a hardy pea which can be planted in autumn and stand all winter. However, I waited until February before sowing the seeds into guttering in the greenhouse. The most favourite time for the mice to eat peas is when they are at the germinating seed stage so I wanted to avoid this by planting them out when they were a bit further on. Sowing them into guttering is perfect. You just fill the gutter ( I cut mine into one metre lengths) with compost, dampen it down and space the peas in a double staggered row about 2 inches apart. Water them and wait for the shoots to spring up. They germinated quickly and are easy to water and care for. When the shoots are a few inches high you just make a shallow trench in the bed and slide the compost along the gutter with your hand pushing the peas plus compost straight into the bed. I found it easiest to slide about a foot at a time. Firm them in and hey presto you have a beautiful row of peas!

So here's to a summer of rows and rows of wonderful peas !!

Soaking Beetroot and Parsnip Seed

These beetroot leaves are so beautiful with the sun shining through them. However last summer I never got to harvest one of my favourite veg....I think I sowed them too early and did not thin them enough and they didn't get enough sun...very disappointing. After these problems I did a bit of a study on sowing the seed. Apparently the two most difficult roots to start off are beetroot and parsnips. Here is what I found out and put into practice this month as an experiment, hoping for a huge harvest.  

Apparently the answer is to soak the seed! Beetroot seed is in dry clusters which will produce several seedlings, but the seed needs to be soaked to wash off the germination inhibitor. Then it must be thinned properly to allow the stem to swell (it is actually not a root at all but a swollen stem!)  It is also important not to sow too early as most beetroot does not like being moved which means that it is best to sow it directly into the soil once the ground has warmed up. However I have got round this one by sowing a bolt resistant variety as an early beetroot, Boltardy which can be sown into half loo roll holders and then transplanted later when the soil is warmer. I will put the whole thing into the ground and just break the holder as it goes in to let the stem swell. Then I will sow the other varieties Burpees Golden which is a lovely yellow beetroot and Chioggia a striped pink and white one together with more Boltardy straight into the ground at the end of April. But I will definitely soak the seed first and be careful to thin them properly giving them 4-6 inches between them with plenty of sun.  I will sow a few every three weeks so that we don't have a glut right through the summer, but sowing a main crop in June of a larger number for winter storage. I really love beetroot and am looking forward to seeing how this works out!

Parsnips seem to give people a few problems too. I had a very successful crop last year but it was not because of good planning, I think I was very lucky and the soil suited them. They are hard to germinate and it is definitely advisable to make sure you have new seed every year...it doesn't keep like some other things from year to year. 

I am growing Gladiator this year. I have germinated the seed on wet kitchen towel, folding another wet sheet over the seed and putting it on a plate inside a plastic bag on our warm caravan wash stand. This was the warmest place I could think of as it is in the sun - if you have an airing cupboard you could try that. 

 After about a week I was delighted to see that the seeds were developing a tiny little white root - they looked so pretty, take a look!

So today I took them down to the greenhouse and filled some half loo roll holders with damp compost and made two holes with a dibber about half an inch deep and carefully dropped two seeds per holder with my tweezers. I felt like a surgeon! 

 Here you can see the tiny seed in the hole before I covered it over with compost.

I am hoping to have sixty parsnips to plant out when the first leaves are formed. That should get them off to a good start. Apparently they like compost so I will make a hole slightly deeper than the loo roll holders and fill it with compost before popping them in, breaking the side of the holder as I go.  

By the way the parsnips stored beautifully in the winter in damp sand in a box in our shed. I have only just finished them. What a vegetable! So delicious roasted, and in stews and bakes and especially in curries with cummin and ginger, and fresh coriander. I can't wait to see those green leaves sprouting up from those precious seeds!