The Gourmand's Progress

Triple cherry smoked fruit beer / My cherry trees

2012-01-17T15:56:00.029Z

The grain bill (see recipe below).

I have a bit of malt left over from my first major brewing project, and I've been playing around with an online calculator to decide what to do with it.

I've also been enjoying a great blog on the subject of brewing unusual beers (and other food subjects), which inspired me to be a bit more adventurous - although there is something to be said about starting with simple recipes and working your way up, I tend to make what sounds interesting, even if that steepens the learning curve.

I have a thing for smoked beers - at least in theory. I have only tried one, on one occasion (the classic Schlenkerla Rauchbier, at my favourite Mancunian bar, Font). It sure was smoky, which isn't something you'd want in every drink, but it was interesting and not unpleasant. The way smoked beers are made is by smoking some of the malt, often over beech - although any wood you use for smoking food could work. You can buy ready-smoked malt, but since this recipe is made from leftovers, I'm going to smoke my own, using some of the many wood chips I bought last year for barbecues and smoking homemade bacon and suchlike.

I also love fruit beers, especially the two classics, kriek (cherry) and framboise (raspberry). I grow both in my garden - last year I got a single cherry and more than seven kilos of raspberries, but I wasn't brewing, so I used them in other things. I veer towards kriek partly because cherries seem much more luxurious, and partly because those I've had tend to be a little more sophisticated than other fruit beers. It happens that I have a bag of cherry wood chips, so I thought - why not combine the two? I came up with:

Triple cherry smoked fruit beer
for 4.5 litres (one demijohn)
grains and sugars
690g Maris Otter
280g English crystal
150g Amber, smoked over cherry wood chips
100g unrefined cane sugar
70g rolled oats
hops
2g Warrior (18.2% AA)
yeast
Hefeweizen (an unfiltered German beer, I poured some into a jug, added water and sugar, and let the yeast grow)/Wyeast Ringwood*
extras
toasted cherry wood chips
cherries

method
I'll mash the grains in the same way as for my first beer - namely by putting them into a big pan with water (I set my variable kettle to 80ºC, which comes down to the right range, 60-65ºC when mixed with the cold malt), then put that in the oven at a little under 70ºC for an hour. I'll boil with the hops for just half an hour - to extract the level of bitterness I've calculated, which should be pretty low, as what I've read suggests high hop levels and fruit don't combine well. I'll ferment in a glass demijohn with an airlock, and when it's done, I'll transfer to another demijohn, and add the wood chips. When the cherries are ripe, around midsummer, I'll transfer again, adding the fruit and probably removing the wood, depending on how woody it's become. The beer will sit on the fruit until autumn sometime, then I'll bottle it. The total time will be at least 9 months.

I really hope that I can use homegrown cherries in this - my schedule is based roughly around when they're ready. I can't count on having enough, or even any - as I'll explain below. In any case, that gives it five months or so on the wood chips - although I'll check to make sure it doesn't become unpleasant-tasting. Otherwise, I'll buy some fresh cherries around midsummer, and add those. As for quantities, I have no idea - but probably 20-30g of wood chips, and 0.5-1kg fruit.

What it ends up tasting like is unknown - I've never had anything like this, and it's rather experimental. But I'm using stuff I already have, so it's not costing me anything. If it's good, I'll have created something really exciting. If not - I now know you can blend beers, so maybe it won't have to be poured away.

*The Hefeweizen showed no signs of activity after a few days, so I added a little of my previous batch of beer, which is fermenting with Ringwood. Hopefully it'll take off soon. Update 25/1 - it's taken off now, bubbling contentedly (but not violently).

My cherry trees
I love fruit trees. They are amongst the most ornamental plants, with gorgeous (often scented) blossom announcing spring, summer verdancy and swelling fruits, edible baubles at harvest time, then bright autumn foliage. They don't need to take up much space - either get a dwarfing variety, or prune them into step-overs, cordons, fans, etc.

Even in my tiny garden, I've squeezed two cherry trees (and a quince). The cherries were from Tesco of all places, and bought on a whim - but I've always hankered after an orchard, so it wasn't unprecedented (I also bought a plum, but it didn't survive). I put one against the fence at the back of the garden - a position in full sun year-round, which gets very warm in spring and summer; the other went in on the other side of the terrace, about twenty feet away, and was left freestanding. I pruned the fence tree into a fan shape, which was held in place with canes. Perhaps because it has been constrained, the branches have grown much longer than the other tree - or perhaps it's the position, or variety.

Freshly-planted in spring 2009, the future fan-trained cherry had just three or four flowers - but put on strong growth through the summer.

In the second year, I added a framework of canes to train the branches into a fan shape. Plenty of blossom, but no fruit.

At the start of its third year, the fan shape was well established - it measured around 7 feet tall by 8 feet wide.

There was plenty of blossom in the spring of 2011, but just a single fruit ripened - most dropped, and the rest were probably eaten by birds (this year I'll put up a net).

At the end of last autumn, the leaves showed off some lovely colours - peach, orange, and gold.

2012 is a make-or-break year for these trees - I expect a harvest, even if it's only a couple of cups. If not, I will assume something is wrong, and try to fix it.

Brewing my first all-grain beer

2012-01-09T18:33:00.028Z

Crushed Maris Otter malt.

I made my first beer in November. I initially toyed with the idea last spring, reading about the process, and drawing up a list of preferred styles. But then I ordered my camera, and decided I couldn't afford both. I started with a kit instead, albeit a good-quality one, and was pleased with the results. I didn't quite follow the standard practice, in fact - I performed both fermentations in the same container, a pressure barrel, since I didn't want to pay for a separate fermenter at the time. I transferred the beer into sanitised buckets, before returning it to the barrel for the second fermentation after I'd cleaned it. The result, from Woodforde's Norfolk Wherry kit, was good - red-brown, fruity, smoothly carbonated, and very drinkable. Whether it was strong I can't say - I didn't measure the relative densities, but I didn't get particularly drunk even after several pints, so maybe it didn't ferment all the way. Nonetheless, it was a good enough experience to persuade me to revive my original plans, so once Christmas was out of the way, I set to finding a recipe, and giving it a name.

There are thousands of recipes online, and for a beginner it is very hard to determine which is best, and what the differences are. I found one that sounded interesting, then tried to obtain the ingredients. Since it was an American recipe, I had to make one or two substitutions, which means this will be effectively unique, and so I feel I can give it my own name.

The original recipe can be found here. It's an unusual hybrid that combines "the color of an American Brown, the caramel notes of a Scotch Ale, and the hopping regiment of an India Pale Ale", according to the brewer. I had particular difficulty sourcing the hops, and decided to reduce the bitterness a little, as I prefer a slightly sweeter brew.

Here's the recipe. It's converted to metric, which will be easier for me to measure with the equipment I have:

Old Margery's Winter Ale
20.8 litres (a little over 36.5 UK pints)
grain bill
5.443kg Maris Otter malt
340g amber malt
227g English crystal malt
227g chocolate malt
155g light brown sugar*
72g white sugar*
57g roasted unmalted barley
hops
28g Warrior (a very high alpha acid US hop)
14+28g Admiral (a substitution for the Vanguard that was unavailable)
yeast
Wyeast Ringwood Ale (1187)

*I needed dark brown sugar, but couldn't get any wherever I looked in my town - so I used what I had.

Crushed amber malt.

method: in theory
The Warrior and 14g Admiral hops will be boiled for 60 and 20 minutes respectively, the remainder being added to the hot wort post-boil. The method I'm going to use for mashing is intended to require as little specialist equipment as possible, so might sound rather unorthodox, but I'm hoping it won't ruin the finished beer. I'll use my stock pot, which I'll pop into the new oven, which can hold a good temperature, between 60 and 70 C (I'll see if I can fine-tune it further). I'll strain it using a chinois and muslin, which seems more manageable than the usual homebrew techniques, especially given my lack of a second large container. If I need to cool the wort, I'll just plunge the pan into a sink of iced water - again, I'm not investing in anything more fancy until I am better acquainted with the process.

Dried Warrior hops. They're flattened because they were vacuum-packed; when rehydrated, they look similar to fresh hop cones. They smell wonderful - the closest I can think of is juniper berries.

method: what happened
So it took much longer than I was expecting, precisely because the capacity of my pan was much less than I thought. I mean, I knew what it was, but the grain swells up, and you sparge (rinse) it with lots more water than I realised, so I ended up doing a continuous multi-batch process, with one smaller pan in the oven (which held the correct temperature well), and the larger stockpot boiling the wort with the hops. It took from 5pm to 1am the first day, which was about half the total, then I restarted 1pm the next day, finishing mid-evening. Luckily, I found it enjoyable, not too stressful, although it did make the most awful mess of anything I've ever done in the kitchen (think sticky brown liquid spilled on the floors, hob, worktops, and lots of washing up). Sadly I broke the new hydrometer I bought, by dropping a mortar on it (I was using the granite mortar to weigh down the grain and extract as much liquid as possible). I've tried weighing the wort to see what the gravity is (in order to work out how much sugar was extracted, and how alcoholic the finished beer will be), but it will be inaccurate. Incidentally, I didn't bother with muslin - it wasn't necessary.

Freshly-boiled wort, before straining into the fermentation vessel.

Using the excellent brew calculator at Beer Calculus, I've determined it should be 6.4% abv, with a bitterness of 47.6 IBU (so fairly bitter), and dark brown to black in colour: a good hearty brew for winter. I've saved a lot of beer bottles, because I don't want it hanging around in the keg for too long, since I may want to do another batch of something fairly soon, and hopefully it will keep longer in bottles.

Update: fermentation
I was worried that the yeast was dead. It comes in a large sachet, that you strike to break an internal pack, and then it's meant to swell up. Well, mine didn't, not even by the next day. So I poured it into a sterilised jug, with some boiled wort and a little sugar. The following day (when I was ready to add it to the main batch, there was still no sign of life. I added it anyway, but contacted the shop who'd sold it to me. They didn't seem concerned, but were very helpful.

The following day, there was a hiss on opening the barrel lid - something was happening. The day after, it had taken off. Indeed, it was such a violent fermentation that I couldn't fully unscrew the lid for a whole day. I researched the yeast online, and found it was often slow to start, but also that it needed high oxygen levels - and that professional brewers use open fermentation vessels to provide that. Once the pressure died down, I left the lid on, but unscrewed, and regularly swilled the liquid around, to reoxygenate it, and prevent too much carbon dioxide buildup.

After around ten days, the fermentation has died down, and I'll set to bottling it in the next week (this yeast produces a lot of diacetyl, a chemical that smells of butter, so it is recommended to rest the beer after fermentation, to allow that to dissipate - buttery notes may be welcome in certain white wines, but apparently hardly ever in beer).

Update 1st February 2012:
I haven't got round to bottling the beer yet, for the simple reason I can't afford to buy a bottle capper yet. It should come to no harm in the sealed fermentation vessel - and some of the buttery notes the yeast has produced will die down. I measured the final gravity as 1.010, which means the alcohol by volume is around 6.7% - slightly stronger than originally predicted. It's rich, complex, bittersweet, and not terribly drinkable just yet.

Chillies: the plan

2012-01-09T13:56:00.032Z

I've written at length on the many tomatoes I've grown and will be growing, but this year there are other plans (and plants). Chillies are something I've had mixed experiences with in the past; shop-bought plants often thrive, even outdoors - so long as they get lots of sunshine and adequate watering. In fact, you treat them rather like their close relatives tomatoes (and aubergines), in that they are hungry, thirsty, heat-loving plants, but they seem less prone to disease. From seed, however, I've never succeeded, in part because I haven't been careful enough. Last year I concentrated on tomatoes to the detriment of their kin, which I left lingering as seedlings until they gave up, so this time I'm sowing them earlier - also because chillies seem to be much slower to germinate and grow.

There are many advantages to growing chillies. The plants are small, tending to grow to a fixed size, small bushes at most. This means they need no pruning and little support. The fruits aren't juicy, so they need less water and cope better with drought. Many of their fruits are small, but intensely-flavoured, so you can easily grow enough for your needs - whereas self-sufficiency in most crops is beyond the home grower with an small garden, it's not at all unrealistic in this case. Finally, they can be overwintered - at the very least, the fruits will keep well on the plant, even if it dies, and you might get a second flush the following year (in fact, all these plants are perennials in their homeland).

So here are the varieties I'm going to try. Apologies for poor-quality photos; there aren't many available. The heat ratings (﹆﹆﹆, ﹅﹆﹆, ﹅﹅﹆, ﹅﹅﹅ for no heat, mild, medium, and hot respectively) and other info are from The Chileman, an excellent online resource on the subject:

Black Hungarian ﹅﹅﹆

photo: conalloughry

Attractive Hungarian heirloom variety, with red-to-deepest-purple fruits, and purple flowers. Good flavour.

Chocolate beauty ﹆﹆﹆

photo: Gelatobaby

A dark bell pepper, no heat. An F1 (breaking my normal rules, but I didn't know this when I bought the seeds) with deep-red-to-dark-brown, large fruits.

Corno di toro rosso ﹆﹆﹆

Long, often curved, horn-shaped sweet fruits from Italy. Like the long bell peppers sold in supermarkets, I'm hoping, perfect for stuffing with goat cheese.

Costeno amarillo ﹅﹅﹆

Medium-sized, narrow golden fruits, thin-fleshed with complex aroma, used in yellow mole (Mexican chilli) stews.

Habanero mustard ﹅﹅﹅+

Rare; peach-coloured, warped, blunt fruits, extremely hot.

Hungarian yellow wax ﹅﹅﹆

Long, pointed, Hungarian variety, ripening to orange or red, but harvested unripe when pale yellow-green. Good for pickling.

Onza ﹅﹅﹆?

Could be one of two varieties, either Mexican or Italian (I think it more likely I'm growing the Mexican one). Either way, little information is available.

Red cherry ﹅﹆﹆

photo: Scott Hamlin

A number of similar varieties exist; probably mild, small, round, red fruits. Varying heat. Good for pickling or stuffing with cheese.

I'll post an update once they've started growing.

Statement of intent: 2012

2012-01-08T19:02:00.003Z

I've not been totally inactive this winter. I turned three months' spent coffee grounds into delicious oyster mushrooms.

It's been a while! At first, it was the usual blogger's curse: laziness. I have a few articles lined up from last autumn that I promise to post soon. Then my laptop, which I used as my workstation in planning and updating this blog last year, died temporarily. Strictly speaking, it was the power adapter that died, but the result was the same. Now I've got a replacement, I can return.

Before I get stuck back into writing recipes, garden and kitchen updates, reviews and so on, I thought I'd give an outline of what to expect in the next few months, so you can decide whether or not to bother returning.

First, I will be gardening more than last year. I had goals, few of which I met, but in essence 2011 was about seeing what my garden and I were capable of. This time, I have much more knowledge and experience, so I intend to be more rigorous and disciplined. More salads, tomatoes, roots and greens, flowers, fruit, and herbs. I'll be sowing heat-lovers in January (chillies and aubergines, that take an age to establish this far north), plus hopefully some early salads. Mid-February I'll start on the tomatoes, of which there will be many, again to get a head-start on the season: I'd love to harvest some before the end of June, ideally. March will be full-on, with most flowers and vegetables starting, then in April the tender ones, like pumpkins, melons, and cucumbers. After that, I'll try and keep it going, with later sowings of peas, beans, oriental crops and fast-growing vegetables like turnips and spinach. Overall, I'll be squeezing even more into the small space I have.

Second, I have a few major projects that are starting or continuing this year. I've ordered the ingredients for my first all-grain beer, which is something I'd wanted to do last spring, but decided to postpone it. I've been doing a bit with bacon and sausages - expect more on this. More baking, especially breads, if I get the time, and later in the year, more jams, jellies, and other ways of preserving what I've grown.

Finally, more photography. I'm held back by the current setup (my new kitchen is close, but not ready yet), and my perfectionism: I take hundreds of photos you'll never see. I will try to do better.

It already feels like spring, though we hardly had a winter here this year: it's mild, if stormy, and the light is increasing. I hear birdsong in the mornings again, and soon the spring bulbs will be flowering, the trees budding. It's an exciting time. I hope you'll join me for the best cooking and growing year yet...

Improvised jerky (or biltong)

2011-11-21T15:40:00.000Z

It was only a matter of time before I started trying to dry sliced meat. I was inspired in part by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's book Meat, which I borrowed from my friends. It contains a recipe for bresaola (an Italian cured beef, served thinly-sliced like a continental ham). I saw silverside (a cut of beef we'd usually roast and served sliced in sandwiches, or maybe in a stew, on offer at the local shop, so I got some. But it was far too small for the recipe, so I decided to make jerky.

To be fair, this could just as well be called biltong, or simply dried cured beef. I love that sort of thing, but it is so expensive - a couple of pounds for a tiny packet. It's a fairly guilt-free snack as far as I'm concerned - and this recipe in particular contains no added fat, and the meat isn't very fat to start with. There is a lot of salt and sugar added, but most of that is removed. Nutritional or not, I couldn't find a recipe online that made sense - there were too many proprietary websites - so I decided to improvise.

It worked out so well, I intend to do it again, and I think it's worth posting here. Once again, it can be varied a lot, so I'll include a few ideas along with what I did.

ingredients

beef (topside, silverside, brisket - fillet is too fine and expensive, and the meat is tenderised by the process, so these tougher cuts are ideal)
salt
sugar (I used dark muscovado)
spices (optional: I used lots of crushed black pepper)
Worcester sauce (optional: I used mushroom ketchup, which is similar)

method

If the beef is trussed up, remove the string. You can remove any fat and sinews too, if you like. Wash and pat dry.
Put the beef in the freezer for an hour or two - until par-frozen.
Slice the meat thinly with a very sharp knife or a meat slicer. Work quickly - it will start to thaw, and this makes the slicing more difficult.
Marinate the beef slices. I layered them alternately with salt and sugar, and poured a mixture of more salt and sugar, mushroom ketchup, and freshly-ground black pepper on top. You could use a more liquid marinade, or a dry one. I didn't measure the ingredients - just added enough to cover the meat. Refrigerate for an hour, several hours, or overnight.
Rinse and pat dry the meat - it should be slightly coloured if you've used dark sugar, molasses, treacle, or Worcester sauce.
Lay the slices on trays, not touching, and put the trays into an oven, at 40-60ºC, or as low as possible, on the fan setting if it has one.
Leave them for a long time - at least 6 hours, maybe as long as 24 (depending on the thickness of the slices, and the temperature). When they are dry, leathery, and dark (almost black), they are done - check them, and remove when they are to your liking.
Refrigerate or freeze, in a sealed jar or plastic container, or eat immediately. They should keep for at least a week at room temperature, possibly much longer - but remember, they will go off eventually (err on the side of caution).

variations and substitutions
I can think of quite a few possibilities off the top of my head, but if I don't include one, don't be put off - experiment. Try different sugars and sweeteners, like honey, maple syrup, or palm sugar. Lots of spices could be included - chilli, Sichuan pepper, five spice, fennel seeds, coriander, garam masala. I don't know if Worcester sauce (or equivalent) is essential - it does add a sharpness, so maybe try a little vinegar instead. Alcohol might work - bourbon or other whiskeys, or possibly brandy might add interest, or red wine, or maybe ale. The dried slices could be smoked, or if you can cold smoke, you could do that before drying them. You can add more seasoning at the end if they are too bland - but taste first, as any flavouring will have become concentrated as the meat dried.

October harvest: week four/monthly summary

2011-11-21T14:30:00.000Z

I was waiting to post this when I had a photo to attach, but at this rate it'll never get done, so here's the text-only version.

A quiet end to the month in the garden - but busier than ever indoors. Outside, the weather has been mild, with no sign of frost (we did go down to around 5ºC a couple of weeks ago), alternating sunshine and rain.

The kitchen is taking shape, at last, and just in time - I have been drying tomatoes at just over 50ºC before bottling in oil, which is a job I wanted to do but didn't expect to have the facilities for (i.e. an oven with a low heat setting) before next year. After that, I did apple slices, which I'm filling a large jar with - a great way of using up two bags of fruit that I'd bought reduced and had sitting around for a couple of weeks. They're chewy and intensely sweet and apply - a great snack. I've also commenced a couple of projects that will keep me busy in the absence of daily gardening tasks - I've started curing bacon, using maple syrup, juniper berries, and salt, which I will then smoke, slice, and freeze, and I have a batch of ale (from a kit, as I'm a beginner) bubbling away upstairs. I'll also be making sausages, smoking more food, baking lots of bread, and making yoghurt and cheese, in addition to bottling more fruits and vegetables (mostly bought).

Totals for week 22nd-31st October:
28th: 268g stem lettuce (two plants; I forgot to weight the leaves and stems separately).
30th: 37g carrots, 17g carrot tops, 33g turnip, 71g black radish, 55g chard (day total: 213g)
Total for week: 481g
October total: 11.289kg
Year to date total: 38.372kg

The highlight of the final week of October was pulling the first carrots and black radish, which went with homegrown tomatoes, chard, and turnip in a Tuscan-style bread soup, made with leftover home-baked bread roll chunks (they had stuck to the greaseproof paper I baked them on, so I had to find a use for the tops I salvaged). The carrots were small, but bigger than any I've managed to grow before, and so fragrant - and totally perfect and unblemished. I used the tops as well.

I haven't yet picked the last tomatoes. Dozens of red 'Gardener's delight' are glowing at me from across the garden when I look out the (old) kitchen window, which is quite remarkable, given it's November. I must gather them in soon, however, and get my seed-grown onions out, along with broad beans and peas, to overwinter for an early crop next year.

I have a lot more to do indoors just now, however, so I don't know when I'll get round to it...

Drying fruit

2011-11-14T18:30:00.001Z

Dried apple slices.

My new oven is great. I've hardly begun to explore its features - in particular, the steam function, which is hard to integrate into existing recipes. But one aspect is already well-tested: low temperature control. It can be held at just under 40ºC, which is ideal for proving bread dough. At 60ºC I can dry fruit and certain meat products (on which more in a future article), and that's what I've been doing. I started with tomatoes, but the most successful thing so far has been apples.

I had a couple of bags of apples that weren't doing anything. I tend to buy fruit when it is reduced in the local shops, or at the greengrocer if there is a good offer on (and this is apple season, so many English varieties are quite cheap). In fact, unless I'm buying for a recipe, almost all the fruit I get is less than full price. The advantage of this is, you can get a lot of fruit for very little money - often half or a third of the retail price. The disadvantage (if you see it that way) is, you end up with a lot of the same thing, and have to find a way of using it. I must admit, sometimes I end up composting some of it (a couple of dozen passion fruit I got for pennies earlier in the year still lie heavy on my conscience). Drying could be the answer.

A punnet of red-skinned plums, sliced, stoned, and spread on a tray, ready for drying...

...and here they are, done - they rather unsettlingly resemble mushrooms, but taste fantastic.

Of course, you could make jam. But that requires a ready supply of sugar, possibly pectin, and jars, and can be quite a messy process. Plus, I don't eat much jam. Drying, however, is almost foolproof, and aside from the initial preparation, is a process that needs no supervision. Admittedly, you do need jars or similar for storage, but they don't need to be heatproof, nor do you need to worry about sterilising them. Otherwise, you can freeze the dried fruit in bags, but it's so delicious to snack on, long-term preservation shouldn't be a worry.

For most fruit, the process is the same. You'll need a knife, one or more trays (I bought some new ones with holes in, which will hopefully increase air circulation), an oven capable of being set to a temperature less than 100ºC (the lower the better), with a fan if possible. For fruit that can go brown, you will also need a bowl and some lemon or lime juice (or citric acid).

These apples have been drying for a few hours; they are nearly ready.

The method is simple. Wash and preferably dry your fruit. You can peel it if you like, but I don't. Remove the core of apples, pears, and the like; remove the stone from plums, apricots, nectarines (by slicing in half, and pulling or prising out the stone). For apples, slice evenly - a mandoline is a useful tool, but a sharp knife will do. Incidentally, an apple corer might be helpful if you have a lot of fruit to do (I intend to get one soon). With fruit that can turn brown in air, put it into a bowl with water and lemon juice (or whatever acid you're using). I would simply halve stone fruit. Thicker slices and larger fruit will take longer to dry, of course, but has a more satisfyingly leathery texture at the end. Spread the fruit slices out (grapes, figs, and cherry tomatoes can be left whole, but prick them with a skewer or cocktail stick to allow moisture to escape) on trays, put the trays into the oven. Fan setting, 50-70ºC is perfect. Leave for several hours, or overnight; check once they look shrivelled. Thinner and smaller pieces will dry faster; you may need to remove these first. The longer you leave them, the better they may keep, but the crisper they will be - eventually they will be totally dessicated.

Washed, blanched grapes on a tray...

Storage is easy: pack them loosely into clean jars or resealable plastic storage boxes. Tie a little uncooked rice in a piece of muslin, to make a pouch, put this in the jar. The rice acts as a desiccant, absorbing any excess moisture, and keeping the fruit fresh longer (like silica gel). They should keep weeks or even months, in a cool, dry place, out of sunlight. Check them - discard any that have gone mouldy.

...here they are halfway through - starting to brown and shrivel...

Eat them as a snack, or sprinkle into cereal, or maybe use them in baking (I'm not sure what recipes you could use dried apples in, but they're so delicious, I'm unlikely to find out!).

...and these have nearly finished their transformation into sultanas.

A break from the routine

2011-10-28T18:30:00.000+01:00

No harvest total for this week - not because there is nothing to pick and gather, but because I have been too busy to do so, and have nowhere to store it. My parents have been staying, and we've been getting on fitting the new kitchen (which some of you may remember has been ongoing almost as long as I've had this blog).

The good news is, some of the cabinets are in place, so I've been moving stuff into them (the luxury of all that space is a joy). But most importantly, my fabulous new oven - an electric combination steam/fan oven/grill is in and it works! It will take much getting used to, but that is only a good thing. I roasted a chicken on the steam setting to begin with, to test the manufacturer's assertion that is could cook one in 46 minutes (around half the time of a conventional oven) - and it did! Of course, steam cooking doesn't crisp up the skin quite the same, so I did it on fan for a bit afterwards. Later, I baked banana bread - I was able to do two full-sized cake tins side by side - what luxury! The gas oven I've used up till now is tiny, so the extra space (and reliability, and accuracy, and functions) makes a huge difference.

But it's hard cooking for myself and my guests in these conditions (everything is in flux), so it's a bit stressful. Normal blogging will resume when it's over...

October harvest: week three

2011-10-24T08:30:00.000+01:00

I started clearing the last of the tomatoes. I picked all the remaining fruit in the front garden first, and pulled up the plants from the ground, gathering those in grow bags together, ready to be taken round to the compost bins. A couple of days later, I stripped all the fruits from half the varieties in the back garden, and the rest I'll do in the next couple of days (I did it that way so I didn't get confused between similar-looking varieties, given they're mostly all green).

I also picked the first stem lettuce (celtuce). I was impressed - it was exactly what I was expecting. It turns out I planted them too close together - they were tiny when I put them in, but they swelled and are pressed together now they're getting mature. But they are perfectly healthy, and that's really encouraged me for next year - the oriental greens can be sown early in the spring as well as after midsummer. I need to harvest the rest of them soon, because I don't think they are frost hardy (and I need the space for other crops). I prepared the first one by discarding the lower leaves, then taking off the upper ones, washing and chopping, peeling the stem, and chopping that into matchsticks. I stir fried it with lime juice, fish sauce, and Shaoxing wine, and sprinkled with (shichimi) tōgarashi (Japanese seven spice). Despite being a mature lettuce, it was very mild with almost no bitterness.

Totals for week 15th-21st October:
19th: 205g stem lettuce (comprising 88g stem and 117g leaves), 1.984kg tomatoes (comprising 22 'Risentraube' at 130g, 63 'Jaune flammée' at 1.185kg, 1 'Super marmande' at 24g, 1 'Cherokee purple' at 171g, 6 'Costoluto fiorentino' at 140g, 7 'Sub arctic plenty' at 176g, and 19 'Cream sausage' at 158g; day total: 2.189kg)
21st: 137g baby pumpkins, 293g 'Uchiki kuri' pumpkins (largest 153g), 1.434kg tomatoes (comprising 7 'Snowberry' at 32g, 15 'Costoluto fiorentino' at 821g, 18 'Jaune flammée' at 306g, 67 'Sun belle' at 275g; day total: 1.864kg)
Total for week: 4.053kg
Year to date total: 37.891kg

The pumpkins were a writeoff. Of the two plants that I got into final positions (out of several dozen sown into pots), one produced nothing, and the other didn't have time once it had recovered from snail attacks to produce full-sized fruit. The baby fruits I took from a vine that grew of its own accord from homemade compost. It germinated in July, I think, but has spread along the whole depth of the front garden - I'll measure it before I pull it up. Sadly, the fruits were bitter. Squash cross-fertilise easily, so if you plant seeds you've saved (or allow seeds to germinate from home-grown or shop-bought fruit), they might have crossed with something inedible, like an ornamental gourd. In any case, that's probably why they tasted so bad. Never again!

I will be able to post my roundup of the tomato season in the next week or so, once all the fruit is in. Meanwhile, I've been doing a bit more preserving - pickling beetroots, and bottling tomato sauce, so I can savour my harvest into the winter.

October harvest: week two

2011-10-21T16:50:00.003+01:00

These grapes are small, but oh so delicious.

Little has changed outside. Sunshine is a memory, and the world is grey. We've had a lot of rain, and a powerful storm, followed by a day or two of calm, then another storm. Darkness comes at half past six, dawn at half past seven; the light has gone (though it will get a lot darker in the next ten weeks, leading up to the solstice).

All this means I've had to swallow my delusion and sacrifice most of the tomatoes. All the sickly plants, those with no change of setting more fruit, and any which have been damaged by the weather will have to go - and the enormity of composting sixty plants struck me yesterday (it should yield a lot of good stuff for the spring though). The contents of the grow-bags most of them have lived in over the summer will be spread over the garden, filling new beds, and providing low nutrient, organic conditioning, which should lighten the heavy clay, improve structure, and produce better crops next year. I'll use some for planting tulips in pots, too - I want lots more of them next year.

The temptation is to leave them, because they are still flowering, and most are covered with green fruit. But with no sunshine, mediocre temperatures, and lots of rain, the chances are they will rot on the vine. And Monty Don (my hero) made a good point on Gardeners' World: the space they're taking up could now be better used. A salad or herb crop sown now, especially under cover in the greenhouse, will provide some food over the next few months. The tomatoes, like it or not, will die.

Totals for week 8th-14th October:
10th: 456g tomatoes (comprising 8 'Summer cider' at 155g and 21 'Sub arctic plenty' at 301g)
13th: 3.097kg tomatoes (comprising 1 'German orange strawberry' at 212g, 8 'Super marmande' at 1.090kg, 15 'Cream sausage' at 247g, 25 'Jaune flammée' at 707g, 5 'Great white' at 196g, 5 'Green zebra' at 77g, 9 'Costoluto fiorentino' at 207g, 25 'Sun belle' at 92g, 5 'Black cherry' at 35g, 5 'Snowberry' at 19g, 26 'Gardener's delight' at 136g, 1 'Sub arctic plenty' at 26g, 1 unidentified at 53g), 396g grapes (day total: 3.493kg)
14th: 225g tomatoes (comprising 2 'Jaune flammée' at 141g, 1 'Costoluto fiorentino' at 72g, and 1 'Cream sausage' at 12g).
Total for week: 4.174kg
Year to date total: 33.838kg

So the harvest is heavy, but this is an ending. Much of the fruit has been taken green, to ripen indoors if I do it right. There are still many outdoors, because it's such a big job, and because some plants are simply too healthy-looking to kill yet. The smaller fruits have a chance of ripening naturally before the frosts, if they come late. In any case, I always check the weather forecast, so I can keep an eye on it.

Update: I wrote the preceding paragraphs earlier in the week. By the end of it, I noticed a great many plants with what I can only assume is blight - great patches of stem and leaf brown, shrivelled, and exuding clouds of spores at the lightest touch. It's very late - for the third year I've been paying attention, blight hasn't struck here before mid-autumn - and for that I'm lucky. And in a way, it's good - it means I can no longer afford to be sentimental. The plants must go. (What's interesting is how patchy it is - not just on individual plants, but some plants are still bright green, healthy, and growing, among their withering brethren - varietal resistance?)

Tomatoes: roll call 2012 (part 2)

2011-10-17T19:15:00.001+01:00

Continued from part one.

Jaune flammée

Jubilee

Yellow-orange, medium-large, round fruit, with richly-coloured, sweet flesh. Stable American cross, producing quickly on shorter plants. I love orange tomatoes, so I have added more to my list this year. Photo: sweetbeetandgreenbean

Plum lemon
Another curiosity. These really do look like lemons - they are medium-sized, yellow, and oval with points at either end. Russian, with an acid taste.

Stupice

The large number of Eastern European tomatoes on my list is in part because they tend to be better-suited to the cool, wet British climate, while Mediterranean varieties are obviously selected for hotter, sunnier places. This is a red, rounded, medium-sized fruit in large trusses, from Czechoslovakia, whose flavour is highly praised, and produces in a short time. Potato-leaved, which I rather like (I don't know that it makes any practical difference). Photo: Satrina0

Sungold

A classic, from what I gather. Another orange one, a little larger than cherry-sized fruit, quick to produce. A Swedish variety. Determinate (bush type). Photo: talkoftomatoes

Super marmande

White cherry
I'm comparing this to 2011's 'Snowberry', which was good, but I need to find out which works better for me. I couldn't find out much information, but it's apparently sweet and resistant to splitting.

White wonder
Medium to large, creamy white fruit. Flattened, somewhat ribbed, with very sweet juicy flesh. A 19th century American heirloom variety, which I'm comparing with 'Great white'.

Zloty ozarowski
Medium, orange fruit - a rival to 'Jaune flammée' (though I'd be amazed it could do better). Slightly ribbed Polish variety.

Many thanks to Passion tomate and Tatiana's Tomatobase for information on these varieties.

Tomatoes: roll call 2012 (part 1)

2011-10-17T19:12:00.003+01:00

It may seem premature to be talking about next spring, given autumn is still in full sway. But we are now almost two-thirds of the way through the tomato year, partly because living by the coast affords me a long frost-free autumn, and partly because I intend to sow next year's a week or two earlier, to give me more time to get organised planting them out (which was the weakest link in my system this year).

So, we are coming up to week 33 of the 2011 season, and in 18 weeks' time, I'll be sowing the 2012 crop. And as a birthday treat, I ordered all the seeds I needed over the weekend. I have some left over from this year - so whether I liked them or not, I will grow these varieties again (I suppose the poorer-performing ones deserve a second chance). For a few I will save seeds of my own - a first for me, although given how readily they germinate in homemade compost, it shouldn't be difficult. The new ones I selected for a few key criteria - variety of colour, shape, and size; recommended flavour or disease resistance; or as replacements for under-performing varieties I tried this year (or simply to try something new).

Now I have ordered them, I can present the final list. I've split it into two parts, as there are now a total of 23 varieties. I won't describe ones I grew this year here - I have put links in to the entry I wrote about them back in the spring. Pictures are provided where a good, copyright-free example could be found.

Black cherry

Black prince

Plentiful medium-large dark red fruit, with dark red-brown/green flesh of good flavour. From Siberia, so good for cool climates. Photo: d reamexplorer

Brown berry
Dark red or brown cherry-sized fruit, greenish inside, with a good reputation for flavour. Possibly American, or Dutch (sources differ). A rival to 'Black cherry' - I will be comparing the two to see which to grow in future.

Carbon

Dark pinkish-brown, large fruit with richly-flavoured flesh and few seeds. American. I will be comparing this with 'Black prince', 'Cherokee purple', and 'Japanese black trifele' - all are similar in size and dark in colour. Photo: kthread

Caspian pink

Large to very large beefsteak fruit with few seeds. Very large plants. A variety hailing, as its name suggests, from the Caspian region of Russia. Photo: summersumz

Cherokee purple

Cream sausage

Garden peach

A curiosity, this - a tomato which resembles a peach, pale yellow with downy skin. These seem to be better established in the USA, though I'm not sure where this hails from. One source claims this keeps for up to several months, but another that its shelf life is very short. I'm only really growing this to see what it is like - I don't expect it to be particularly good. Photo: fortinbras

Garden pearl
I am comparing this to 'Gardener's delight', although it is somewhat different - this is a determinate (or bush) variety, and often recommended for pots or hanging baskets, I think. It's a bit twee, but said to be very productive. Lots of small red fruit.

Gardener's delight

German orange strawberry

Great white

Ildi
I have heard good things about this. It replaces 'Sun Belle' from this year, being a yellow cherry tomato, tending to oval or pear-shaped. Massive trusses of several dozen fruits each. Said to be from Sweden.

Japanese black trifele

Medium to large dark red fruit. Russian. said to be delicious. Photo: Rubber Slippers In Italy

Continued in part two.

Many thanks to Passion tomate and Tatiana's Tomatobase for information on these varieties.

October harvest: week one

2011-10-07T19:10:00.000+01:00

Your eyes are not deceiving you - this is a strawberry, ripe, in October. I tore out the fruit patch, but the strawberries have spread around the rest of the garden. They're covered with flowers.

I had labelled this as a 'German Orange Strawberry', but I was suspicious when the fruits started forming. Its identity is now secure - 'Black Cherry'.

The heat has gone, and autumn has returned. But autumn means different things to different people, and varies a lot by location, so what do I mean by that?

Well, I live near the coast, as I may have mentioned in the past. That means it is, at all times of year, less extreme in temperature, but more so in wind, than much of the country. Autumn does not mean clear light, crisp mornings, the first frosts. No, it is more a matter of regular storms, lots of rain, and only slightly lower temperatures than the season preceding it. This year's heatwave was brief and exceptional - early September was much more typical. This blasts the leaves off the trees, brown, and turns them to mush underfoot, treacherous and unlovely. There's not much yellow, gold, red, on the trees - they don't get the chance, for one thing, nor is it hot or dry enough here in the average summer to promote the bright colours' formation in the first place.

The herbaceous plants - the shrubs, vegetables, annuals - continue, a little slower, shaggier, tireder, but little changed from July and August. My Cosmos plants have finally started flowering in earnest - they spent the summer growing to five or six feet, monsters that overfilled the space I'd allotted them. The Calendula, also grown from seed, are having a marvellous time - they've filled the garden with gold and shocking yellows and oranges for months now, and hopefully will self-sow profusely. Verbena bonariensis, which grows of its own accord every year - each time in different locations - is doing its lovely thing. The same goes for the tomatoes, beans, and pumpkins, which are all blissfully unaware of the oncoming darkness and cold. But frosts here come late, and are infrequent - I've had tomatoes fruiting outdoors well into November the past two years, although they look rather forlorn by that point. So I am not worried about the winter just yet - like the plants, I can afford to pretend everything's going on as before, though the early, more sudden, sunsets are rather cutting off my options for outdoor work in the evenings now.

Totals for week 1st-7th October:
1st: 32g chard, 10g pumpkin flowers (day total: 42g)
3rd: 139g tomatoes (comprising 3 'Jaune Flammée' at 94g, 1 'Summer Cider' at 45g)
4th: 17g runner beans, 32g strawberries, 1.01kg tomatoes (comprising 2 'Super Marmande' at 107g, 1 'Summer Cider' at 117g, 1 'Costoluto Fiorentino' at 35g, 2 'Great White' at 11g, 2 'Snowberry' at 11g, 11 'Sun Belle' at 54g, 12 'Gardener's Delight' at 80g, 6 'Sub Arctic Plenty' at 67g, 2 'Cream Sausage' at 43g, 5 'Green Zebra' at 126g, 11 'Black Cherry' at 115g, 8 'Jaune Flammée' at 244g; day total: 1.059kg)
7th: 1.341kg tomatoes (comprising 5 'Green Zebra' at 223g, 1 'Summer Cider' at 61g, 6 'Cream Sausage' at 174g, 7 'Jaune Flammée' at 211g, 6 'Sub Arctic Plenty' at 154g, 4 'Snowberry' at 23g, 17 'Sun Belle' at 55g, 13 'Gardener's Delight' at 77g, 3 'Costoluto Fiorentino' at 47g, 4 'Super Marmande' at 131g, 3 'Great White' at 185g)
Total for week: 2.581kg
Year to date total: 29.664kg

A lot of tomatoes! If I have just one day harvesting a dozen varieties of tomato in the whole year, I will have achieved a major part of what I wanted. I now have an ongoing dilemma - do I gather in all the remaining unripe fruit, and hope to get them to colour up indoors, or do I rely on the continuing mild weather, and occasional sunshine, to do it for me? I think a bit of both; some plants look very tired, and need to be laid to rest on the compost heap, while others look as fresh as they did in June. I also need to start planning my overwintering vegetables - the onions I sowed are doing well; I will order garlic sets, and sow broad beans and peas to put out in November.

Insalata caprese

2011-10-05T18:00:00.002+01:00

The version is layered, and uses three types of tomato. I'd like to say I grew the basil, but mine was destroyed by aphids, so this is from the market. Still tastes good!

There must be thousands of versions of this online and in books. But it's one of my all-time favourite dishes, and now's the perfect time to make it, with an abundance of ripe tomatoes coming from the garden.

It's hardly a recipe at all - which is probably why I like it so much. It's just a matter of combining the six ingredients, more or less prettily, and eating them. The simpler a recipe, the more important the quality of each ingredient - there's nowhere to hide. So, indulge yourself and buy the best you can (homegrown produce is even better).

Insalata caprese (Capri-style salad)
ingredients

the best-quality tomatoes you can find, at the peak of ripeness
buffalo mozzarella (the fresher the better), brought to room temperature
fresh basil leaves
extra virgin olive oil
salt (Maldon, or another coarse sea salt is perfect)
black pepper, freshly cracked

method

slice the tomatoes, or cut them into chunks - whichever you find more appealing. Slice or tear the mozzarella into chunks about the same size as the tomato.
arrange the cheese and tomato on a plate, or in a bowl, roughly mixed together, or layered alternately.
tear the basil over the top, or layer the leaves between the slices, if using.
sprinkle over salt (if using coarse sea salt, crush it between your fingers as you sprinkle) and pepper to taste, and drizzle as much oil as you like.

It's pretty, not terribly unhealthy, takes no time to make, and is delicious at any time of year. If I had the money, and access to the best ingredients, I would eat it every other day.

Incidentally, the price of the plateful above works out around £1.25. I used bocconcini (small mozzarella balls), which are a little more expensive than full-sized cheeses; I used around 1/3 of a pack. The basil was 99p a pack, of which I used no more than a fifth. The tomatoes were free, and the oil and seasonings were a penny or two each, at most.

September harvest: week four/monthly summary

2011-10-01T18:30:00.000+01:00

The greenhouse 'Jaune Flammée' has reached its end, but outdoors, several other plants have started producing even larger fruits recently. This variety continues to impress.

We've been having a heatwave, along with the rest of England and Wales. It's been perfect, with light winds, mostly clear skies, and temperatures in the mid twenties by day, mid teens at night. So the summer crops have continued to flourish - I have have left them be for now.

Totals for week 22nd-30th September:
23rd: 37g turnips, 21g turnip tops, 60g chard, 46g runner beans, 390g tomatoes (comprising 2 'Sub Arctic Plenty' at 54g, 3 'Jaune Flammée' at 76g, 3 'Cream Sausage' at 74g, 14 'Gardener's Delight' at 90g, 4 'Snowberry' at 30g, 6 'Sun Belle' at 36g; day total: 554g)
24th: 1 'Sub Arctic Plenty' at 17g, 2g French beans, 7g runner beans (day total: 26g)
26th: 41g turnips, 39g turnip tops, 8g pumpkin flowers, 17g runner beans, 197g tomatoes (comprising 1 'Black Cherry' at 17g, 6 'Sun Belle' at 41g, 1 'Green Zebra' at 37g, 4 'Gardener's Delight' at 19g, 3 'Snowberry' at 14g, 2 'Sub Arctic Plenty' at 13g, 1 'Super Marmande' at 56g; day total: 302g)
27th: 221g tomatoes (comprising 3 'Sub Arctic Plenty' at 107g, 5 'Jaune Flammée' at 114g)
28th: 24g runner beans, 290g tomatoes (comprising 1 'Summer Cider' at 146g, 3 'Green Zebra' at 69g, 2 'Jaune Flammée' at 32g, 6 'Sun Belle' at 43g; day total: 314g)
29th: 17g pumpkin flowers, 191g tomatoes (comprising 2 'Jaune Flammée' at 80g, 3 'Costoluto Fiorentino' at 111g; day total: 208g)
30th: 132g mizuna, 12g runner beans, 2g French beans, 280g tomatoes (comprising 2 'Costoluto Fiorentino' at 65g, 4 'Jaune Flammée' at 135g, 1 'Sub Arctic Plenty' at 12g, 12 'Gardener's Delight' at 68g; day total: 426g)
Total for 8 days: 2.051kg
September total: 5.605kg
Year to date total: 27.083kg

Two kilos in just over a week is good - the tomato harvest has accelerated. All but three varieties ('Riesentraube', 'German Orange Strawberry', and 'Great White') have produced something, and I'm confident even these will give some fruit before the end of the season. Mizuna has rebounded from its first proper cropping, and I'll let it grow back once or twice more. Stem lettuces are huge, but suffering in the heat a little; chard is growing well; swedes were thriving but have been ravaged by caterpillars; turnips likewise, but with slugs. I'll need to tidy the whole garden pretty ruthlessly as things start to wind down through the rest of autumn, but for now, I've been getting more outdoor joinery done (this time, building a shed).

Many more harvests to come!

Some thoughts on beer

2011-09-27T19:20:00.001+01:00

Not the kind of Belgian beer I favour.

The weekend before last I had the great pleasure to attend my first-ever beer festival. There are no breweries in my town, and hence no beer festivals, but the next town north has one (sadly, it took place while I was in Reykjavík), and the next town south, which is the one I went to. I hadn't thought to look up when it was happening, but fortuitously, it was on the very day I was planning on going down there to mooch around the shops (there's an excellent greengrocer where I bought quinces a few weeks ago, and an independent kitchenware shop that sells the flip-top bottles I use for homemade liqueurs). When I mentioned it to my friends, they told me about the beer festival - so we made a date (we're all partial to beer, but they tend to shop for value, so their house is filled with mass market swill).

I've never been to either a food festival or a beer festival before - indeed, my town lacks even a farmers' market, it's so divorced from local producers. So I had no idea what to expect. I downloaded the list of beers, and organised them in order of the distance between my house and the brewery - since there were dozens, I had to decide which to try, to get my priorities straight in advance. I was told they would sell beer in 1/3 pints, as well as halves and whole pints - since I wanted to try the most possible, and not get drunk, that was ideal. Even so, I was unlikely to get through even the ones from the five counties of Northwest England (Lancashire, Cumbria, Cheshire, Greater Manchester, and Merseyside). In fact, the extremely useful website Quaffale informed me there are 108 operating breweries in the region - each producing several beers, sometimes dozens. Although the beer festival didn't have anything like all of them, it had enough to stretch a determined taster for its three days' duration. We were only going for one session, so I needed to be picky.

A large hall was filled with tables and chairs in the middle, a long bar down each side, and a smaller one in a corner. After paying entry (£3), you could buy cards of £10 or £5 value, divided into 5p, 10p, 20p, and 50p (I think); the bar staff would then cross off the amount you spent on each drink - a clever way to avoid their needing tills. You hired a glass - either a pint or a half (with a marking for 1/3) for a £2 deposit. Then you could pick whichever beer you wanted. There were around 70 domestic ales (mostly local), over 40 international bottles beers (half of them Belgian), and maybe 20 draught "farmhouse" ciders and perries.

I began with the brewery in the town holding the festival. Then one just a couple of miles from my house. My friends chose more or less at random, but we soon started splitting international beers between us - so we could try the most possible, and because they were more expensive on average. So I never got much further than 20 miles away, but I managed to try 23 beers and a single cider (I hadn't intended to, but it was a good palate cleanser, and I was intrigued that they made cider in my county - I'd never heard of such a thing).

The impression I got was consistent and rather disappointing: I much prefer Belgian beer to anything produced in the UK. That is not to say every UK ale disappoints - some are superb, and I would like to source some from the nearest brewery for future festivities (such as my birthday) - nor that Belgian beers are always good. Of course, it's a matter of taste - but mine seems to favour the Trappist styles, especially lambics, which are invariably more complex, fruity, with larger, more persistent heads, and usually higher alcohol levels. The difference, I suspect, is in the yeast - British brewers tend to employ standard brewing yeast (mostly Saccharomyces cerevisiae, or for lagers S. pastorianus), whereas many Belgian beers are brewed with wild yeasts (such as Brettanomyces spp.), native to the region, which produce more more varied aromatic compounds.

In fact, some homebrew shops now sell "lambic yeasts", which will probably match fairly closely those strains found in the old Belgian breweries, but I am not aware of any such beers made in this country (I am very happy to be proven wrong on that matter, however). I intend at some point, perhaps over the winter, when the garden is not a priority, to start making beer at home, so I will give it a try myself. However, I am left with the slightly annoying conclusion: I prefer Belgian beer. This means two things: most pubs do not serve the kind of beer I like (though having any real ale on tap is preferable to the standard international conglomerates' industrial products), and to drink what I like will cost more than the average pint. Ah well, one must suffer for quality sometimes...

I should point out, one style of beer I adore is not Belgian, namely IPA (especially so-called "American-style" IPAs, whether made in the US or over here). And I've had many enjoyable craft beers from the United States in other styles, and from other places too.

Addendum: I joined CAMRA at the festival. I'd considered it in the past, but £20 seemed a bit much for tenuous benefits. Well, this time it made sense. They refunded the £3 entry, gave you a £5 drinks voucher card, and promised £20' Wetherspoon vouchers. I appreciate the image this organisation has (for those who don't know, it's the CAMpaign for Real Ale, which seeks to support traditional brewing and pubs), but I support its aims, and share its dismay at the direction beer, brewing, and pubs had taken in recent decades (before the micro-brewing renaissance of the last few years).

September harvest: week three

2011-09-24T17:15:00.002+01:00

I started taking portraits of my ripe tomatoes, one variety at a time. Sadly, I used the wrong camera settings for several, so they weren't good enough to be uploaded to Flickr, but they are alright reduced in size for use here. Clockwise, from upper left: 'Cherokee Purple', 'Gardener's Delight', 'Sun Belle', 'Jaune Flammée'.

Tomatoes are rolling in (if you'll excuse the awkward metaphor) now - a few hundred grammes every couple of days. I tend to ripen them indoors (picking them when they are ripe enough to come off the vine, but less than fully coloured), because if I don't, they get nibbled. Sadly, some have elected to go mouldy before becoming fully edible, especially 'Costoluto Fiorentino', whose ribs must provide an ideal hiding place for fungal spores. Still, their colours gladden my heart, and I've started photographing them so I have a copyright-free record (and because they are pretty).

Totals for week 15th-21st September:
15th: 1 'Jaune Flammée' tomato at 6g, 12g pumpkin flower (day total: 18g)
16th: 350g tomatoes (comprising 1 'Jaune Flammée' at 22g, 1 'Costoluto Fiorentino' at 12g, 2 'Super Marmande' at 164g, 1 'Cherokee Purple' at 152g)
18th: 5g pumpkin flower, 21g runner beans, 6g French beans, 326g tomatoes (comprising 11 'Gardener's Delight' at 61g, 1 'Costoluto Fiorentino' at 68g, 3 'Jaune Flammée' at 58g, 2 'Cream Sausage' at 52g, 7 'Sun Belle' at 52g, 5 'Snowberry' at 35g; day total: 358g)
20th: 4g French beans, 2g runner beans, 426g tomatoes (comprising 1 'Cherokee Purple' at 180g, 1 'Costoluto Fiorentino' at 28g, 4 'Jaune Flammée' at 47g, 4 'Gardener's Delight' at 28g, 8 'Sun Belle' at 60g, 1 'Snowberry' at 11g, 4 'Green Zebra' at 172g; day total: 432g)
Week total: 1.158kg
Year to date total: 25.032kg

More than a kilo is respectable, and passing the 25kg mark is pleasing, if not especially significant. As a spoiler to the following week's harvest, I've got chard, turnips, and many more tomatoes and beans, so I'm pretty happy with where the garden is right now.

Making liqueurs

2011-09-20T23:45:00.001+01:00

Preamble

A few years ago I got hooked on cocktails. It began when I ordered a box of assorted premium spirits from an online retailer. I still have the email, so I can say it contained 3 bottles of premium plain vodka, and one bottle each of berry- and lime-flavoured vodka. Throughout my sixth form and university years, my tastes for alcohol changed, as you would expect. When I was a teenager, I drank tequila, alcopops (which were still quite new then), and whatever else was cheapest. Then vodka and orange (again the cheapest I could find) took centre stage, before I gave up drinking almost entirely for over a year. When I resumed, I started taking advantage of the good wine shops in the city, and tried numerous whites and rosés (red was still rather too challenging on a daily basis).

In France, where I spent a lot of time in my third year (I studied French, see), I drank more wine (I have fond memories of the chain Nicolas's budget rosé range, where you could get a very decent bottle for €2.50, which in those days was a pittance), and kir, which was invariably the cheapest drink in bars (white wine, traditionally Bourgogne aligoté, with crème de cassis - blackcurrant liqueur). Returning to the UK afterwards, I started enjoying the odd Long Island iced tea, and vodka. So by this point - not long before I finished - my tastes were broad, and I was eager to learn more.

I also liked absinthe, but that's another story.

When I finished my degree, I had a lot of spare time, and I started reading books on cocktails. You might be surprised - but a food-lover is likely to enjoy reading recipe books, and cocktail formulae are merely simple recipes. What I started to do was make lists of drinks I wanted to try, and the ingredients I needed to buy in order to make them. By the end of this period, two or three years later, I had a personal collection of well over 100 spirits, liqueurs, bitters, and many more syrups and mixers. I've since drunk, given away, or disposed of them all - my house no longer regularly contains alcohol at all, as it's too much of a temptation. However, I do enjoy making my own, and recently I've begun making liqueurs again, from seasonal fruit - sometimes home-grown.

The issue at hand

The beauty of this is, they are useful as straight drinks - Amalfi limoncello is beautiful over ice - but particularly good in simple, delicious cocktails. The fruit syrup is great too, of course, but its keeping qualities are much poorer. The alcohol in a liqueur should keep it fresh for many months, especially if unopened.

You can flavour liqueurs with almost anything. And I should say, before I continue, that by 'liqueur' (not to be confused with liquor), I mean a syrupy, sweetened alcoholic drink made from fruit, herbs, spices, nuts, and the like, combined with sugar and spirit alcohol, usually 15-25% alcohol by volume (though some commercial ones are stronger). I'll leave out cream liqueurs here, which include the addition of dairy products, and sometimes eggs, because they are rather different in production and keeping qualities.

This week I've made two, with a third in production - quince, plum, and pear. These fruits are ripe now, so are perfect for transforming into things that can be enjoyed later, but almost anything can be used - though some are easier than others.

Basic liqueur recipe
ingredients
Fresh, ripe, seasonal fruit
Sugar
Spirit (vodka, brandy, and rum are best, but whisky and gin are possible)
Optionally: citric acid, lemons or limes, water
basic method

First the flavour of the fruit must be extracted. There are three main ways of doing this. First, you may juice them directly. This works well with firm, watery fruits, like apples and watermelon. Use a domestic juicer. The second method, which is suitable for all types of fruit, is to gently heat the fruit in a pan, with a small amount of water. The third is to steep the fruit, whole or chopped, in the spirit, but I'll say more on that below.
Take the juice, or the heated pulp, and strain. The best way to do this is using a sieve lined with muslin. If there is a lot of pulp, skin, etc, you may be best sieving it without the muslin first, to remove most of the solids. Gently press the mass wrapped in muslin if you like - but the result may be a slightly cloudy liqueur.
Then, put the clarified juice in a pan, and add sugar, lemon, and citric acid to taste. I only started using citric acid recently, but find it excellent for correcting the acid/sugar balance. It's a white powder, used in many types of cooking, and sold in some supermarkets, ethnic food shops, and home brew suppliers. A little goes a long way, but it really perks up the juice, and can help bring out the flavour of less than perfect fruit. It's also great if you add too much sugar, as it brings the mixture back into balance.
Once it tastes right, add the alcohol. The strength is up to you - I'd say no more than 50/50. Then readjust the sweetness and acidity - remember, the alcohol will have a certain kick, or burn, and the final sugar and acid levels will be higher than in a non-alcoholic syrup in order to carry this - unless you use very smooth, expensive alcohol, which is a bit of a waste anyway.
Once it is to your taste, pour into clean, sterilised bottles. Store in a dark, cool place. The flavours are often said to "mature" over several months - possibly due to slow chemical reactions between the alcohol, sugar, and acid - but I am not sure if there's any real difference (unlike, say, in a wine, where there's a much more complex interplay with dead yeast enzymes, etc).

The colours can be beautiful - I don't understand why most commercial examples are still coloured artificially, since fruit and herbs have so much of their own. Of course, if you use golden sugar, or brown spirit (like brandy), or honey (a little of which makes a lovely addition to some), then it will be darker.

The third way is more traditional. Take a large jar, and place alternating layers of sugar and fruit into it. Add the spirit of your choosing to cover. Ideally, you would fill it, otherwise the fruit will often float to the top - but you can weigh it down (this is how a "Rumtopf" or rum pot is made - but in that case, mixed fruit is usually used). Leave for two weeks up to several months, until the liquid is fruity and coloured. Strain. The problem I have with this method is there is no easy way of adjusting the sweetness until the end. It is, however, easier, and you end up with alcohol-soaked fruit, which can be useful as a dessert in itself (although it's not really my cup of tea). This method tends to produce a stronger finished liqueur than those above.

Ways to serve

A good liqueur is excellent served straight, in a small glass especially for that purpose, or a sherry schooner, small wine glass, or even a brandy snifter. Over ice can work well, and sparkling water can be added for a long drink. A simple cocktail can be made by shaking a measure or two of spirit over ice with at least as much liqueur, and possibly a little lemon or lime juice, or the juice of whatever fruit is in the liqueur, or a complementary one, and possibly sugar syrup. It's all to taste, so I can't specify - I prefer much more sour cocktails than most people. Experiment!

It goes almost without saying that this is an excellent way of dealing with a glut of fruit, and makes a lovely handmade gift for those who like a tipple. At the very least, the bright, jewel-like colours are likely to gladden the heart, especially deep in winter.

The picture above shows, in the bottles left to right, plum (also in the glass), banana, pear, and quince liqueurs, all made this month.

September harvest: week two

2011-09-15T19:30:00.000+01:00

Tomatoes, large and small, ripe and unripe. A good impression of the range of colours and forms the varieties I've been growing have taken.

This week was all about tomatoes. Finally! Sadly, many of the ones I picked were not yet ripe, but I had to save them from my mollusc enemies - the recent wet weather hasn't harmed the plants directly (I'd say it's been too windy for blight conditions), but has encouraged the slugs and snails to gorge - and they often take a little out of the side of an unripe tomato. They will ripen adequately indoors, though they'll lack the intensity of flavour you get when they reach full ripeness on the vine. Still, on the basis of weight alone, I should be happy.

Totals for week 8th-14th September:
8th: 12g pumpkin flower, 156g tomatoes (comprising one each 'Cream Sausage' at 21g, 'Super Marmande' at 45g, and 'Summer Cider' at 90g; day total: 168g)
9th: 74g tomatoes (comprising 1 'Super Marmande' at 67g, and 2 'Gardener's Delight' at 7g)
11th: 5g French beans, 77g tomatoes (comprising 5 'Sun Belle' at 28g, and one each 'Super Marmande' at 21g, 'Cream Sausage' at 10g, 'Jaune Flammée' at 11g, and 'Snowberry' at 7g; day total: 82g)
14th: 15g French beans, 1.083kg tomatoes (comprising 2 'Cherokee Purple' at 236g, 2 'Costoluto Fiorentino' at 108g, 7 'Jaune Flammée' at 91g, 2 'Sun Belle' at 21g, 2 'Snowberry' at 12g, 12 'Gardener's Delight' at 81g, and 7 'Super Marmande' at 534g; day total: 1.098kg)
Week total: 1.422kg
Year to date total: 23.874kg

In the next couple of weeks, I'll get another picking of mizuna, possibly the first kohl rabi (some have started to swell), more runner beans (they had a second flush of flowers), and hopefully many more tomatoes. I can't say this is the harvest cornucopia I'd pictured back in the spring, but I've learned a lot through my failures - most importantly, patience.

September harvest: week one

2011-09-11T12:30:00.001+01:00

A plate of mixed tomatoes.

Here they have been put into an ovenproof dish, drizzled with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. The larger ones have been chopped.

And this is what they look like after being roasted in a medium oven for over an hour.

The weather this week has not been kind to the tomatoes, but it has suited the autumn vegetables. We've had a bit of everything - sunshine, rain, wind - alternating rapidly. Currently, I'm awaiting the second major storm of the season, this time the remnants of a hurricane, which means outdoor work (such as fencing, painting, repairing previous wind damage) is on hold. The only minor concern is the newest addition to my garden, a quince tree, which has gone in the front. It's a pretty exposed position, though very sunny and with good soil, so I need to stake the tree today to stop it rocking about in the ground, preventing the roots settling. Other than that, ripening is slow. Too little sun has made this a summer of disappointment for many - comparing notes with family who've been visiting recently, confirmed it wasn't just a northern problem. But I have successfully ripened green tomatoes indoors with a banana in a bag (a traditional method, which never ceases to amaze, despite its simplicity) - and I suspect more fruit will go through that process than will ripen on the vine.

Totals for week 1st-7th September:
1st: 11g French beans, 11g runner beans, 193g tomatoes (comprising 3 'Jaune Flammée' at 57g, 1 'Costoluto Fiorentino' at 61g, 2 'Snowberry' at 8g, 6 'Gardener's Delight' at 35g*, and 5 'Sun Belle' at 32g; day total: 215g)
2nd: 28g summer squash, 2g French beans, 45g tomatoes (comprising 4 'Gardener's Delight' at 17g, 1 'Jaune Flammée' at 21g, 1 'Snowberry' at 7g; day total: 75g)
4th: 13g pumpkin flowers, 1g runner beans, 15g radish, 49g tomatoes (comprising 6 'Sun Belle' at 20g, 5 'Gardener's Delight' at 23g, 2 'Snowberry' at 6g), 483g apples (day total: 561g)
6th: 30g French beans, 30g tomatoes (comprising 2 'Snowberry' at 14g, 3 'Gardener's Delight' at 14g, 1 'Sun Belle' at 2g; day total: 60g)
7th: 2g French beans, 61g tomatoes (comprising 3 'Jaune Flammée' at 47g, 2 'Gardener's Delight' at 12g, 1 'Sun Belle' at 2g; day total: 63g)
Week total: 974g
Year to date total: 22.452kg

Still, nearly a kilo of produce in a week is not bad - around half of that apples, from the smallest 'tree' in the world (a tiny, knee-high standard my grandfather passed over to me a couple of years ago; last year it carried no fruit at all, this time it had nine, though all were very small). Enough tomatoes for a few meals, enough to gladden the heart and give me an incentive to grow more next year (as if I needed one). Their taste is incomparable.

Meanwhile, I've had a lot of bought produce to deal with. It's a time of plenty, with fruit and vegetables very cheap in all the shops, so I've been making liqueurs, and have plans for more preserves and frozen desserts. Stocking up for winter!

*I couldn't remember exactly how much, between 30 and 39g, so I split the difference.

Banana bread

2011-09-03T16:40:00.000+01:00

I have Nigella Lawson to thank for this one. Well, her and the local chain of posh supermarkets, which has a habit of bagging up old bananas and selling them off cheap. A kilo or more for 50-60p. Now, I'm not a fan of overripe bananas. Until recently, I didn't even like ripe ones - my preference was for those large, perfect fruits that were still blushed with green. Not unripe - those have a mouth-drying character bordering on the tannic - but not yet fully yellow. I've since moved on to those whose banana aroma is fully developed, but whose flesh is still firm, and not at all mushy. Anyway, I still won't eat these reduced bananas, but they are a wonderful resource for cooking.

The best thing to do is, as soon as you get them home (or, in my case, a day or two later), peel and chop them, lay them out onto trays lined with something non-stick, and freeze them. Then, the next day, split them between freezer bags, and keep them until needed. A handful in a smoothie provides richness, body, and a cool sweetness without the need for ice cubes. They can be softened in the microwave and added to porridge. Best of all, however, they make banana bread - a simple luxury, rich and warming.

The original recipe (or, I should say, the previous iteration, since Nigella explains hers is but a refinement of another recipe) is in How to be a domestic goddess, but the first time I had occasion to make it, I was lacking a couple of ingredients. Now, many banana bread recipes I have seen call for nuts, as hers did (walnuts, to be precise), but I rarely have any in - I do, in fact, like nuts now (as a child I hated them), but they are so expensive, I must reserve them for very special occasions. As it is, I don't see that they add much beyond a crunch in this context. By all means, add some if you have them to hand, but they are not essential.

The other missing ingredient was alcohol. Ms Lawson does so revel in rich food, and she recommends poaching the sultanas in bourbon or rum before incorporating them into the cake, but this is another ingredient I rarely have. I have a little too much love for liquor, so I don't keep it in the house (or perhaps I should say, I buy it, but it never lasts long). I don't see that an alcoholic tang would sit well with the other ingredients, so I'd advise leaving it out, even if your drinks cabinet is fully stocked.

So, my version of this recipe is pared down, simplified, but no less indulgent for it. A word on the name - this is, quite clearly, a cake, not a bread. But 'banana cake' lacks a certain cadence, and besides, it conjures up an image of something with a layer of caramelised, possibly semi-dried, whole fruits - like a pineapple upside-down cake. This is rather different (and often baked in a loaf tin).

Simple banana bread
makes one large loaf
ingredients
300g bananas (peeled weight), as ripe as you like - even very bruised fruit will do
150g sugar (a golden sugar, as in so many things, adds extra richness)
125g butter, melted
175g plain flour
100g sultanas
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
a dash of vanilla extract
a pinch of salt
method
I've found it really doesn't matter what order you do this in; mash the bananas until mostly puréed (a few lumps are no problem), add the butter, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and sultanas, and mix together thoroughly. Combine the dry ingredients, then mix with the rest, until you have a batter (make sure no lumps of flour remain). Pour/spoon into a loaf tin, or cake moulds, or even muffin cases; note that the smaller the cakes, the shorter the cooking time, so I'd advise rather than a set length, just keep your eye on them, and test with a skewer when they look done - if the (metal) skewer comes out clean, they are ready. Bake at gas 3/170ºC until done.

You can do this in a food processor - but in that case, reserve the sultanas and stir in at the end (or they'll get pulverised).

August harvest: week four/monthly summary

2011-09-02T16:00:00.001+01:00

Say hello to mizuna pesto. I harvested so much I had to find a recipe that required a lot. It's such a vibrant green - though I don't yet know whether it will be delicious.

I'm continuing the practice of lumping together the final part of the month, even though it exceeds seven days - it doesn't make sense to have a 'week five' post for three extra days. So the figure below can't be seen as a week's harvest, but given the low figures this month, I don't suppose it will matter. Ultimately, my totals will be for the whole year (when it's over), so there's no need to nitpick.

Growth may have slowed in some areas (the tomatoes are putting more energy into swelling existing fruit, than getting much bigger or setting a lot of new ones), but is still fast elsewhere - windowsill herbs, and autumn-cropping leaves and roots are racing ahead. However, I'm still very much waiting for the harvest. I've all but given up on my 50kg total tomato haul, although my attitude goes from positivity to pessimism almost daily. It depends largely on how much the larger fruits weigh - the 'Cherokee Purple' have grown quite fat, though ripening is nowhere to be seen. The smaller varieties are well underweight - in fact, everything I've picked so far has been less than a quarter the lower expected average weight, which means my sums will be all wrong. To put it in context, I'd assumed the average weight would be 50g per tomato, and so far only two or three fruits has exceeded that. At this rate, unless I harvest several times more fruits than I estimated, I will miss my target by an order of magnitude.

Totals for week 22nd-31st August:
22nd: 89g tomatoes (comprising 2 'Cream Sausage' at 30g*, 4 'Snowberry' at 24g, 2 'Jaune Flammée' at 23g, 2 'Gardener's Delight' at 7g, and 1 'Sun Belle' at 5g)
24th: 6g runner beans, 5g French beans, 34g tomatoes (comprising 4 'Gardener's Delight' at 24g, and 2 'Snowberry' at 10g; day total: 45g)
26th: 43g tomatoes (comprising 1 'Jaune Flammée' at 22g, 2 'Sun Belle' at 11g, and 3 'Gardener's Delight' at 10g)
27th: 6g runner beans, 2g French beans, 32g tomatoes (comprising 1 each 'Jaune Flammée' and 'Snowberry', both 5g, and 3 'Gardener's Delight' at 22g; day total: 40g)
28th: 40g mizuna, 25g radish, 3g chives, 54g tomatoes (comprising 1 'Jaune Flammée' at 11g, 2 'Snowberry' at 15g, 2 'Gardener's Delight' at 8g, and 4 'Sun Belle' at 20g; day total: 122g)
30th: 16g runner beans, 39g tomatoes (comprising 1 'Snowberry' at 9g, 1 'Jaune Flammée' at 12g, 1 'Sun Belle' at 6g, and 2 'Gardener's Delight' at 12g; day total: 55g)
31st: 3 'Cherokee Purple' tomatoes at 266g**, 408g mizuna (day total: 674g)
Total for 10 days: 1.068kg
Total for August: 2.536kg
Year to date total: 21.478kg

Over a kilogramme! Mostly tomatoes and mizuna. The latter has been an unexpected star - it was ready before I expected, based on average cropping time, and it regenerated in just a few days after its first cutting. I've had it in salad, stir fry, and will use the biggest batch for a kind of pesto.

I suppose September will be the month for tomatoes. I can see signs of ripening on dozens of fruits now, inside and out. The kohl rabi, turnips, black radish, swede, and beetroot are beginning to swell, so I might get some by the end of the month. The carrots are slower, so they may be an October crop. The stem lettuce have swollen alarmingly, but I don't know the crop well enough to know how long they will take to mature. There's still time for more sowing, so I hope to have a lot more in the ground in a few weeks - it's easy to think of September and October as autumn months, but the average temperatures aren't much lower than summer, so the harvests should continue for weeks to come.

*These were suffering from blossom end rot, but ripened regardless.
**A large truss split, and three fruits snapped off, unripe. I'm hoping to ripen them indoors with the aid of a banana.

Planning ahead

2011-08-27T23:04:00.004+01:00

I think this is 'Super marmande'. In any case, many of the larger tomato varieties are now swelling, promising a reasonable crop, though none show signs of ripening just yet.

I have tasted fewer than half the varieties of tomato I am growing this year - although I think I will be able to try at least one of each before the frosts.

However, seed fever has taken me again, and I have planned next year's list of varieties already. It is subject to change, but only addition - a few of those I have at the moment have not yet proven themselves, but they may be redeemed later in the season. Some seeds remain from the purchases of 6 months ago, so obviously I will start with these. Then, some which I do not have spare, but which have done so well already, I will gather the seeds from. Finally, I have chosen a few varieties that either come highly recommended, or which fill gaps in the size/shape/colour/habit combinations, or whose names I like, or which duplicate 2011's attributes, but might be even better. I'd set my limit at 20 varieties - which sounds like a lot, but in fact, I'd say it's no harder to grow 60 of 20 types than 60 all the same. I knew I'd overshoot a little, so here is the first draft, amounting to 23.

Varieties in bold will be making a return appearance after this year; asterisks denote those whose seeds I will have to collect myself.

Black cherry
Black prince
Brown berry
Carbon
Caspian pink
Cherokee purple
Cream sausage*
Garden peach
Garden pearl
Gardener's delight
German orange strawberry
Great white
Ildi
Japanese black trifele
Jaune flammée*
Jubilee
Plum lemon
Stupice
Sungold
Super marmande
White cherry
White wonder
Zloty ozarowski

A few notes. I will not save seed from this year's crop of 'Gardener's delight', because although they have grown well, the fruits are small, and I am not convinced I have a very good strain (the seeds, if you remember, came free with a magazine a couple of years ago). 'Brown berry' will grow alongside 'Black cherry' - they are very similar, and I want to know which I prefer. 'White cherry' will be compared with this year's 'Snowberry', which has not yet earned a place in the lineup. 'Garden pearl (Gartenperle)' will stand as comparison with 'Gardener's delight'; 'White wonder' with 'Great white' (although the former is smaller); I suppose 'Ildi' is next year's 'Sun belle'. 'Sungold', 'Zloty ozarowski', and 'Jubilee' are there because I realised my favourite tomato colour is orange - and I want to see if anything matches 'Jaune flammée', my absolute favourite of the year so far. 'Garden peach' is a peach tomato - namely, one that has a slight furriness, a fuzz, on its surface, and can look very much like its namesake - a type I nearly tried this year. Finally, all were selected from their peers on the basis of earliest ripening - since my garden clearly isn't hot or sunny enough to get fruit to harvest in the standard number of days (all have been around five weeks behind this year - not always due to incompetence).

So, exciting times. I don't yet know how many plants in total I will grow - 100 seems a nice figure, but it depends on how much I get this year - my goal of 50kg hangs in the balance; if I make it, a hundred will be too many. Of course, if I get an allotment in time, I will grow more.

I'll return to this subject in a few months, when I have finished assessing this year's varieties, and when I've bought the seeds I need.

August harvest: week three

2011-08-21T19:00:00.000+01:00

The mizuna is ready! I snipped one third of the catch crop I sowed in the first raised bed, which was plenty! The odd tiny slug and snail were dealt with by soaking in salted water and thorough rinsing. I'll pick more in the next day or two.

Slim pickings again, but I've had a little of something more than every other day. The tomatoes are ripening gradually, giving me enough for a salad here, a pasta sauce there, but nowhere near the quantities I need for preserving. Another variety came on-stream this week: 'Sun Belle'. I'll obviously be doing full summaries of each variety later in the year, but my initial impression was, it's sweeter and less acid than its near-twin 'Snowberry' (the former not as golden as expected, the latter not quite as pale). Delicious, anyhow.

Totals for week 15th-21st August:
16th: 70g tomatoes (comprising 2 'Jaune Flammée' at 38g, 3 'Snowberry' at 15g, and 4 'Gardener's Delight' at 17g)
17th: 9g French beans
20th: 2g French beans, 34g runner beans (day total: 36g)
21st: 121g tomatoes (comprising 2 'Costoluto Fiorentino' at 76g, 3 'Gardener's Delight', 3 'Sun Belle', and 2 'Snowberry', each at 15g), 80g mizuna (day total: 201g)
Week total: 316g
Year to date total: 20.41kg

So, I didn't manage another 500g. Not to worry - I have been doing other things (including building the side gate, finally - a key step in securing the back garden, which has not had a lockable gate for two or three years, and has never been private). The raised beds in the front garden are growing so fast, it fills me with pride, and spurs me on - I want more like that! I'll do another tomato update very soon, but I will just mention here that there is a lot of fruit coming - including some rather large 'Cherokee Purple' (outside!). I might get to 21kg by the end of the month.

The height of summer

2011-08-14T19:45:00.000+01:00

There have been a few large butterflies hanging round my front garden this summer, but only one at a time. This red admiral kept startling me today.

Another garden update? Aside from the tomatoes (which I wrote about a few days ago), so much is going on right now, I thought I'd do a summary. What's coming up to harvest, what's just germinating, what's yet to be sown.

I started this post over a week ago. This is what the seedlings in my first (shallow) front garden raised bed looked like...

...and here it is today. The mizuna has lived up to its reputation as a good catch crop, being ready now, long before the beetroot (left) and kohl rabi (right).

This is the other (deep) raised bed. In one half, carrots, swede, and radishes are just appearing, while here, I have transplanted stem lettuce (celtuce; above), and rainbow chard (below).

First, the old. The beans and squash aren't doing too bad, considering my earlier neglect and worries! Okay, so 95% of what I sowed went to waste, but what I did find space for has burgeoned. The runner beans have just started showing signs of setting pods - so maybe there will be a crop, after a few dozen failed flowers. They have been pretty, and not defoliated by snails as they have been in previous years. The French beans, on the other hand, have been problem-free since I sowed them. They have lovely, rich purple flowers, purple-tinged stems, and it seems, purple-blushed pods. They're actually ahead of the runners, even though they were slower to get started. They lose their colour when cooked, so it's best to just quickly steam them, or pick young and eat raw.

Finally - baby runner beans! And lots of them. They should be ready in a week or two.

The squash were a bit of a disaster. I sowed dozens, of around ten varieties. But most I allowed to die - I just didn't have the space or soil for them, and I was concentrating on tomatoes. I planted one in a large container on the terrace, where runner beans had been. It had been thriving in the greenhouse, but almost immediately was attacked by snails in its new home. I thought I'd lose it - but it fought back. Now I think it will survive. One more (a different kind) went into the large runner bean pot - it has grown well, straight up the sturdy supports. This week, I spotted the first, tiny, embryonic fruit - so there's hope. Actually, I've been overrun with self-sown squash - wherever I've spread homemade compost, they have sprung up. I've left a few, around the place, where they aren't harming other plants. Their identity, and whether they will produce anything, I can't comment on.

After my tomatoes, this might be my greatest achievement so far - a tiny pumpkin! It's 'Uchiki Kuri', a (one-day-to-be) red Japanese "onion squash".

Now the new. All but two of the things I sowed at the start of the month have germinated (the two that haven't are year-old red perilla seed - it may be one that loses viability quickly - and mixed salad leaves, which were several years old, and had come free with a magazine - there are plenty more where they came from). The ones that have grown are rainbow chard, stem lettuce ("celtuce"), Chinese cabbage, mizuna, mibuna, mispoona, kailaan, tsoi sim, heading lettuce, green perilla, fennel (herb), and sage indoors, and turnips, beetroot, more mizuna, black radish, kohl rabi, and mesclun (mixed salad) outside. Parsley and namenia, both also sown outdoors in trays, were destroyed by slugs and too much sun respectively - they will be restarted indoors. In the last week or so I've also sown carrots, cheeky late summer squash, swede, and radishes outdoors, and several kinds of basil (Thai, holy, purple, cinnamon, and Genovese) and bulb fennel inside.

This is perilla. I sowed green and red, but only the green has germinated. It's perfect for sushi and Japanese-style pickles.

And sage! You can grow it from seed, and it's so easy, why would I ever buy plants again?

And here is another aromatic herb - basil. This is standard ('Sweet Genovese'), but I also have several other kinds. Still tiny!

The near future holds a little more sowing - spring cabbage, more basil (Greek, maybe giant-leaved), kale, cavolo nero, more carrots, more radishes, more turnips, perhaps some cheeky late chillies - I can overwinter them indoors or in the greenhouse if they take. Then it's over for a few months - until November probably, when the greenhouse will be cleared of tomatoes and repopulated with winter salads and oriental vegetables, and outdoors I can attempt overwintering broad beans and peas. I'll also plant some garlic and shallots, maybe onions too - since most of what's going in now will be harvested by then. I've found an exciting mixed multipack of garlic sets, nine different varieties, for £17.99. Pretty expensive, you'd think, but that will easily provide enough garlic for a year - 10 bulbs and 5 extra cloves, let's say 8 cloves per bulb, could make as many as 85 bulbs by next summer. They sit out during the winter and spring, so they're not competing with other crops for at least half their lifespan, and they can be planted quite densely - I'll only need a couple of raised beds for them. I eat a lot of garlic, so it makes sense. As for shallots, I will plant some next spring as I did this year, but some (especially Japanese varieties) can go in before winter, and I'd like to see if they're worth it. As for onions, I have a pack of 'North Holland Blood Red' seeds, which I got for spring onions, but they are a dual-purpose variety, which can be grown as full-sized red onions. I might see how that goes.

Plenty of seedlings on my windowsill again! In the foreground, heading lettuce 'Pinares'.

August harvest: week two

2011-08-14T18:30:00.013+01:00

My camera has problems focusing in less-than-perfect light. Still, you can see the range of colours in the three varieties of tomato I picked today. The red one on the left is the mutant bloom I mentioned two months ago.

Another light week. There a lot of variety, but not much substance. The tomatoes are delicious, at least, and everything is brightly coloured. I'm a little concerned by the continuing paucity of tomatoes and beans, but I'm comforted by thriving autumn crops, which are germinating all over the place.

Totals for week 8th-14th August:
8g French beans, 54g tomatoes (4x'Gardener's Delight': 21g; 2x 'Jaune Flammée': 33g; day total: 62g)
12th: 121g beetroot, 87g beet tops (day total: 208g)
14th: 4g French beans, 164g tomatoes (2x'Costoluto Fiorentino': 79g; 4x'Jaune Flammée': 66g; 3x'Snowberry': 19g), 537g shallots (day total: 705g)
Week total: 975g
Year to date total: 20.094kg

My informal goal this week was 20kg, but I knew it was unlikely. In fact, until I cleaned, trimmed, and weighed the shallots, I thought I'd missed it. It may seem convenient that I harvested them this week, but in fact they were as ready as they'd ever be - their leaves had mostly died back, although the bulbs were pretty small. Still, for an old recycling box of unimproved compost, it's not bad. Most of them have gone into a batch of marrow chutney I'm just making.

I suppose, to be realistic, I can't expect more than 500g this coming week, but we'll see.

Could this be my future? (part 3)

2011-08-11T14:30:00.000+01:00

A little more exotic: a bed of netted cavolo nero kale, perfect, dark, inviting. For hearty Tuscan-style soups and stews, or maybe pasta dishes.

Am I that easily swayed? Half an hour in the allotments, and I was thinking about applying for one? Apparently so. It's that I've never thought about it though. I have considered it, and rejected it, for complex reasons. But they all seemed irrelevant when I was there - it was a transformational experience. That so close to home, hidden away, was this other world, where normal, local people were producing so much wonderful food. The plots were big, but not unmanageably so, they were pleasant - even joyous - places to spend time, not places of work, but spaces created by their owners, where nature was corralled, chivvied, encouraged to do what they wanted, but not without allowing space for its own preferences. Birds, insects, wild flowers, were all around, no doubt helping as much as they hindered - predating pests as well as crops, attracting pollinators as much as competing with the cultivated plants.

I'm not sure if these celery were being grown for a competition - but they would certainly be worthy of a prize. Fascinating to see how they've blanched them with metallic insulation, keeping them clean and white.

Here and there, was a sign of the "traditional" allotment culture that had repelled me in advance. Show vegetables: those grown for their appearance, size, regularity, in order to win prizes, rather than primarily for eating. One large greenhouse contained a couple of dozen onions and leeks, the former as large as my head, the latter as thick as my arm. They were incredible - but thankfully in the minority, outnumbered by more realistic examples. The celery above, I suspect, was also grown for this purpose - there was other celery, not even earthed up, in other plots. Actually, apart from the size and spacing, this method, wrapping the stems in foil, seems very sensible, and worth doing generally - a reminder that these approaches are not mutually exclusive. Overall, the plots seemed geared towards producing as much tasty, fresh veg as possible - which I suppose is their purpose.

A view across the heart of the site. Onions of some kind are flowering in the foreground - vegetables are often as pretty as ornamental plants. Look how many greenhouses there are!

In fact, it was amazing how much people were getting from the space. The soil here is fertile. It's heavy - clay where I live, and probably a mixture of clay and peat on the allotment site (as I've mentioned, it was once a glacial lake bed). But even so, it takes extraordinary management of nutrients and space to get so many plants to grow this large, produce this much fruit, in a patch not much bigger than a suburban garden. Without exaggeration, I can say if I had such a plot (assuming I did as well as these folks), I could produce all the vegetables (and eggs, and non-exotic fruit) I would need - what an exciting prospect. It would be a lot of work, but everything in life is work, and at present, this option - producing as much as I can myself, so my overheads are as low as possible - attracts me the most.

A comfortable corner: massive columns of runner beans either side of a path, leading to a cosy blue shed. Not too neat or fussy, neither drab nor unkempt - a perfect allotment.

I can imagine myself there, the radio on in the shed, doing a few hours' work every couple of days. Taking myself away from the intensely urban environment in which I currently spend all my time. Not being limited by space - having the room to grow everything I want. Having a space that I can be proud of. Not instead of my garden here - but that will never be quite what I want, and there's nothing I can do to change that. Rather, a sanctuary, all my own. Running away without having to go anywhere very far. And of course, a source of so much more food.

I bought a few things from a stall they had set up (actually, there was a cafe, a raffle tent, a stand selling cakes, and a barbecue). An enormous marrow, bright yellow, the size of a baby - more than 4.5kg. A punnet of black grapes - yes, black grapes, ripe in August, here in northern England - small, but tasty. A bunch of beetroot, a couple of corn cobs, and some cucumbers.

And I sent an email enquiry about applying for an allotment myself. Next weekend it's the open day for the closest site to my house, where I'd always dreamed of having a plot - but it's on the largest road junction in town, so I suspect I'll like it less. Either way, I have a plan now. Given the waiting lists, I may have to be patient. But that will give me time to finish my garden here - no point in starting a new project until this one is complete. I can wait.

August harvest: week one

2011-08-10T19:00:00.000+01:00

I already posted a picture of the week's harvest in this entry, so here's a pretty shot of the French bean blossom - they are so ornamental, any crop is a bonus!

It wasn't a heavy week's harvest, but there was more out there than before. A few tomatoes, French beans, blackberries. Enough to brighten my plate here and there, but not enough to subsist on.

Totals for week 1st-7th August:
5th: 6g French beans, 80g 'Jaune Flammée' tomatoes (5 fruits), 42g 'Costoluto Fiorentino' tomatoes (1 fruit; tomato total: 122g), 32g blackberries, 3g nasturtium flowers, 3g Calendula flowers (edible flower total: 6g), 11g mesclun (day total: 177g)
Week total: 177g
Year to date total: 19.119kg

Meanwhile, the next door garden (belonging to my grandfather) was the star. He has a double plum tree (i.e. two varieties grafted onto one rootstock, though they have grown into effectively two separate trees), and the large, yellow-green variety (the other is a mirabelle, I believe - cherry-sized, red fruits, but it has never given a large crop) has cropped heavily again this year. I can't include them in my totals above, but the first picking (he'd already picked a lot, and some had fallen to the ground, yet there were as many again still on the tree) yielded just over 12kg. That was more than enough to occupy my kitchen for now. I made a batch of wine, reluctantly, as the last one (I made it two years ago) wasn't very nice, but there were so many, I needed to find some way of processing a lot in one go. The most delicious product so far has been plum sauce - the fragrant yellow fruits being converted into a rich, complex, satisfyingly balanced brown purée, with onion (or homegrown shallots in this case), garlic, vinegar, honey, brown sugar, five spice (home-blended and -ground), soy sauce, and sherry. Really delicious, which is excellent as it transforms the plums into something much nicer, and I've been converted to the stuff, having never much enjoyed commercial plum sauce in the past.

I also bought a few bits from the allotments on Sunday, including a 4.5kg marrow. I haven't yet done anything with it, but again it will require some ingenuity!

Could this be my future? (part 2)

2011-08-08T14:00:00.000+01:00

A bed of (curly/sea) kale, under protective netting. Pristine, beautiful. Enough for the whole winter! Needless to say, I'm jealous.

Early August is a perfect time for an open day. Almost everything is at its peak - the flowers certainly are, and there are still some vegetables that I associate more with spring and early summer, like broad beans, alongside midsummer favourites like runner beans, raspberries (must have been late season varieties), tomatoes, potatoes, maize, and things I'd expect to be ready much later in the year, like cabbages, kale, and leeks. The brassicas in particular were impressive - beautiful fat cabbages, perfect under their mesh protection, some silver-grey, some tinged with purple, others pale green. Onions, broccoli, lettuces - they were all represented. I was surprised how large some things were - pumpkins the size of cannonballs (mine are still marble-sized), fats cobs of corn - while others seemed late, those same crops freshly-planted. It seems the sowing and planting windows in the books and on seed packets are much more flexible in reality.

Another surprise - livestock! I didn't realise you could keep chickens and ducks on allotments - or together in the same cage! They seemed unperturbed by all the visitors. I'd love to keep both, especially ducks.

One "crop" I didn't expect was poultry. I suppose I may have heard of people keeping animals on allotments before, but it was still unexpected - clearly the rules here are quite flexible. I have toyed with keeping bantams at home, as my garden is too small for full-sized birds, but this would be perfect - there's space for them, and they provide a means of recycling waste plant material and pests like snails into fertiliser on site (and faster than composting).

Grapes weren't as popular as tomatoes, but there were a few - including the punnet I bought. Most seemed unripe, which is to be expected at this time of year. Growing them under glass means this person must be serious about fruit production, rather than just growing them as an ornamental.

Down the main avenue, I found more of the same - some plots were open, others more secluded. A big surprise was the many channels of water that ran through the site - between the plots and even under the paths, which crossed them on little wooden bridges. In fact, the whole area these allotments are on was once a glacial lake, which was largely drained in the eighteenth century, but the fact that the water was only a few inches lower than the grass paths, and was all around the site, was both charming and slightly unnerving. It had rained heavily overnight, but even so - I wonder if there is a problem with waterlogging, although none of the plots showed any sign of it (raised beds were the norm). One advantage, in either case, would be (despite piped water being provided, and water butts abounding), no shortage of water for irrigation (and I suppose you could even try growing watercress and other water-loving vegetables).

The biggest, densest, most perfect bed of strawberries I have ever seen. It ran half the length of this allotment, and although it's long past their season, the harvest was doubtless immense. Clearly the plot of a fanatic!

I have to admit, I didn't like the middle of the site as much as the first section I'd seen, as it was more open, but there were still hundreds of little corners, sheds and summer houses, secluded nooks and private spots. With fields on three sides, and a quiet road on the fourth, the whole site is peaceful, but still only a mile and a half from the town centre. I started to think, maybe this was where I wanted to be...

Concluded in part three...

Could this be my future? (part 1)

2011-08-07T19:30:00.000+01:00

Or: A day at the allotments

The biggest surprise: flowers! Every allotment had them - a few were more traditional, but still had the odd companion plant, but most were filled with colour.

Overnight it rained a lot. Intense pulses, battering the roof, overflowing the gutters. This morning was grey, with a chill breeze. Why did this matter? Well, it was the open day for a large allotment site within walking distance of my house, and I'd wanted to go. Last year I meant to, but didn't, so when I saw a poster in the window of the local post office, it reminded me, and I searched online. The most important one is in a week's time, but today was another - not so close, but still easily walkable, on the other side of the park at the edge of town. I decided to take a chance - and I am so glad I did...

This cabbage is perfect - probably thanks to the mesh.

I've never set foot on an allotment before. Shameful, isn't it? Well, of course, the open days are only once a year, and they generally seem closed worlds, where the lucky ones can enjoy a second life filled with fresh, homegrown produce, albeit one governed by esoteric rules enforced by aged, humourless men. I know things have changed a little - younger people have started going - even women! - and not everyone is a retiree. Still, I was not prepared for what I found behind the high hedgerow and steel fences...

A gorgeous, deep maroon sunflower - I meant to grow these myself this year, but didn't get round to it. Next year they are a must!

There were several paths leading into the site from the entrance. I took the rightmost one. Immediately, I was confronted by what looked like a garden - somewhere between a cottage garden and a smallholding. It was big - and full of flowers, mixed in with the vegetables. A low fence ran between it and the path, so I could take lots of photos - and the owners were there chatting to people about it. I carried on, and plot after plot surprised me, with their size, and the variety of what I found.

This plot was deserted and secluded. I lingered. Here are some wonderful lilies.

Some of the plots, including the one the lilies above were growing in, were a bit messy. No worse than my own garden, and clearly regularly tended (raised beds of potatoes, tomato- and chilli-filled greenhouses, flowers and vegetables thriving), but with weeds, overgrown corners, bits of junk. They were lived in. Others were nearly pristine - laid out more formally, neatly trimmed and weeded. Some were larger than others, but all were full of vegetables, flowers, and interest. Most had at least one greenhouse - some had as many as three. And the greenhouses themselves ran the gamut from small aluminium-framed domestic models, to massive timber structures, and even some that looked like they'd been thrown together from whatever the owners could find. Tomatoes were ubiquitous, but so were chillies, peppers, and cucumbers.

So many leeks! I was intrigued by how closely these were planted - dense cropping is a must when space is at a premium.

Just as varied was the methods of growing those tomatoes - some had their leaves stripped, some were rampant. Most were still green, some already red, others yellow. I didn't see any more exotic kinds, but there was every size from currant to beefsteaks larger than two fists together. Some were in beds, some in pots, there were shelves, different supports, different watering systems. It was fascinating - it's very easy to get stuck in your ways, even if you read about other people's methods and experiences. Seeing it in action - and how every technique seemed to work - was an inspiration.

Continued in part two...

An August day

2011-08-05T20:01:00.010+01:00

A few photos I took today sum up the day so well, I decided to do a quick photo post:

Trusses of 'Jaune Flammée', some ready to pick, and to the left, 'Snowberry', still green.

Everything I picked today was orange or purple! Blackberries, purple French beans (the first of the year), edible flowers (nasturtium and Calendula), tomatoes ('Jaune Flammée' and 'Costoluto Fiorentino')

And where some of that produce ended up. Millet, served with tomatoes, mesclun, French beans, and edible flowers.

It was a pretty good day - what I hoped, but didn't dare expect of this time of year: picking homegrown fruit and vegetables at their peak, and eating them for dinner. The more I do it, the more I am inspired to try. The icing on the cake? I sold my first plant! I'd like to do this a lot more, supplementing my partial self-sufficiency with a moderate income from selling spare plants. Enough to cover my costs would be a good start!

Tomato update: beginning of August

2011-08-05T17:25:00.000+01:00

It's a good time in the garden. The weather has been typical of high summer - humid, warm, alternating between intense sunshine and torrential rain. We're not basking in heatwave temperatures like the southeast of England, but it's warm enough, especially when the clouds break. In the greenhouse, a new temperature record was set since the last tomato update, of 39.3ºC. Rather than harming them, it seems to have spurred the plants in there on to maturity - fruit abounds, and some of it is turning golden and red.

This has its downsides. The tomatoes require regular attention - a barely-visible sideshoot can grow to half a foot long in a few days. Watering and feeding are major undertakings - although the outdoor tomatoes haven't needed extra water, when I fed all my plants at once recently, it took at least 150 litres of water, and more than half a bottle of feed. Still, they respond to this treatment quickly, by greening, growing, and flowering so profusely, it seems as though they're thanking me. This weather won't last long - maybe six more weeks - so every good deed now counts extra.

I have, as I said in the last harvest update, picked my first fruits. 'Gardener's Delight' and 'Jaune Flammée' have proven themselves tough and vigorous, and have earned a place in next year's lineup (yes, I've already started planning). Both were delicious - obscenely concentrated, fragrant, sweet and sour all at once. I can't wait to have enough to cook with. And today, I picked 6 more - five 'Jaune Flammée' and the first 'Costoluto Fiorentino', which was a smallish one pressed against the greenhouse glazing (and was also utterly delicious).

As almost all varieties have set fruit, I've changed the format of these listings slightly - with categories for the progress of set fruit, rather than just a tick or a cross. As time goes on, I'll start including harvest totals for each, so I can keep track more accurately. I have also gone back to basics and recounted all my plants, as I felt I'd made some mistakes before, so don't be surprised if it doesn't seem to follow on from what went before...

Black Cherry
planted 1 • plant 108cm tall • flowers open, 9 small fruit set, still green

Cherokee Purple
planted 3 • tallest plant 74cm • approximately 4 fruit set, medium-sized, still green

Costoluto Fiorentino
planted 4 • tallest plant 156cm • 22 fruit set, medium-sized, one harvested, another taking on colour

Cream Sausage
planted 3 • tallest plant 96cm • 22 fruit set, medium-sized, still green

Gardener's Delight
planted 5 • tallest plant 120cm • 117 fruit set, two harvested (total 7g)

German Orange Strawberry
planted 5 • tallest plant 60cm • flowers just opening, no fruit set

Great White
planted 1 • plant 92cm tall • 1 fruit set, still tiny

Green Zebra
planted 4 • tallest plant 95cm • 20 fruit set, still smallish and unripe

Jaune Flammée
planted 5 • tallest plant 144cm • around 54 fruit set, some taking on colour, 6 harvested (94g)

Riesentraube
planted 4 • tallest plant 43cm • flowers open, no fruit set

Snowberry
planted 4 • tallest plant 160cm • 36 fruit set, medium-full sized?, still green

Sub Arctic Plenty
planted 4 • tallest plant 74cm • 15 fruit set, medium-sized, still green

Summer Cider
planted 4 • tallest plant 124cm • 13 fruit set, small, still small and green

Sun Belle
planted 3 • tallest plant 210cm • 82 fruit set, full-sized?, still green

Super Marmande
planted 4 • tallest plant 133cm • 25 fruit set, medium-sized, still green

I did a thorough census - measuring the height of every plant, and counting all unripe fruit (anything that had certainly started to swell, not including tiny fruit that may yet abort). I'm glad I did. Most have grown a lot - one must have been mis-measured last time, as it lost height, but the tallest plant is a scary 2.1m (nearly 7ft - I am having to train it along the underside of the greenhouse roof!). And a total of 420 fruits, at various stages - many tiny, a fair few approaching full size (especially on the smaller varieties). I picked enough today to have as part of my lunch (on a sandwich) and my dinner (a salad with millet and 'Jaune Flammée', adapted from this delicious recipe). A total harvest of 101g puts me at a shade over 0.2% towards my goal of 50kg - so some way still to go! Nonetheless, I am feeling very positive.

July harvest: weeks three and four

2011-07-31T00:00:00.019+01:00

A little out of focus, but there it is - the first 'Jaune Flammée', and the third tomato harvested*. The skin was thick, and maybe it was a day or two too early (note the green tinges) - but it was delicious! Intense, sweet, fragrant, rich. The best reward, small though it is. Many more to come!

Another hungry gap! Usually, that phrase refers to the period at the beginning of the year, up to around April or May, when the overwintering veg (like cabbages and sprouting broccoli) is mostly harvested, and the spring stuff (peas, broad beans, potatoes, asparagus, salad leaves) isn't yet ready. Well, I've hit another one here in late July - but although it means my totals are well down right now, I can avoid it next year if I sow the right crops.

Simply put, the first flush of summer fruit and vegetables have been gathered and preserved or used. Meanwhile, the late summer harvest is still unripe. As I picked pretty much nothing in the first week, I decided to swap back to a fortnightly harvest update, but I'm hoping that I can revert to a weekly format soon. There were some things to be picked; spinach still provides - although I pulled up one plant that was being encroached by a lavender that's grown a lot since they were all planted in March, the remaining two are producing fairly tender flower spikes with small leaves that go nicely with pasta. The grape vines have grown rampantly for the most part (I need to control them at some point), which is excellent for stuffed vine leaves - something I made a lot of last year, but not as much as I wanted. The leaves are mostly a little smaller than I'd like, but it's not too hard to use two or three per roll. You can buy the leaves in specialist shops or some supermarkets, of course, but how much better to gather them from your own garden - so exotic for these climes. They are simply trimmed of their stalks, blanched in boiling water for a minute or so, and left to drain. Once you get the hang of wrapping them round rice (with various seasonings), or minced meat, or a combination of both, it's quite easy, and they have a lovely, distinctive, sharp taste from the tartaric acid they contain. Delicious.

The blackberries are early this year, like everything else. I left some to grow on an otherwise uncultivable patch of ground at the side of the back garden, but I will probably not leave them next year, as they always try to spread. I reclaimed much of the back from brambles over the past few years, but they are tenacious - they still sprout here and there (the trick is to dig them out, and keep attacking them whenever they appear). For now, though, the dark, soft, ripe fruit is very sweet, and ideal for a late batch of jam.

The highlight of this week, however, was the smallest harvest of all: the first tomatoes! The first of all was indoors, on the windowsill. The second was from a plant that had formed fruits similarly in response to stress, but that I'd planted up on the terrace, so it counted as the first outdoor tomato. Both were 'Gardener's Delight', a variety not known for being especially early, but which deals with adverse conditions better than most. The final one was 'Jaune Flammée', from the greenhouse plant that went in first. It has many fruits on several trusses, which are now taking on colour, but it's nearly five weeks late (based on the number of days this variety ought to take from final planting to harvest), so it's not perfect. Still, all were indescribably intensely flavoured and delicious, and the ultimate reward for all the work I've devoted to them so far. Just another 50-100kg would be nice now!

Totals for week 15th-31st July:
26th: 4g tomato
28th: 278g turnip tops, 35g shallot (day total: 313g)
30th: 3g tomato, 312g vine leaves**, 48g spinach, 478g blackberries*** (day total: 841g)
31st: 14g tomato, 72g spinach (day total: 86g)
Total for fortnight: 1.244kg
Total for July: 7.351kg
Year to date total: 18.942kg

Over a kilogramme isn't bad, I suppose, and I'm heading towards 20kg, which is another milestone. I just need more tomatoes to ripen! I'll continue to harvest vine leaves (another few in the coming week, probably, and then a second flush before they turn at the end of the summer) and blackberries - they ripen over a period of weeks. There are also saladings coming - a tray of mesclun (mixed leaves), and then the kailaan (which I've already potted on) and seedling thinnings. And more spinach I expect.

*In the last entry I asked of a tomato "how long before this is ready to pick?". This is the very same - so the answer is five days!
**I only include those from my garden; I will also harvest some from next door (my granddad's), but since I didn't grow them, they can't count towards the total.
***These grow unfettered on a strip between my garden and next door's fence. I didn't plant them, but allowed them to grow there, so I count them in my total.

Encouraging signs

2011-07-26T17:10:00.009+01:00

I've never seen a marigold this colour before - it's lovely!

It's been good weather again. As if to remind us what the summer can be about, warm sunshine has beaten rain more often than not this past week, although the wind hasn't been insubstantial - even today, despite a forecast of a few miles per hour, I watched the washing bounce back and forth on the line. Not enough to discourage me from working outside though - and I need to, as some of that wind has damaged the roof of my new greenhouse (as I mentioned in the last post).

But pottering around the garden, although the overriding impression was of semi-wilderness, the weeds having reclaimed whichever corners I haven't spent much time in recently, there was a sense of impending fecundity. Wildlife thrives here, mostly because I've never stripped back all the wild plants, and hopefully also because I don't use pesticides. I found a common blue butterfly, which was unperturbed by me shoving a camera lens close to it. There were bees, hoverflies, and other unidentifiable insects (I find most very tough to name). The Calendula plants that I grew from seed and squeezed in wherever I could back in the spring are still flowering their heads off - all colours from pale peach and lemon to deep orange and gold. The grape vines on the terrace need controlling, but are growing rampantly - excellent news both for my plans for a vine-covered pergola, and for the batch of stuffed vine leaves I'm intending to make in the next few days.

The warm sunshine makes everything glow of course. And when the breeze isn't too strong (it's calmed down since this morning), the scent of Buddleia, lavender, and mint (in the front garden), and roses (in the back) fills the air, and adds to the sensual pleasure of the space. And there are flowers! The roses are having a better year than I can remember - older plants are thriving, and ones I put in last year look just as well established (I love roses, by the way - they are my absolute favourite ornamental plant, although they have a culinary use too, of course). Nasturtiums and Cosmos (grown from seed like the Calendula), and lavender are also in full bloom, although the garden isn't quite a riot of flowers.

But colour is appearing elsewhere. The runner beans have been flowering for a couple of weeks - but as yet, no pods have formed. This is a worry, as I've never had success with them in the past, either - so much for being an allegedly "easy" crop. I chose 'Painted Lady', which is the best variety according to several sources. At least its scarlet-and-white flowers are pretty - still, I'm not giving these plants space in future if I get no crop this time (it was really my fault last year, but this time I've put them in a large container, fed them, and given them very tall supports). The French beans have also started flowering - but today I saw a tiny pod, so some beans should be on the menu this year, at least. The colour I am most excited about, however, is - tomatoes! As if in response to my concerns the other day, some of them have started taking on colour at last - the final step in the long process. One 'Jaune Flammée' (though not the oldest or largest) has turned yellow-green, although it still feels hard. Up on the terrace, a 'Gardener's Delight' I stuck in one of the large planters (where the peas had been) has a single, tiny, bright red fruit (again, it didn't feel quite ripe, so I left it for now). I will harvest the first fruit today though - but indoors. The windowsill beat them all - though I'm going to compost all the remaining plants there (squash, aubergines, tomatoes, basil), as they have been baked, infested by greenfly, and neglected to the point of death anyway. I also need the space for all the autumn vegetables.

How long before this is bright orange and ready to pick?

This should be ready in a few days.

On which note, I have built a raised bed. I had two planks of sturdy, tanalised wood waiting to help reinforce the side fence, but I decided to put them to better use and make a rectangular frame to raise the soil level in the front garden a little. I was inspired by my friend, with the greenhouse tomatoes I envy, whose fiancé has built just such a raised bed in their back garden. They have a major horsetail infestation, and lined the bottom of the new bed with weed-suppressing membrane. I don't have any such fiesty weeds, but I do have problems with couch grass in the front. I was digging it out bit by bit, but this way is much quicker and should stop the grass coming back if I miss any of the roots. Well, we will see. I wanted to try out my new circular saw, so I cut the timbers at 45º so there were no cut ends facing outwards (which should retard rotting). I will staple the anti-weed fabric and then place it over a section of the front garden - I'll remove as many of the weeds as possible first, though. I have about 45 litres of homemade compost, to which I'll add a little sand and some sieved garden soil. I may add a second layer of timber, either this week or in a few months. At its current depth, I can grow leafy crops, turnips, beets, and kohl rabi, but probably not carrots or long radishes. Either way, it should push things forward a lot - the front garden will be mostly vegetables by the autumn, if all goes to plan.

A feeling of unease

2011-07-23T17:09:00.004+01:00

I didn't sleep well last night. Well, I didn't sleep at all - I only managed to drift off after dawn (announced by an hour of shrieking gulls - this is one of the noisiest times of year for them - it's like living in a bird sanctuary). I was running over all the things I hadn't done so far this year, all the plans that came to nothing, and worse, the plans I started and let fall away. The plants I neglected, the patches of weeds, the delayed crops.

One source of concern at the moment is the tomatoes. In the previous post, they must have sounded quite healthy - growing taller, setting fruit. But all is not well. The outdoor tomato plants are healthy - deep green, stocky, flowering. Many of the flowers, however, are taking an age to open, and many more that do aren't setting fruit. In the greenhouse, things are reversed - there are lots (dozens, even) fruits forming, but the plants do not look well. The largest, those planted way back in May, are worryingly spindly, etiolated things - all their leaves, save those they already had when they went in there, are curled back on themselves and tiny, the stems stretched out. Compared in particular to my friend's greenhouse tomatoes, from the same stock of plants, sown in the same way, at the same time, in the same place, are archetypal - whereas mine are downright sick looking.

I have looked into it. The first signs of leaf curling I feared were disease - but all the experts say, curling leaves are a sign of health, though possibly of cooler nights, but absolutely nothing to worry about. But now... it hasn't gone away, it's spread. I have watered them, fed them, cut off side shoots, tied them in. They are flowering, and fruiting, as I say, though the fruit is showing no sign at all of taking on colour. I got it into my head last night that maybe twinwall polycarbonate is unsuitable for greenhouses after all - I have made massive mistakes before - and they were to all intents and purposes growing in darkness (UV-darkness, anyway). But today, I consulted a range of sources, and all agree, it's an ideal material to build a greenhouse from. So I am left with the less expensive, but still worrying conclusion that they are diseased. I hope I get a crop from them - so far so good. But I won't settle until those spindly boughs are dripping with red, yellow, cream, green, and orange baubles. It seems I have a long, anxious wait ahead...

Can you see what I mean? These plants are now getting as tall as me, but they are terribly thin...

Tomato update: mid July

2011-07-22T20:10:00.000+01:00

'Costoluto Fiorentino' continues to swell - living up to its name! (Costoluto means "ribbed")

Bad weather discouraged me from spending much time in the garden this week. We had terrible weather over the weekend - gales again, which nearly tore off the roof from the new greenhouse. I wish I didn't have to say that every few months, but it seems despite the buildings, walls, and fences that look as though they shelter the place, being so close to the coast means winds like that are a fact of life. At this rate I'm going to have to build my greenhouses out of steel. Anyway, I managed to save it, although a little repair is necessary. Meanwhile, the plentiful rain has kept the outdoor tomatoes green and vigorous, while those under cover are spindlier, but fruiting freely. Here's the standard rundown:

This is by no means the largest 'Jaune Flammée' fruit - just the easiest to photograph!

Black Cherry
planted 3 • largest plant 75cm • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✔?

Cherokee Purple
planted 5 • largest plant 58cm tall • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✔

Costoluto Fiorentino
planted 6 • largest plant 112cm • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✔

Cream Sausage
planted 4 • largest plant 98cm • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✔

Gardener's Delight
planted 7 • largest plant 90cm tall • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✔

German Orange Strawberry
planted 3 • largest plant 44cm tall • flowers open ✘ • fruit set ✘

Great White
planted 1 • largest plant 60cm tall • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✘

Green Zebra
planted 9 • largest plant 70cm • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✔

Jaune Flammée
planted 6 • largest plant 118cm tall • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✔

Riesentraube
planted 7 • largest plant 38cm • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✘

Snowberry
planted 4 • largest plant 174cm tall • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✔

Sub Arctic Plenty
planted 4 • largest plant 60cm • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✔?

Summer Cider
planted 4 • largest plant 100cm • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✔

Sun Belle
planted 3 • largest plant 160cm tall • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✔

Super Marmande
planted 4 • largest plant 90cm tall • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✔

That makes 70 plants (I had aimed at 60, but I trust my notes, even though I don't remember planting quite that many). Some may have been left too late - although with the long days, mild temperatures, and frequent rain, it's possible they will have just enough time. As you can see, most of the varieties are now in fruit, and all but two ('Riesentraube' and 'German Orange Strawberry') are flowering. Again, it's amazing how much some of them have grown. 'Sun Belle' has grown 44cm - nearly a foot and a half - in 19 days. The largest 'Jaune Flammée', long since left behind in the height stakes, has fruit swelling on four trusses, and flowers open on two more. Other winners are 'Cherokee Purple', which is fast catching up the first planting. In fact, almost all the greenhouse plants now have baby fruit, demonstrating in an entirely unscientific way how much of a head start a bit of protection can give. The first ripe fruit goes to 'Gardener's Delight', and ironically it is on one of the plants that didn't get chosen - it's still in a small pot on the windowsill. That's the true sign of a tough, productive variety, I'd say - giving fruit in the least forgiving conditions. No sign of a sustained harvest this month, however. I live in hope.

'Sun Belle' is now fruiting freely in the greenhouse - little egg-shaped fruit on long trusses.

Summer sowing

2011-07-17T19:45:00.000+01:00

These kailaan seedlings are perfectly spaced

While these tsoi sim will need to be thinned out very soon.

I have too many seeds.

I didn't think I'd been too greedy buying them, but when they're all gathered in one place, it's frightening. So many varieties, so little space! I've learnt more about the best ways to sow and grow this year, with many failures due to lack of space/inconsistent watering/laziness. This second round of sowing should be more successful as a result. For instance, I've saved and washed as many plastic trays from food containers as I could, so all the pots will have their own reservoirs, and not dry out (or ruin the windowsill).

So what am I sowing? Well, I rediscovered a lot of seeds I'd bought reduced a few weeks ago, which are going to have to wait until next year as it's too late to sow them now. These are mostly flowers, so I'm not that bothered. However, July is a good time for many vegetables. I was going through them in my head, partly for myself, and partly for my friend, who now has a raised bed in her garden, and which would be a shame not to fill with edibles for the autumn. It struck me that all those you sow now are leaf, stem, and root crops. Those which were sown in the spring for summer/autumn cropping were fruit crops. It makes sense - it takes maybe half an annual plant's life to get to adulthood, then the same time again to flower and ripen its fruit. So the tomatoes started in March, and after four months are flowering freely. In another four months, they will have produced their whole crop, and died. Those vegetables that we don't want to flower (such as lettuces, spinach, root crops, and so on) can be cropped when they are much younger. It makes sense put like that, but I'd never seen it that way before.

With the exception of one or two oriental vegetables whose flowering shoots can be eaten (like a quicker version of sprouting broccoli), and broccoli itself (well, calabrese), all the current sowings are for leaves, roots, and stems. The quickest are baby leaf crops for salads. I sowed a tray of mesclun, a mix of salad leaves, over a week ago, and it's growing fast. At the same time I sowed namenia, which is a kind of mustard grown for its leaves. These germinated a day or two later, but are doing fine. Indoors this week, I've sown pots of mizuna, mibuna, mispoona (all similar, fast-growing, tender leaf crops), kailaan (which resembles broccoli in its uses), and komatsuna (akin to spinach, though again a type of mustard). Green and red perilla, the latter of which I grew very successfully last year, will add colour and spice (they are a pretty, nettle-like herb, much used in Japanese and Korean cooking). Yellow and green pak choi will provide bland, bulkier crops for stir fries - I've also read they can be dried for use in winter soups, which I find intriguing. Tsoi sim (or choy sum - there are many variant transliterations) is another leaf vegetable to add to the mix, along with 'Yukina Savoy', a sort-of loose-headed cabbage (though it may be a mustard, I'm getting confused by them all), and a true heading Chinese cabbage, 'Yuki' (what the Americans call "napa cabbage", I think). Meanwhile, mustard greens (which is to say, mustards without other confusing names), both red and green, will provide hotter leaves.

There are some western leaf crops, too. Summer spinach is tricky, but hopefully worth the effort. Perpetual spinach has proved itself tough, productive, and reliable, so I'll sow lots of that, but later in the year. Mixed chard (in various colours) should brighten the garden up, though I've never had big crops from them, especially the yellow-ribbed kind. Turnip greens 'Rapa Senza Testa' should be quick and easy (if a little coarse). Kale 'Nero di Toscana' (better known as cavolo nero) is a nice, tough, hearty leaf crop for the long term. For salads, I also have a heading lettuce 'Lakeland', which I don't think I've ever grown before - they seem a bit daunting in a garden with so many slugs and snails!

Roots and swollen stems will take a little longer to mature, but are less perishable and don't wilt down. I still have 'Snowball' turnip seed (the packet has lasted me a couple of years, and provided several excellent crops), and I bought a purple-shouldered variety to take over when they're gone ('Purple Top Milan'). To replace the failure carrot seeds I tried in spring, I've got a small, quick type 'Amsterdam 3 - Sprint', and a more standard kind, with the very encouraging name 'Autumn King 2' (I don't know why carrots seem always to have numbers in their names). Swede 'Collet vert' (green-shouldered) is a bit more of a gamble - I've never grown it before, so I don't know how easy it will be. Bulb fennel was a surprise success last autumn, and is so expensive to buy, it's worth growing a larger crop this time round (amazing how the tiny, feathery seedlings can bulk up so much by November). Kohl rabi 'Azur' (despite its name, it appears to be purple) should be straightforward, though the one time I did sow some (a different variety), they didn't germinate. Beetroots, both standard red, and 'Chioggia', which displays concentric red and white rings when cut open, will be sown direct, as the spring sowing into modules was an almost total failure. Radishes should be quicker. I have standard red and white summer radish 'Sparkler 3', although the seeds are getting a bit old. I have two pointy white varieties (I bought two by accident, I don't like radishes that much!), 'White Icicle' and 'White Dream'. Finally, and most unusually, I have German black winter radish, which are cooked, rather than eaten raw. They should be interesting! Even more exotic is "zha cai" (榨菜), a kind of mustard grown especially in Sichuan for its swollen, knobbly stems, and often pickled. I couldn't resist something so unusual! It shouldn't be any more difficult than any of the other varieties though.

And a few herbs. I have a load of different basil seeds, which I'll try and coax into fast production on the windowsills and in the greenhouse. There's also dill, fennel, parsley (I sowed this at the same time as the mesclun, but it's been slow to sprout), lovage, and sage - which I find a little more daunting, being a perennial.

How many varieties is that, then? Maybe 50? Too many, perhaps. But I won't go hungry, at least in theory!

What to do with raspberries (part 2)

2011-07-17T15:15:00.003+01:00

Once again, I started this a while ago, when there was still a plentiful supply of fruit coming from the garden. Ten days later, I've finally completed it, but the fruit is gone...

Two bottles of raspberry vinegar (for recipe see part 1); on the right, last year's, made from white wine vinegar, now mature; on the left, white balsamic vinegar just beginning to take on the fruit's colour and aroma.

The raspberry glut continues, so I've been searching out more ways of dealing with them. I have started freezing the best ones, in order to prevent them mouldering around my kitchen (at one point, I had a good dozen bowls and colanders full of soft fruit, and it was getting difficult to prevent some going off), and I've made more jam, but there are other ways of preserving their deliciousness...

On July 4th, my friends had a small barbecue. It was the best weather - mostly sunny, really warm (for round here - low 20s), and mild right into the night. As an American was present, I decided to make a red, white, and blue dessert. Originally, I was going to try pavlova, but I had a lot to do, and wasn't inclined to spend several hours on it. The next best thing was Eton mess - incorporating homegrown strawberries and raspberries. I consulted a few recipes online, and adapted them to what I had in. First I whipped double cream with a good drizzle of honey and a dash of vanilla extract. Into this I crumbled shop-bought meringues. Then I took a bowlful each of raspberries and strawberries. half of these were puréed with a hand blender with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, the passed through a sieve to make a coulis. The final dessert was assembled by stirring the intact fruit (the strawberries were chopped), with a punnet of blueberries, through the cream-meringue mixture, then drizzling the coulis over the top.

The reason I had the cream was a recipe I found in Rick Stein's French Odyssey cookbook for raspberry parfait. Sadly, I never got round to making it. However, for the record, it's a frozen dessert made by whisking eggs yolks and sugar syrup, then adding whipped vanilla cream, crushed raspberries, and freezing in ramekins. They are served topped with fresh raspberries and icing sugar.

Now for something experimental. I developed a love for pomegranate molasses over the winter. I'd never tried it, so when I visited a great Middle Eastern/Turkish/Greek/everything food store in south London in November, I had to get some. It's not cheap, but it goes a long way. It's almost transcendentally intense - sweet and sour together. I like it as it is, but drizzled over roast meat, stirred through cous cous, or added to sparkling wine, it's just as good. I want to make my own sometime, although pomegranates are criminally expensive (as is their juice). However, for now, I'm trying raspberry molasses. I could find no recipes for this online, so I went with instinct. I had a colander of raspberries that were on the turn, so I crushed them, then strained them through muslin with boiling water. I poured the juice into a pan, and added a little white sugar. This was brought to the boil, then simmered very gently, and allowed to reduce until syrupy. I didn't want it to be too sweet, so I kept tasting, to make sure it was balanced (citric acid is useful here, in case you do add too much sugar). The idea was partly to make something unusual, and partly inspired by how quickly the strawberry syrup I made a few weeks ago went mouldy (the liquid under the surface is still fine). A "molasses", being that much more concentrated, will, in theory, keep indefinitely. As for uses, I'm hoping it will work wherever the more usual version is recommended!

A extension of the fruit syrup in the last post on raspberrie s is the alcoholic version: raspberry liqueur. Essentially, this is a syrup or cordial combined with a spirit. It can keep much longer than the non-alcoholic version, depending on strength. The simplest method is to make a syrup and then combine it with brandy, vodka, or rum. However, I would recommend making the syrup more concentrated, with higher sugar and acidity levels (adjusting with citric acid), in order to counterbalance the alcoholic "burn". Another way of making them is to layer the fruit with sugar in a large jar, topping up with the spirit of your choice. However, it's much harder to balance the flavour, as it takes up to several weeks for the sugar to dissolve, and the fruit juices to seep into the liquor. The method I'm using this time is more complicated than either of these, and based loosely on the recipe for Chambord, a proprietary "black raspberry" liqueur (there are a couple of species of fruit called black raspberries, but I'm not aware of which, if any, is used for this - it has always sounded rather like something dreamed up by their marketing department, especially given neither type of raspberry is native to Europe, yet the liqueur claims 17th century ancestry). The Wikipedia article outlines the method, but it basically involves steeping the fruit in brandy and then pressing. I have started the process, with the addition of a little sugar. The fruit will be left for a couple of weeks, then passed through a sieve, and strained through muslin, before adjusting for taste. This leads to a much stronger liqueur than the first method above, since no water is added to the mix.

Raspberries soaking in brandy. The bits will be strained out before final bottling.

Flavoured spirits were rare a couple of decades ago, but you can buy dozens of kinds nowadays - mostly vodka. It's still worth making your own, however, since you can produce flavours that are unavailable, it works out cheaper (in general), and they tend to taste fresher and less confected (at least to me). Vodka is a clean, neutral base, perfect for any fresh fruit, vanilla, or more exotic things like chilli, ginger, or horseradish. Rum and brandy work with most fruits too, and also spices and dried fruit like raisins and sultanas. Gin is usually paired with the autumn hedgerow fruits damsons and sloes, although summer fruits might be worth a try too. In all these cases, the method is the same: either pour out some of the spirit from its original bottle (assuming it doesn't have one of those pesky plastic contraptions that restrict the flow) and fill with your flavouring of choice, topping up if necessary. Alternatively, place your flavouring into a wide-mouthed jar, and fill up with the spirit. Leave in a cool, dark place for a couple of weeks or several months, shaking regularly. Either strain and return to the bottle, or use as is, although it will need straining before use in cocktails or with a mixer. It goes without saying your flavoured spirit will take on the colour of whatever you've soaked in it - rather than remaining colourless like the commercial versions. If you've made raspberry vodka, try a raspberry martini: shake 2 measures (50ml) raspberry vodka with 1 measure each of sugar syrup (or raspberry syrup, or honey) and either lemon or lime juice. Strain into a chilled martini glass. A measure of fresh raspberry purée would work in this too. Or try a raspberry Collins: stir 2 measures raspberry vodka (or gin), and 1 each of syrup and lemon juice, with ice in a tall glass, and top up with soda water.

(For another cocktail using raspberries, see this previous post).

A raspberry martini - very intense! (Apologies for the use of flash)

No doubt there are plenty of other things you can do with these delicious fruits, but I think that will do for this year.

July harvest: week two

2011-07-14T00:00:00.000+01:00

Shallots, laid out in the sun to "cure"

It had to happen, though when it came, it was more sudden than I expected: the end of the soft fruit harvest. I lost a fair amount to laziness - some shrivelled berries dropped to the ground, some were too far gone to use. But most - well over 75% - have been harvested, I'd say, and I don't begrudge the earth taking back some of what it gave me. There was far more than I needed anyway.

The sun has shone rather a lot in the past couple of weeks. The temperatures have been pleasant, the wind light. Evenings and nights have been cool, which may suit some plants more than others. In general, it's a "normal" English summer I suppose - though it's been so long since we had one (last year there was a hosepipe ban here, the last few years have seen prolonged heavy rain), it's hard to tell. I suppose what I mean is this is what I hope for in the summer - it's not Mediterranean, let alone subtropical, but it's nice. Ideal for spending time outside, which encourages me to tend to plants, pull up weeds, and do general building work and maintenance, which I might otherwise neglect.

For the first time in weeks, the harvest is dominated by vegetables again. Just as the broad beans were a blip when they finally matured, so this time it is with the shallots. I had two varieties, in three locations - "Red Sun" and "Golden Gourmet". They were purchased on a whim, reduced, from Wilkinson (a general store, very useful for those of us in the town centre without a car, as they sell lots of gardening and DIY products). They cost around £1.30 a bag, with 40-50 sets in each one. I had a main bed, on the lower part of the sloped part of the back garden (around 2 metres by half a metre), in an old recycling box, and in the front, in a corner. The main bed thrived, the box shallots have done okay, but are quite small, and those in the front got overshadowed by weeds and other vegetables, and have shrivelled, though survived. This week I picked all the main bed, and acidentally pulled up one cluster in the front. They range in size from similar to a clove of garlic, up to the size of a golfball, though most are about halfway between these two extremes. The main bed yielded a large weight (see below), which for reference is about 125-130 separate bulbs. I am really impressed by that - they were cheap, easy, and I only fed them once, at the start, by enriching the soil with a little compost, and a sprinkling of blood, fish, and bone. They were not watered after the initial planting. So they epitomise the ideal small garden crop: low-maintenance, cheap, and providing a large crop in a small space. They will be a fixture in my garden forever more.

Totals for week 8th-14th July:
10th: 461g raspberries*, 21g spinach (day total: 482g)
11th: 50g shallots
13th: 2.574kg shallots**, 84g strawberries, 16g blackcurrants, 367g raspberries (day total: 3.041kg)
14th: 12g beetroot, 31g beetroot tops, 59g turnip (day total: 102g)
Total for week: 3.675kg
Year to date total: 17.698kg

As you can see, I beat my informal target this week, which was 16.5kg. I must say, I'm becoming rather blasé about it - but I ought to remember how ecstatic I was with a few tens of grammes per week back in the spring. July to October is the heavy cropping season, of course, when the garden has the most sunshine to convert into produce, and where the work of the spring bears literal fruit. However, this is also a time to be planning for the next six to nine months - as there is a great deal that can be sown into the spaces left by beans, peas, and shallots.

So what's the plan? Well, the tomatoes and summer beans are mostly self-sufficient, needing just occasional tying in, pinching out, feeding, watering, and inspecting. Pleasant tasks, especially in the summer sunshine. What really needs my attention is sowing and preparing ground. At this time of year, seeds germinate very quickly - in days in many cases - so it won't be long before fresh greenery appears around the place, which mitigates a little the feeling of sadness as the summer turns into autumn.

A few conventional British crops can be sown now, just: beetroots, summer spinach, spring onions, radish, and lettuces, and even late peas. I'll try to make room for all those, but I'm really concentrating on "oriental vegetables", of which a great range is now available, and which have the advantages of varying hardiness (so some will go right through the winter, especially under cover), novelty (shapes, flavours, and textures that will liven up the garden and the kitchen), and speed (some will be ready in four to six weeks). I've got pak choi, tsoi sim (choy sum), kailaan, komatsuna, mustard greens, mizuna, mibuna, mispoona, and a few more whose names I haven't yet learned. And a few random crops: amaranth, orach, kohl rabi, radicchio, and black winter radish. Making room for all of these will be a challenge, but I will be creative. If all goes to plan, September and October will be fruitful times indeed!

*includes 100g estimate, fruit I picked and immediately gave to my granddad without weighing.
**picked 11th, left to cure in the sun until the 13th, when they were cleaned and weighed.

July harvest: week one

2011-07-07T00:00:00.008+01:00

No pictures this week, I'm afraid.

Totals for week 1st-7th July:
3rd: 2.090kg raspberries, 82g shallots, 250g strawberries, 10g gooseberries (day total: 2.432kg)
Total for week: 2.432kg
Year to date total: 14.023kg

The shallots weren't planned. Most of the plants in the main bed have started falling over, which is a sign they're getting ready for dormancy (which is the time to harvest them), but I was clearing some raspberry canes that had infiltrated them, and some of the smaller bulbs lifted out accidentally. They are really good - intensely flavoured. These were the variety 'Red Sun', with a pinkish tinge under the skin.

I set another mini goal for this week, of reaching 15kg. Again, it was possible, but not guaranteed, which is what these things are for - to motivate me, and make me feel good about what I've achieved. The larger goals - for my tomatoes, for example - are based more on what I think I can practically expect. Shorter-term targets are easier to set high, because I can judge how much the garden is producing now. A month down the line is still beyond me.

Well, if I'd gone out yesterday and picked some more fruit, no doubt I would have found more than a kilo to make up the total, but the weather has been mixed recently, and I have been concentrating on the new kitchen (it's edging closer!). Still, over 14kg is great, and as I'm likely to pick a lot more in the next week, I'll set a new total of 16.5kg for seven days' time.

What to do with raspberries

2011-07-05T03:08:00.004+01:00

Note: I wrote this about a week ago, but only posted it on the date above, as I wanted to take a few more photos.

I know I've posted a similar shot before, but I find them so beautiful like this - a reward for doing nothing. First you need to pick them...

How nice it is to have so many raspberries, you can eat them like sweets! When I buy raspberries (invariably when they are reduced to clear, partly because they are otherwise very expensive, partly to mitigate the guilt of buying them out of season, and partly because I like them slightly overripe, which they are when they come to their 'best before' date), I usually do eat them as they are, but I wanted to use most of my homegrown ones to make things, mostly things that will last - such as jam, jelly, syrup, and frozen delights. However, there are so very many of them right now that I can do both - with no sense of guilt whatsoever, since they are free.

Once you've picked them, they look like this - even more appealing! And the smell is quite intense, too.

But as I say, that's not the main use I have for them. So what does one do with a glut of these delicious fruits? Well, you can freeze them, of course. That's a bit of a cheat, but if you are going away, or don't feel like cooking, this is a good option, because they won't keep for more than a very few days. To freeze them, rinse them to clean, then drain them thoroughly - maybe even dry them on kitchen paper. Spread them out onto a metal tray, keeping them as separate as possible. Place in the freezer for a good few hours, or overnight. Then put them into freezer bags (if they've stuck to the tray, flex it gently and they should detach), and they should keep for at least six months, sealed. The one disadvantage of this is they will turn to mush once defrosted - so they're no good for recipes where intact, pretty fruit is needed.

As an aside, if you do this - or buy frozen fruit - you can make a very nice sorbet in the Thermomix, and maybe in other powerful food processors/blenders too. Put a small amount of sugar into the machine, depending on taste, and blitz to icing (confectioners') consistency. Add the flesh of half a lemon or a lime, then the raspberries, and a few ice cubes if you want it a little less rich. Blend at the highest speed setting, stirring in an anticlockwise direction with the spatula - you may need to add a few drops of water to make it blend correctly - until smooth. Serve, or to lighten it and make it go further, add an egg white, insert the whisk attachment, and blend again, on speed 4, until it doubles in volume, usually just a few seconds.

The first thing I did with my raspberries was make a syrup. I suppose it's a cordial, too - if there is a difference, I'd say a syrup is maybe a little thicker (and used more for drizzling than diluting). This is simple and quick, but you do need to strain it properly, or it will go cloudy. I got the recipe for this, and for the jams below, from The Preserving Book by Lynda Brown, which is one of the best food books I've ever come across - clear, comprehensive, with nice pictures. It got me on to smoking food, but that's another story... Anyway, for this syrup, take 450g raspberries, and place into a pan with a little water (the books says 200ml, but I'd probably use less). Heat gently, until the fruit starts to break up. Crush with a potato masher or fork, then pour into a muslin-lined sieve or jelly bag over a bowl or jug. Leave it to strain - you can help it with the back of a spoon, but don't press too hard, or it might be cloudy. Return the strained liquor to the rinsed pan (or a fresh pan), and add 250g white sugar. Stir, and heat, until the sugar dissolves. Bring to the boil, then heat for up to five minutes, so it thickens a little. Add a teaspoon of citric acid, or to taste (this adds a delicious balance between the fruitiness, acidity, and sweetness). I strained it again at this point, but you don't have to. Pour into sterilised bottles, seal. I didn't add a vanilla pod as the recipe recommended, partly because I didn't have one, and partly because I wanted the purest expression of the fruit.

The finished syrup

The syrup is excellent in sparkling wine - as is any fruit syrup. Otherwise, pour a little over ice cream, or serve with still or sparkling water for a cool drink.

Now the most classic way to preserve raspberries: jam. I must admit, I'm not much of a fan of jams and marmalades - I don't have occasion to eat them, since toast has never been a big part of my life (and when I do make it, I like it with savoury things, like poached eggs). However, it's an excellent way of preserving large quantities of fruit for long periods, and has a touch of kitchen alchemy - a bowlful of your garden is transformed into intense, jewelled flasks on your larder shelves. It's also a useful ingredient in baking - for sandwiching Victoria sponges, for examples, or serving with high tea.

In fact, the techniques for jams, jellies, and syrups are very similar - it's just a matter of straining or not, adding pectin or not (in fact, raspberries often don't need added pectin, but I'm a beginner, so I wanted to be sure of a firm set). Take 650g raspberries, place in a large pan, and add the juice of half a lemon. The recipe I used called for the addition of 150ml water, but I ignored it - I suppose it makes a less concentrated jam this way. Heat gently to soften the fruit, then add 500g sugar (either plain white, or jam/preserving sugar; if using the former, you may add a glug of pectin stock if you want to be sure it will set firm). Once the sugar has dissolved, bring to the boil, and continue to boil for 5-10 minutes - or until it has reached 'setting point', which is 105ºC (a sugar thermometer helps!). There are a couple of ways of testing if it's ready, with a cold plate, or methylated spirits, but I've never succeeded there, so I'll let you look them up yourselves. Ladle into jars (remembering that everything needs to have been cleaned and sterilised first), seal and label.

I also made peach and raspberry conserve - with is essentially a slightly softer-set jam. This stretches your raspberries further - a mere 175g are needed for 700g stoned, cubed peaches. Less sugar is added - just 400g - but the method is the same as above (including the lemon). It has the delicious fragrance of a peach melba, and appeals to me more than the standard recipe - probably great with croissants and the like.

Perhaps the easiest way of preserving the taste and aroma of raspberries is to make a flavoured vinegar, something I did last year. I took a bottle of white wine vinegar (you could use cider vinegar instead), poured a little away (I used it in other things, like mayonnaise), then topped up the bottle with as many clean raspberries as would fit. After a year, it smells astonishingly like the ripe fruit - and is much mellower than the original liquid. Use it in salad dressings or to make an unusual mayonnaise. I'm not sure if the fruits left in the bottle have a use - I'll let you know!

Lastly, ice cream. I've hybridised a Nigella Lawson recipe, from the book Forever Summer, and the standard vanilla ice cream from the Thermomix Fast and Easy Cookbook. It's so much easier to do a custard base in this machine, which stirs and heats to a set temperature for a fixed time. However, I used Nigella's quantities, as it was her recipe that inspired me. So, I put 600ml single cream, 6 egg yolks, and 200g white sugar into the machine, and cooked it at speed 5, 80ºC, for 6 1/2 minutes. It's then poured out into a shallow, greaseproof paper-lined, freezer-proof container, left to cool, then placed in the freezer overnight. I then use a knife to cut the frozen custard into blocks, return it to the machine, and blitz as for the sorbet recipe above. For the ripples, again I adapted the original recipe: I heated 150g raspberries with a little good balsamic vinegar, then sieved (I used a microwave for speed, but you could do it in a pan). This coulis was par-frozen, then blended to smoothness, and gently stirred through the ice cream. You could, of course, make it in whatever way suits you best.

Raspberry ripple ice cream

So that's a few ways of dealing with the glut - I'd better get cracking, as I have another 2kg to use up!

Tomato update: early July

2011-07-03T17:16:00.035+01:00

Time for an update on the tomatoes, as in the two weeks since my previous in-depth roundup, they have made enormous progress.

They were rather overshadowed by the soft fruit harvest, which continues to amaze me, but now they are asserting themselves more - the last plantings must be made in the next few days, and those already established are flowering freely, and setting fruit without too much difficulty.

I have just tended to them - a really pleasant job, especially on a day of blazing sunshine like today, where the heat outside is in the high teens to low twenties, and has exceeded 35ºC in the greenhouse this afternoon. I pinched out all the sideshoots, tied in any loose stems, and fed the older plants in full bloom. As tomorrow is set to be dry and even warmer (low-to-mid twenties), I will water the rest later, although they show no signs of wilting.

I'll do a run through below in the same style as before, but just the basic facts of how the plants are getting on, and a few pictures. Some of the plants look a little yellowish-green, but most (especially those outside) are the colour and shape they should be - rich green, stocky, and untroubled by pests or disease (there are a very few aphids on some of the plants, but nothing to concern me).

Black Cherry
planted 1* • largest plant 40cm • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✘

Cherokee Purple
planted 3 • largest plant 36cm • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✘

Costoluto Fiorentino
planted 6 • largest plant 78cm tall • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✔

Cream Sausage
planted 3 • largest plant 60cm • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✘**

Gardener's Delight
planted 7 • largest plant 60cm tall • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✔

German Orange Strawberry
planted none yet

Great White
planted 1***

Green Zebra
planted 3 • largest plant 50cm • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✘

Jaune Flammée
planted 6 • largest plant 88cm tall • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✔

Riesentraube
planted 1 • all plants <30cm • flowers open ✘ • fruit set ✘

Snowberry
planted 4 • largest plant 76cm tall • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✔

Sub Arctic Plenty
planted 2 • largest plant 34cm • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✘

Summer Cider
planted 4 • largest plant 60cm • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✘

Sun Belle
planted 3 • largest plant 106cm tall • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✘

Super Marmande
planted 4 • largest plant 60cm tall • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✔

You can see how much they've grown - the biggest change I think it 31cm - over a foot in two weeks! Some have raced ahead, with 'Super Marmande' flowering and starting to set fruit, 'Jaune Flammée' and 'Costoluto Fiorentino' swelling into recognisable tomatoes. Some have been slower - 'Sun Belle' has grown and flowered, but not set any fruit yet. With the exception of 'Great White' and 'German Orange Strawberry', which have mostly languished on the windowsill, I can now believe I'll harvest every type, although I suspect some will abound, while others may be a rare treat. I still want to plant a total of at least 60, and have found plenty more healthy plants indoors and in the greenhouse to make up that number. I hope as much progress is made by the next update in the middle of the month!

*It seems I'd counted two in the last update, but the sheet I use to keep track says one. I've no idea where the confusion arose!
**These figures only cover the plants in their final positions. I have discovered, however, a 'Cream Sausage' plant on the windowsill with tiny fruit forming, even though it's growing in a plastic cup! Tomatoes continue to amaze me.
***I couldn't find this plant anywhere! Either I made a mistake, and haven't planted it, or it's lurking somewhere - when you get to 48 plants, it's easy to lose track! Especially as the labels tend to be hidden under lots of foliage. I need to plant more of these anyway, if there are any left.

June harvest: week four/monthly summary

2011-06-30T21:00:00.001+01:00

The end of the month meant the peak of the strawberries - mostly intact, a good colour, and intensely fragrant!

Instead of doing my harvest update on Tuesday, I decided to wait till the last day of the month, and round up all that's happened. First of all, the daily totals:

Totals for nine days 22nd-30th June:
27th: 825g raspberries, 7g wild strawberries, 5g strawberries (day total: 837g)
29th: 1.225kg strawberries, 182g gooseberries, 1.83kg raspberries (day total: 3.237kg)
30th: 746g broad beans, 94g spinach (day total: 840g)
Total for period: 4.914kg

Yes, I wasn't out there so much this past week. I've been quite busy, and to be honest, I like to pick large amounts at once, rather than little and often, at least where the fruit is concerned (you need a certain base amount for most recipes, usually a pound). Still, the totals are impressive - and it's largely soft fruit. The vegetables put in a late showing, but are now mostly over, and I'm still waiting for their replacements (I warn you now: there aren't going to be any squashes for a long time - more on that in a future post). There are quite a few baby tomatoes in the greenhouse now, but I have no idea how long they'll take (the date for the theoretical first fruit has passed, unsurprisingly without ripening, as I've not been quite conscientious enough about the plants' welfare).

A little of the fruit has been discarded. I refuse to store fruit in the fridge unless absolutely necessary, and that's usually fine, but I was distracted by a number of other things going on (such as a friend's barbecue), so some of the strawberries went mouldy. A tragedy, but what can you do? Better than throwing away shop-bought food, and it all gets composted anyhow.

As far as June is concerned, however, it's been a raging success. I had harvested just over half a kilogramme of produce up to the end of May, which I was proud of, but seems pitiful now, after so many days with more than that in a single bowlful. As I keep saying, the soft fruit season is finite, and will soon end, so this is the first of two major harvest periods in the year (the other, I imagine, will be towards the end of August through September, when the tomatoes and other late things will be ready). I am enjoying it while it lasts. As if to confirm this, yesterday's prodigious strawberry harvest was almost the end - very few fruits remain, although a second flowering is not out of the question (last year they didn't have time to ripen the second crop, however). Raspberries have another week at least.

What else has been successful? The spinach, although that goes for the whole year - it has kept producing endlessly, and I haven't bought any for months. What hasn't? The peas were a writeoff, the beans were just so-so until the very end. They weren't so delicious as to justify the time and space devoted to them (let alone the price; bean seeds are quite expensive), but I will plant some again next year (or in the autumn for an early spring crop). I may revert to more productive, less unusual varieties, though - three beds have given around a kilogramme in total, which simply isn't enough. The gooseberry was a failure - for the fourth or fifth year in a row. It didn't lose all its leaves to sawfly this year, and the fruits ripened - they were meant to be deep red, but have never had the chance to get that far in the past. I will be ripping it out, and I doubt I'll grow them again - they take up too much space, only produce one crop a year (whereas that ground could provide a succession of vegetables), and it's not as though I'm crazy about gooseberries anyway. The currants didn't provide a mass of fruit, but I do adore them, so I'll buy new plants and try again somewhere else.

Total for June: 11.081kg

I had the idea last week, looking at the figures, that I'd set a final personal goal this month - of 10kg total harvest. A bit ambitious, but just possible. Well as you can see I beat it by some margin. Which means:

Year to date total: 11.591kg

Which is respectable, I think, and satisfies me for now. But the sooner my front garden is stuffed with lettuces, spinach, beetroot, turnips, and tomatoes, the sooner I can relax again!

Finally, what do I have to look forward to in July? Well, hopefully more settled, sunny conditions! We're in the middle of just such a period, and it's just what the garden needs (especially the tomatoes). I will be harvesting the shallots this month - the best have really swollen, each bulb now several, each larger than the original. Most will be stored for later use, some kept for planting next year. The first tomato! I am confident the largest 'Jaune Flammée', which is now around the size of a large cherry tomato (it may grow a little more, it may not) will ripen in the next two to three weeks, although I doubt I'll be harvesting very many until August. I'm determined to sow salads, and oriental greens for the autumn - hopefully, the first leaves will be ready in a few weeks.

June harvest: week three

2011-06-21T16:00:00.009+01:00

My harvest on the 17th: a bowlful of summer.

And not to be outdone, the front garden has been producing vegetables.

The fruit just keeps coming! The strawberries are ripening all over the place, and not getting too nibbled before I catch them (the ones I miss end up hollow and full of woodlice - seems to be their favourite food! Except wood, of course)*. And now, the raspberries are doing the same - and being held high off the ground, they tend to avoid any problems (the birds round here, which may have noticed my cherries, seem to ignore these equally delicious fruits). The strawberries weigh more, of course, the largest so far being 30g, so they still account for the bulk of the total. But in numbers, the raspberries are probably winning by this point. I actually prefer raspberries, so I'm perfectly happy with that.

Meanwhile, in the front, there is still spinach - what stars they've been (living up to their name 'perpetual'). The broad beans are swelling at last, and as you can see, the turnips that took (a handful) have got to a good size (they say pick them at golfball size, but I've had them nearer a tennis-ball and they aren't woody). So as you can see from the pictures, June is red and green, with just a touch of white.

Totals for week 15th-21st June:
15th: 98g turnip, 244g turnip tops (day total 342g)
17th: 323g raspberries, 774g strawberries, 6g cherry (day total 1103g)
18th: 1g wild strawberry
21st: 73g broad beans, 693g strawberries, 1049g raspberries, 159g redcurrants, 210g whitecurrants (day total 2184g)
Total for week: 3.630kg
Year to date total: 6.677kg

The exponential growth continues! Once again, a week's harvest has exceeded the year's total to date. I suspect this will be the last time - at least until tomatoes and winter squash are ripe. It seems appropriate that the largest haul I've had so far came on Midsummer's Day - the high point of the year for me, I think. Not that it's all downhill just yet - warmth and light can be counted on (to a point) for a couple more months.

So much fruit! It actually took ages to pick all this today, but in the peaceful sunshine, it was no chore.

I used the previous batch of strawberries to make jam, but despite following the recipe closely, and using proprietary pectin stock, it didn't set. That's a problem I always have with strawberry jam, so I need to work on it. The taste was great, though - perfect, light but intense, if that's not contradictory. The raspberries will be split between jam, syrup, and whatever fancy recipes that catch my eye in the next couple of weeks. The turnip and broad bean tops made a passable soup, but it was a bit fibrous, even after prolonged blending. Maybe not worth the effort.

*Picking strawberries this damp evening, it turns out the holes are made initially by tiny slugs. Thankfully, the damage has remained lighter than in previous years.

The tomatoes of midsummer

2011-06-17T16:31:00.011+01:00

The stupid autofocus on my camera is useless in situations like this. However, you can see the first tomato here, a 'Jaune Flammée' swollen to the size of a pea!

It's time for an update on the heart of my garden this year - the tomatoes.

I'm being a little mean to the other crops, perhaps. But the reason I describe them in that way is simple (apart from the emotional attachment, the flavour, the usefulness) - they will be providing the bulk of my year's harvest, at least in terms of weight.

Three months ago, or about one third of the total season I suppose, I set out what I wanted to do, which varieties I would grow, and why. As time has passed, and I've seen how the plants have progressed, and especially once I'd committed to building my new greenhouse, I decided roughly how many plants I'd grow, where I'd put them, and then I worked out my projected harvest.

'Riesentraube' (bottom left), 'Gardener's Delight' (upper right), plus beans and winter squash (upper left), at the base of the outside wall of the greenhouse.

I started with 15 types of seed, and all have produced plants - although I had rather a glut of 'Green Zebra' and 'Gardener's Delight', and rather too few 'German Orange Strawberry' and 'Snowberry'. Nonetheless, I have met the minimum requirements - 3 of each variety. That makes 45 plants in total, but I decided I wanted a few more than that, and after I've distributed some to friends and family (so far, 6 to the boys, 18 to my friend and her mother, around 8 to my parents, and a dozen to my sister) I will have to find a home around the place for the remainder. That could be anything up to another 50 plants, but my rough total (i.e. the number I want, with anything over being a bonus, or a burden depending on your point of view) is 60.

Now for the maths. Some plants (between 15 and 20) will live in my greenhouse, the rest outdoors. The general advice with cordons (indeterminate plants, that won't just form a neat, self-limiting bush) is to stop the plant's growth after 4-6 trusses (bunches of fruit). I will probably push the ones under 'glass', as they will be kept under ideal conditions. A good average then would be 5 trusses per plant (300 in total). Trusses vary quite a bit in how many flowers they produce - each flower becoming one fruit, of course. The smaller the fruit, in general the more fruits per truss. A conservative estimate would be 6-8 fruits per truss averaged across all the varieties. That's 1800-2400 fruits, so let's pick a round figure in between of 2000. Two thousand tomatoes! Then, once again, the weight varies hugely, from as little as 15g for 'Snowberry' (probably even less for 'Riesentraube', but I couldn't find any figures online*), up to (apparently) as much as 800g for 'Great White'. I'll be modest, and say 50g on average across the board. That amounts to a lovely round 100kg grand total. Now, that's far more than I'd estimated I'd need, to attain self-sufficiency, which was a minimum of 50kg I think. So anywhere between the two, and I'll be satisfied.

A range of smaller plants, including 'Great White', 'Cherokee Purple', 'Cream Sausage', and 'Black Cherry'.

Now for a roundup of how each variety is faring.

Black Cherry
planted 2 • all plants <30cm • flowers open ✘ • fruit set ✘
Fairly small, as they were in the later-sown batch, but healthy enough. Hopefully they'll catch up once established.

Cherokee Purple
planted 2 • all plants <30cm • flowers open ✘ • fruit set ✘
They seem alright, vigorous and a good shade of green.

Costoluto Fiorentino
planted 3 • largest plant 58cm tall • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✘
Not all of these have survived, or look healthy, but the largest, in the greenhouse for a few weeks now, is doing very well. Its first flowers, however, are very odd - I think some sort of mutation has occurred, as there is one huge fused flower, with dozens of petals, and the truss is irregular. Hopefully an aberration!**

Not perfectly in focus, but the large, fused, mutant flower is in the middle, between normal ones. I doubt it will form a fruit. Sadly, inspecting the open flower to the right, I snapped it off. Still, plenty more coming!

Cream Sausage
planted 3 • all plants <30cm • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✘
I found one of these on the windowsill today, with a full truss of open flowers - still in a tiny plastic cup 'pot'. Amazing tenacity! The plants are small, not terribly vigorous (I suppose because they are determinates), but early flowering - all the plants have blossom open now. One of the ones I'm really looking forward to!

Gardener's Delight
planted 3 • largest plant 38cm tall • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✘
True to form, these have grown well, put up with a lot of neglect, and flowered early and profusely. They are popular for a reason! Again, I had a glut of plants, but that's no problem - I gave plenty away, as they're great for beginners.

German Orange Strawberry
planted none yet • all plants <30cm • flowers open ✘ • fruit set ✘
A straggly bunch, rather neglected, still a little small to plant out (or at least, I can leave them a little longer while I devote space and time to other varieties).

Great White
planted 1 • all plants <30cm • flowers open ✘ • fruit set ✘
No problems with these - and I found several extra plants when rearranging the windowsill, so hopefully I'll not be short of fruit when the time comes.

Green Zebra
planted 3 • all plants <30cm • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✘
There were far too many of these, around 40 seedlings. Thankfully, my friend has a greenhouse and seemed happy to take some for herself and her mother. They seem happy enough, showing no signs so far of the tendency to disease I'd read about.

Jaune Flammée
planted 3 • largest plant 70cm tall • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✔
The star of the show! These are strong, tall, early-flowering plants. The first buds, open flowers, and set fruit all came on this variety - although being the most advanced to begin with, I lavished more attention on it (it got planted first). I have taken side-shoot cuttings, which have started to root. Hoping it's as productive and delicious as I've read!

The second truss is already open, and two more trusses are visible higher up the plant.

Riesentraube
planted 1 • all plants <30cm • flowers open ✘ • fruit set ✘
What an odd variety! To begin with, nothing germinated. It ultimately took two or three times as long to get established as the others, and even then, most of the plants didn't thrive. They then exhibited two different habits; some remained short and stocky, putting out lots of side shoots (a bit like a determinate), and the rest grew tall and leggy. I have a feeling there's some sort of genetic variation, at least in the seeds I bought. However, those that have grown look okay.

Snowberry
planted 3 • largest plant 50cm tall • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✘
I thought disaster had struck when, searching for plants to give to my mum, I found they'd all died. They were from the first batch that went outside to harden off, and got blasted by hot winds, killing the tops. Thankfully, I'd already planted two for myself, and I later found another one clinging to life. I took side shoot cuttings from the strongest plant, so I won't go short after all. The ones that did get planted early are large, and very healthy, on the verge of setting fruit.

Sub Arctic Plenty
planted 2 • all plants <30cm • flowers open ✘ • fruit set ✘
I don't mind if these don't do so well - I wanted really early fruit, and these are amongst the earliest, but I didn't plant them soon enough, so they'll end up fruiting later than some of the others. Small and early-flowering, like the other determinate type, 'Cream Sausage'.

Summer Cider
planted 3 • all plants <30cm • flowers open ✘ • fruit set ✘
The one variety I don't need to label, as it has potato leaves (they really stand out). Otherwise, a little slower than some others, but strong enough.

Sun Belle
planted 3 • largest plant 75cm tall • flowers open ✔ • fruit set ✘
Another one I started having a lot of, but lost some along the way.

This 'Sun Belle' is taking over as the tallest plant. The uppermost leaves are strangely curled back, with no obvious cause, but it seems untroubled.

Super Marmande
planted 3 • largest plant 40cm tall • flowers open ✘ • fruit set ✘
Very strong, stocky plants, some of these, showing off the vigor that made me want to grow it again this year. Hopefully it'll be just as delicious, too.

This 'Super Marmande' may not be very tall, but it's very healthy-looking.

And one non-tomato picture: my largest squash plant, an 'Uchiki Kuri', which is really thriving in the greenhouse, but will need to be moved out soon.

*I've since found a source that says 6-10g.
**Looking at other people's photos of this, it seems the flowers do tend to have more petals/look rather odd. Watch this space!

June harvest: week two

2011-06-14T15:30:00.012+01:00

Today it is sunny, and noticeably warm. Sadly, that's a rarity. It was similar on Saturday, but the breeze got up later in the day, and in any case I spent the afternoon and evening away from home (helping my friend with her tomatoes - well, giving her some plants, installing them in her greenhouse, showing her the ropes). So today I must make the most of a dry spell - Sunday was the opposite, cold and rainy, but most days are cool to mild, with showers. Not good for cementing, painting, or using powertools outdoors! I'm hoping to get the final roof panel on the greenhouse today, and maybe the door.

I pulled up the peas. I had one large container (almost a raised bed) of them, and although they'd persevered through everything we've had this spring, the snails didn't relent, and I decided to pull them up, releasing space for probably a couple of pumpkin plants. The broad beans similarly, have produced little - tiny beans, smallish pods, and not many of them. I will probably pull them up wholesale over the next week or so.

My pitiful harvest - this is all the peas I got, plus some broad beans.

I wrote the paragraph above before I went into the front garden a little earlier. In fact, patience has paid off there - the chest-high bean plants have fat pods hidden at the base of their stems. I still won't have a glut, but it's not a disaster - enough to encourage me to try again next year, with more plants, earlier sowing, and more discipline. I will leave the existing plants until the pods are ripe, rather than ripping them up.

However, there's been no shortage of strawberries, as I mentioned in my last post, and the raspberries are ripening too. I'll give the currants a few more days, and what gooseberries there are are starting to blush (they're a red variety), so I'll wait until they're ready. Otherwise, there's not much to have - the shallots are fattening, but the leaves are still green, so I expect it'll be a month before I can harvest them. The tomatoes are flowering left, right, and centre, but no fruit has set as yet (I'm starting to get concerned). Everything else is either too small, or I haven't sown it yet. Damn.

Totals for week 8th-14th June:
8th: 190g strawberries
10th: 4g raspberries and alpine (wild) strawberries, 274g strawberries, 22g snap peas, 20g broad beans, 28g peas (day total: 348g)
12th: 330g strawberries, 3g raspberries, 2g cherries (day total: 335g)
13th: 7g broad beans, 5g alpine strawberries, 43g raspberries, 172g strawberries (day total: 227g)
14th: 30g raspberries, 305g strawberries, 39g spinach, 50g broad beans, 87g turnip, 31 broad bean tops, 245g turnip tops (day total: 787g)
Total for week: 1.897kg (once again, more than the whole year to date!)
Year to date total: 3.047kg

So, not a bad week, statistically. In fact, the stuff I gathered just today amounts to more than one-and-a-half times the weight of everything I harvested up to the end of May! Clearly, June is a season of mellow fruitfulness - I just hope this isn't a peak, but more a sign of the bounty yet to come.

And what did I do with all that produce? Well, the strawberries went into a batch of syrup, and I'll make another one with some of the rest (the syrup really is divine - I'll post a recipe soon). I'll look through my recipe books for the small batch of raspberries I have so far - maybe a mousse, tart, or jelly. The spinach, peas, beans and turnip go into my dinners (usually rice), and their tops will make a soup (a bit of an experiment!).

Strawberry season

2011-06-12T15:16:00.010+01:00

Washed, hulled, and ready to use.

The strawberries were early this year. As I mentioned previously, I picked my first on the last day of May, but for me (based on average conditions round here), June is the time for these fruits. That's when they are in full swing, producing handfuls a day from my patch of a couple of dozen plants. I grow four or five kinds, although the labels I carefully placed next to each plant when they went in three years ago have long since disappeared, and they've multiplied so much (sending out runners despite my best efforts at control) I now just treat them all the same. For the record, there are 'Honeoye', 'Cambridge Favourite', 'Hapil' (I think labelled as 'Happil' when I bought it), and 'Rhapsody' (but I'm not 100% sure of that last one). I wanted a range, partly to mitigate against disease, partly to give a longer season. In fact, the sizes, shapes, shades of red, and flavours are all very distinct - a strawberry is not a strawberry is not a strawberry.

The plants are meant to be replaced every three years, which gives me an opportunity to move the bed - it's currently on a terrace of the slope in the back garden, south-facing, on enriched clay soil. They thrive here, but I need the space for something else. I will ditch the gooseberry planted with them, which has never done well. I'll probably put them in raised beds I'm planning on building by the side of the house, which is a tough spot, being quite shady and cool. Maybe not so ideal for ripening, but I'll keep some in pots, too, to hedge my bets. I need the current fruit bed for vegetables, which I care more about now, and which will really benefit from the aspect of that location. I probably won't buy any more plants, because there are enough self-spread across the garden to provide for my needs - I'll just dig them up later in the year and relocate them.

Anyway, this year is providing the largest harvest ever, so the bed is certainly mature. As for earliness, I have a photo from last year of my strawberries from the 20th of June - and although it may not be of the first fruits, it's clear that they are indeed (as I may have said before) around two weeks early. There are many more fruits still on the plants, although blooming finished over a week ago, so I expect to be picking some for the next fortnight or so - perhaps till the end of the month. Thankfully, a bumper crop of raspberries will take over - the first fruits have started turning red, which is early again (I think of raspberries as more of a July crop), but around two weeks after the first strawberries, which is about right.

But what to do with this bounty? Well, first of all, enjoy it! The process of searching through the fruit patch, looking under leaves for bright red (or in my case, blush pink*) fruits is exciting, and very pleasant in warm summer sunshine (today, in the cold driving rain, it was not so fun). Eating them, perfectly ripe, unadulterated, is a simple, but satisfying pleasure. You could do the cream-and-sugar thing (I've never been a fan), or use them in a smoothie or cocktail (I find they work well, puréed, with bourbon). Or make a basic custard, blitz strawberries, pass through a sieve and/or muslin, combine, and freeze in an ice cream machine (or however you prefer to make it), maybe adding chopped strawberries, or a coulis, to really enhance the flavour.

With less-than-perfect, or slightly unripe fruits, try this: chop them quite finely, dust with fine sugar, drizzle with the best balsamic vinegar you can find, and if you like, some fresh, coarsely-ground black pepper, cover, and refrigerate overnight. Serve over vanilla ice cream, or with mascarpone. The strawberry flavour is much enhanced. I never used to like the idea of this, but it really works.

A pound of strawberries, waiting to be turned into syrup...

...and the finished product.

*I have to pick my strawberries a little before they are perfectly ripe, otherwise they get eaten by culprits unknown (probably slugs and snails). They turn deep red indoors in a day or two.

Maybe I was wrong...

2011-06-08T17:49:00.004+01:00

They aren't full size yet, but they're definitely broad beans! Note the pinkish blush of this variety ('Karmazyn'). There's hope after all!

June harvest: week one

2011-06-07T11:10:00.001+01:00

Two exciting things make this first June harvest particularly special. My first-ever home-grown cherry ripened a few days ago. I have two trees, which I planted two years ago. One I've trained as a fan against the top fence (a south-facing fence that runs along the terrace, higher than the house), and the other is planted on the opposite side of the terrace, and left to its own devices. I expected no fruit the first year (two or three flowers on one of the trees fell off), but last year there was some blossom, but no fruit either. The freestanding tree got infested both years by blackfly, making its new growth twisted and discoloured. This year, the fan-trained tree (which is much larger, whether due to the variety, the soil, position, or having its growth forced into a few strong branches) got the blackfly, but at least has set a couple of dozen fruits, but it was the other one that produced the first ripe fruit (of only three full-sized cherries on the whole tree).

Totals for week 1st-7th June:
1st: 8g chard (the last of last summer's rainbow chard - I need to re-sow), 40g spinach, 73g mint
2nd: 23g strawberries, 3g cherry
3rd: 62g strawberries, 33g spinach
5th: 30g peas + pea pods (I had to harvest some early, because one plant was looking sickly, so I stripped what was there, and cooked the whole lot as there wasn't much - the pods were tough), 53g broad bean tops (more on this below), 158g strawberries, and a negligible weight of (but big taste hit from) tarragon and parsley
6th: 128g strawberries
7th: 37g strawberries, 2g broad beans (I tried a large pod)
Total for week: 650g (more than the whole year to date!)
Year to date total: 1.16kg

Which means I beat my target a week early! (That's the second special thing, in case you were wondering). I'd hoped to harvest 500g in the first two weeks of June. Now, I don't want to get ahead of myself, so I'll revise it to 800g - I can't guarantee the strawberries will continue producing consistently (there's a mass of green fruit, but I suspect the weather has an effect on when they ripen). Second, I've harvested my first kilogramme of produce! Compared to Annie's Granny, it's small beer indeed, but it's a nice figure, and the heavy stuff comes later in the season (pumpkins, squash, tomatoes).

As you can see from the figures above, the vast majority of the weight is soft fruit, but I suppose it's slightly unfair since leaves don't weigh much (I've had lots of spinach, but even a large handful amounts to a few tens of grammes). If I was feeling uncharitable, I could also mention how most of it comes from perennials, rather than stuff I sowed/planted in the past few months. But produce is produce! And I think it's good to have a balance between crops that largely look after themselves with minimal intervention (mint is a prime example), and those that need more care, last a much shorter time, but allow for more experimentation year on year.

Now, a note on peas and beans, pre-empting the next couple of harvest totals. I planted two beds of broad beans in the front garden. One has been rather swamped by surrounding plants (mostly weeds), so I expect little from it; the other has grown luxuriantly - they are chest-high, with not a blackfly amongst them. But, there's part of the problem. I got it into my head that pinching out the tops was only necessary if they became infested, so I left them. They flowered their heads off, but the pods are small and few. The rule is, pinch out to allow the energy to go into the fruit - just like tomatoes. Second, the winds here in May have blasted the plants, stripping a lot of flowers. So, I don't expect much from them. In the back garden, I have two large planters, one with more broad beans, the other with peas. Incidentally, the two varieties of broad beans I planted were 'Karmazyn', a pink-fruited kind, and 'Red Epicure', with even darker pink/red beans (I have a batch of young crimson-flowered plants ready to go somewhere); the peas are 'Serpette Guillotteau'. Well, both have been attacked by snails relentlessly - even now they are large, the lower leaves are stripped, and even the pods have been nibbled.

So I don't expect much from my legumes this season. I've never done terribly well with peas, so maybe I should give up on them. I had high hopes for a glut of beans, but it seems it's not to be. At least the French and runner beans are looking healthy - for now!

Ups and downs

2011-06-06T18:32:00.001+01:00

The centrepiece of my rose bed: a huge, fragrant pink bloom (whose name I've sadly forgotten)

I lost the internet for the best part of a week, hence a lack of entries on here. The router's plug had literally melted to the socket, which was worrying, and the service provider was less than helpful in resolving it. Anyway, I'm back now, and interestingly, it was blogging (and reading blogs) that I missed most, I think.

What's been happening? Well, the new greenhouse is almost finished. It's taken three times longer than it should, but only a third of that is my laziness (maths never was my thing) - the rest was down to the terrible weather slowing me down (say no to power tools when it's raining, and laying polycarbonate sheeting during gales is not advised) and actively destroying some of what I'd already done. However, I fought the tendency to get disheartened, and repaired it - and made it better than it would otherwise have been. As of this afternoon, four of the five roof panels are on, all but two small end panels, and the only major thing lacking is the door (which I'll put together indoors for ease). A discovery of new things at the timber yard (excellent self-adhesive flashing strips, special exterior sealant, new kinds of wooden trims) have left it looking good, sturdy, and watertight.

The roof - compare it with the photograph I took a few weeks ago. My proudest achievement!

A view down the greenhouse - it looks pretty good! The tomatoes are loving it.

This is why - today's maximum temperature outside was around 14ºC. The thermometer is inside the greenhouse.

Inside, it's full of plants. The oldest tomato plant is very large and sturdy (and has given me three side shoots worthy of attempting to root into new plants), and several others aren't far behind. Flowers are everywhere, though no fruit has set yet. The chilli seedlings, Thunbergia alata ('black-eyed Susan'), and few squash plants I've shoved in there are doing well too, though probably that has more to do with the ease of watering in there compared to indoors (a lot of plants have withered because I've not kept up). The best thing of all, it smells like a greenhouse in there now - a proper greenhouse, like they have at the park, or in garden centres. Warm, humid, earthy, alive. That spurs me on like nothing else.

The star, as ever - 'Jaune Flammée', now with three trusses (two open, but no fruit)

Nestling under the table: spare tomato plants - rather too many!

And on top - a handful of summer and winter squash, chillies, tomatoes, T. alata, and Lobelia.

And the harvest totals have really picked up - but more on that tomorrow.

End of May harvest update

2011-06-03T14:46:00.001+01:00

Plenty more to come!

A quickie. May was a poor month for weather, and only those crops that were already producing yielded much, until the very end. However, as a portent of things to come (I hope!), the very last day of the month was the most exciting, and I picked my first strawberries of the year! That's a good fortnight early, so the recent cooler weather can't have retarded things too much.

Totals for two weeks from 15th-31st May:
17th: 43g spinach
21st: 22g spinach
25th: 27g lettuce (a 'volunteer', or self-sown plant, from who knows where), 15g spinach
26th: 28g mint (applemint, to be precise)
31st: 29g strawberries (three whole fruits!)
Total for fortnight: 164g
Year to date total: 510g

From now on, I'll post weekly harvest updates, as the soft fruits, peas, and beans will push the weights up considerably. I've already picked as much in the past three days as in the previous two weeks, for example! My goal is to have 500g from the 1st to the 14th of June - I'm pretty confident about that.

More details on the garden (and photos!) coming soon.

Where everything stands

2011-05-25T11:41:00.001+01:00

The peas are swelling fast.

It's time to do a thorough update on the plants I have, the seeds I've yet to sow, and my plans and concerns at the moment. I feel like this is one of the pivots of the year, where a snap decision either way can set the next few months.

First, I bought more seeds. In my defence, they were super-cheap. When my sister visited a couple of weeks ago, we went to a discount book store in town, and they had a bargain bin full of branded seed packets - all the major names. 2 packs for £1. I held back at the time, as I didn't want to stall my sister, and I wasn't in a buying frame of mind. I finally went back a couple of days ago, and I was right to wait - they were now 4 packs for £1. There was a lot of good stuff, including - annoyingly - some I'd ordered from eBay at a much higher price (cavolo nero and Greek oregano for example, neither of which I've yet sown). I settled on 12 packs, which is a lot, but I don't have to grow them all this year. At that price, how could I refuse? Incidentally, the price of the seeds (printed on the backs of the packets) amounts to £21.50 - quite a saving!

I got:

Carrot 'Amsterdam 3 - Sprint'
Carrot 'Autumn King 2'
Lettuce (romaine) 'Pinares'
Lettuce (iceberg) 'Lakeland'
Mesclun mixed
Sage
Parsley 'Giant of Italy'
Wallflower 'Aurora'
Poppy (Icelandic) 'Ballerina Mixed'
Poppy 'Shirley Single Mixed'
Nemesia 'Carnival Mixed'
Ornamental Grass Eragostris spectabilis

The carrots were to replace my current stock of seeds. I've read that carrot seed has a short shelf life, and when I tried the homemade carrot seed mats championed by Annie's Kitchen Garden, not a single one germinated. The two varieties here are small, container-grown and large, maincrop respectively - covering all the bases. I have a lot of random cut-and-come-again salad seeds, but no hearting lettuces - I'd like to give the latter a go. Sage, well, I wouldn't normally grow perennial herbs from seed, but I always fail with shop-bought sage plants, so this might be a way forward - I adore sage. As for parsley, my current herb seeds (like the carrots) didn't yield much this year, so I need to replace them. As for the flowers - well, I love all of these, and there's still just enough time to sow them this year (some, like the wallflower, won't bloom until next year anyway). It occurs to me that the grass (a real random purchase for me) is in the same genus as teff, an Ethiopian grain used to make flatbreads. But I digress...

How are the tomatoes? Mixed, frankly. I gave my mum a selection of plants, but was dismayed to discover I'd run out of a couple of varieties already - 'Snowberry' and 'Sun Belle'. It turned out that I'd given a couple to my friends, and planted some myself, and the remaining plants all died. Well, they aren't quite dead, but all their top growth has withered. It remains to be seen whether they will bounce back - otherwise, I'll take side-shoot cuttings from the survivors. It could be a coincidence, or maybe these varieties simply don't take so kindly to neglect as their brethren.

The top plant, 'Jaune Flammée' is still by far the largest and healthiest-looking.

The flower buds on 'Costoluto Fiorentino' look quite different to the other varieties'.

Several of the 'Gardeners' Delight' plants indoors have started flowering - more through stress than anything else, I think. I've put them outside.

By the end of today, I should have around 25 planted in their final positions, i.e. into half growbags. The first ones to go in seem happy enough, although a lot of wind (the greenhouse, unfinished, offers limited protection) means they still look a little weedy. I intend to have 45-50 plants myself this year, to provide a year's supply of fruit, which was my original goal. At a kilo a plant, minimum, I should be able to manage that - though we'll see how I feel about watering in a couple of months' time. Indoors, there are several dozen plants remaining, though many have suffered from a lack of regular watering, so they may have to be ditched. I've started moving the rest outside regardless of their size and state, simply to give them a chance at getting some rain (there's been plenty of that this month here).

The same can be said for the aubergines. A few have thrived, although they grow achingly slowly compared to their cousins the tomatoes. Some have simply fried on the windowsill. Hopefully I will have a couple of each variety, which was my intention.

Pumpkins and other squash are thriving. Most varieties have germinated, some indoors, some out. The ones on the front windowsill have grown quicker, in the warm, but they are all doing well. I want to keep back two plants of each variety (there are around ten kinds) for myself, and sell the rest. My first melons went very leggy and died, but I sowed a second batch, which I've lost track of (all these cucurbits essentially look alike as seedlings). The cucumbers are everywhere too - just one variety sown so far, 'Armenian yard long' (I have a few of last year's 'Crystal Lemon' seeds left too), but they look happy for now.

The beans are looking great. The first couple of batches of broad beans have flowered for weeks, and now some pods are swelling (though I think the high winds will have drastically reduced the yield). The last batch, of crimson-flowered broad beans, are now healthy seedlings. The French beans are large, and I planted the first few today, one each into medium-sized terracotta pots. I also planted five runner beans, into a huge pot, with a very tall wigwam of reclaimed privet and Buddleia prunings, a good 7 feet tall (I learned my lesson last year - they grow huge!).

Young broad bean pods - I find it funny how they point upwards.

French beans to the left, runners to the right (and a tiny pumpkin 'Marina di Chioggia')

Finally, the less said about my ornamentals the better. I have seriously neglected them - which is a real shame, but I just don't seem to be able to juggle everything at once (I'm basically too lazy). Hopefully I'll have a few Cosmos, sweet peas, and Lobelia, nonetheless.

So it's a mixed bag overall. I have never in all my life been as self-disciplined as I should have been, but in gardening you really see the results: wilting, shrivelled, stunted plants, screaming out how inconsistent you are - you sowed them, labelled them, gave them love, then withdrew it and they died. Maybe the plants that survive are particularly tough as a result, but that's a very charitable interpretation. At least the perennials - in particular soft fruits - are racing ahead, regardless.

There is going to be a glut of raspberries at this rate - the hundreds of flowers are swarming with bumblebees!

Seeing results

2011-05-20T23:26:00.001+01:00

The biggest news of the week - the first tomato flower has opened! This is 'Jaune Flammée'. In my defence, tomato flowers are hard to photograph.

The blue geranium that grows in my front garden. It's pretty, but huge and spreading, so I will dig it out. Still, I'll wait till it's finished flowering.

The peas have started flowering, almost behind my back. The first pod is an inch long - progressing fast!

A lot has been happening here recently. I've hosted my parents for a week, which has been much easier than I feared, and the main reason for their visit (my dad's application of electrical knowhow on to the new kitchen) has been fulfilled. More on that in the near future I hope...

The interior end of my greenhouse. On the left: the largest tomato plants in their final positions. To the centre and right: chilli seedlings, many more tomatoes, and a sole pumpkin, braving the grey weather.

Beans! French, runner, broad. Looking good now, especially the runners and French beans, which will need to be potted on soon.

Meanwhile, outdoors, things have continued to grow. May has been wet, blustery, grey and cool, but not cold (no frosts), which has led to the partial wrecking of the new greenhouse. It's probably retarded some of the warmer-climate crops, but the peas, broad beans, and spinach are thriving. We're on the cusp of summer now - peonies and roses are in bud, and tiny green strawberries and raspberries are swelling.

Mid-May harvest update

2011-05-13T19:06:00.000+01:00

Not edible, but beautiful: this is ornamental Allium season. This one was only planted a couple of months ago, along with the spinach and first broad beans.

A quick one, to record how much I've harvested from my garden in the first two weeks of the month. As predicted, it's not much, but it's something - I've saved a couple of quid not having to buy spinach. And my broad beans are covered with flowers - hundreds of them - although no tiny pods are visible yet. The few peas I managed to sow outdoors are also in bloom, and the shallots seem to be bulking up. Tomatoes are looking good, at least the ones I have planted into half grow-bags, but some of the ones I've neglected aren't happy. Squash and pumpkins are sprouting, and looking good enough to sell off the bulk, hopefully allowing me to break even on the plants overall.

The new greenhouse got damaged in storms recently, before my very eyes in fact, but it wasn't anything too bad. I'm adding extra roof cross-beams, and have nearly finished the wooden parts, so it shouldn't set me back too much, but it's been cool, cloudy, windy and rather wet for a couple of weeks, so I haven't managed to do all that much outside. However, a load of mixed beans (climbing French, broad, and runner) I sowed less than a fortnight ago, which have sheltered in there, are now all sprouting, so the summer harvest still looks good!

Totals for two weeks from 1st-14th* May:
1st: 109g mixed chard and spinach
4th: 7g spinach
7th: 18g spinach
13th: 26g chard, 38g spinach, 11g chives
Fortnight total: 209g
Year to date total: 346g

*I won't harvest any tomorrow - too busy preparing for parental arrival.

How to poach eggs, and what to serve with them

2011-05-03T16:21:00.000+01:00

I love poached eggs. I am starting a diet this week, to cut into the layers of excess that have coagulated around my waist this past couple of years, and eggs are very prominent (it's essentially a fusion of GI and Mediterranean eating - portion-controlled, wholegrain, but with lots of dairy, vegetables, and lean protein). That's good - I love eggs, especially for breakfast. My favourite way of cooking them nowadays is poaching - which is luckily a very healthy way to cook them, alongside boiling, as no extra fat is added.

A lot of people seem to have trouble poaching eggs, my mother among them. I have never found it difficult, so I thought I'd share my technique, which is pretty standard, and observations built up over the past few years (I must have poached a couple of hundred eggs in that time). I must admit, this is unscientific - I followed advice, and it worked, and now I do it every time. Maybe there are other ways, or even better ways, but I can tell you with confidence that this way works.

The most important thing, if you want neat, compact, self-contained poached eggs, with no strings of white floating off in the water, is use the freshest eggs you can get. I buy mine from the local greengrocer, and they are perfect for a couple of days. Some uses of eggs, such as meringue, are better done with old ones, but here, freshness is key - since the whites become weaker and runnier as they age, and this leads to them breaking up when you poach them.

Cooking the eggs
Take a pan, fill it with water, and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat, add a dash of vinegar (white wine or cider is best, and not too much - maybe a tablespoon per litre). Take a slotted spoon, and stir the water into a vortex. Break your eggs, one at a time, into a cup or bowl, and ease into the swirling water (i.e., add one egg, then break another - don't break more than one into the cup or bowl at once). Cook for two or three minutes - timing isn't critical so much as checking the eggs visually. The white needs to be fully set (if the water isn't hot enough, or you cook them for too little time, the centre of the white tends to stay gelatinous), but the yolk should be runny inside. Once done, remove from the water with the slotted spoon - leave them too long and the yolk will set firm, which misses the point of poaching.

Accompaniments
I always serve poached eggs on toast, or toasted pitta (whatever I have in), although English muffins are more classic, I suppose - but what you serve with them is endlessly flexible. Generally, the accompaniment goes between the toast and the eggs. Here are a few favourites:

smoked salmon/smoked trout: you can quickly microwave the fish (for just a few seconds) to par-cook it, or if the toast and egg are piping hot, the effect can be the same (although raw is fine too if you prefer).
spinach: wilt this if you like - an easy way is to put some in a sieve, and dip it into the boiling water as the eggs poach. Make sure it's well drained before putting on the toast. Asparagus can be treated the same way.
cheese: you could make cheese on toast, and top it with the eggs, or crumble goat cheese over the top before serving.
vegetable purée, e.g. broccoli: steam broccoli, and blitz with crème fraîche, salt, pepper, and parmesan; alternatively, try cauliflower blended with a little cream, salt and nutmeg, or peas blended with softened shallots and a little stock.
ham: prosciutto, Serrano, or equivalent, either raw or cooked until crispy, or English-style.
bacon.
tomatoes/mushrooms: grill or fry, as you would for a fried breakfast.
Hollandaise: this is rather classic, especially combined with, say, salmon or ham. Spoon a little over the eggs.
spices: try a pinch of garam masala, smoked paprika, or ground cumin on top.

However you serve them, if you like soft-boiled or fried eggs, I urge you to have a go at poaching them instead - don't expect perfect results the first time, maybe, but trust me, they are delicious, and feel a lot more special.

April harvest

2011-05-01T11:20:00.000+01:00

Hopefully, as the summer commences, I'll be able to do weekly harvest roundups, as is the norm in this sort of blog. However, as April is a lean time (and I didn't keep up with winter crops), I am doing one summary for the whole month.

Some things have been abundant. Applemint (which started out as variegated pineapple mint, but has reverted to the green form) grows freely in the front garden (though is rather choked by couch grass, so I need to dig the whole lot out and start again), and I've harvested lots of sprigs for summer rolls (rice paper wrappers filled with rice noodles, herbs, and sometimes prawns, sometimes chicken). Chives have been naturalised in the front for years, too, and I get lots of handfuls - it grows back quickly. The spinach and chard have bulked up almost without my noticing, and I've taken a few leaves (see the picture above). And I cut back the flowering sweet woodruff, though I won't eat that - it's mostly for enhancing rooms and laundry with its sweet vanilla scent.

Aside from this, wild foods have been abundant over the past six weeks. I've had dandelions (I gathered them for beer, then ignored them and had to throw them out), ground elder (which infests my friends' garden, and made a delicious soup with lovage and homemade chicken stock, of which more in a future post), and I keep meaning to gather the nettles that luxuriate in the uncultivated parts of the back garden (for soup, pesto, and making plant food).

May might see the first tomatoes forming, and the broad beans are already showing tiny pods. More herbs, nasturtium leaves, and rose petals will add a little interest, but no bulk. But come June, and the first strawberries, raspberries, ripe tomatoes, and salad leaves should be providing regular meals.

Total harvest to date (chives, spinach, mint, chard): 137g.

Struggling

2011-04-30T16:47:00.000+01:00

Today has not been good. All night and all day, the wind has gusted remorselessly. Strangely, it's sunny and warm - the wind is from the east. I don't know why that is, but its effect is all too obvious: destruction of what's there, prevention of what's planned, and a darkening of my mood. I've not been in the best humour for some time now, not entirely sure why (nor is this the place to go into it), but the wind is the worst weather for it. I would rather anything but this - it's threatening to continue the destruction of the old greenhouse, blasts sand and cement (both of which I'm using a lot of right now) into my eyes, and worst of all, has done a lot of cosmetic damage to the outdoor tomatoes.

That is, the plants that live outside in the day. There isn't anywhere light enough indoors, but I've had to bring them in early in order to protect them. Too late: they are wilting, and many have dead leaf tips. I had wanted to sell some, but I can't now. It's not devastating, as they will survive and recover, but it is galling - to see plants you've raised from seed, tended diligently, watered, fed, repotted, and moved back and forth to give them the best conditions. I want to scream, swear, and thrash about - not because of this specifically, but a lot of little things (a deeply painful back, thanks to much heavy lifting, a sense of being utterly alone against the elements, the general wearing-down of life, that I've discussed before) have conspired. I'd love a relaxing evening, but my sister is coming - she texted me the day before yesterday, totally out of the blue. I haven't even spoken to her in a couple of months, so it'll be good to catch up, but she's very fussy and I'm not in the mood.

However, the new greenhouse stands unmoved by the weather so far, partially glazed, with a new, level, solid paved floor, and the first tomato plant (the 'Jaune Flammée' that first got flower buds) is in its half-growbag, in the corner, and looks very healthy. So long as there are no cold nights before I get the job finished (still a half week away), it should be fine. That's something, at least.

Moving fast

2011-04-27T19:35:00.000+01:00

A quick update on the garden. Today I fed my tomatoes for the first time! Not strictly following the rules, I suppose - I saw good-quality tomato feed in the local discount store, so I got some, and the three trays of plants (around 50) that have been outside in the daytime (except yesterday when it was too cold) needed a boost, I thought. Several plants have flowers forming now, and you are meant to start feeding around the time of the first blooms I think (or maybe when they start to 'set', i.e. when tiny fruits form). I have to say, I thought they'd stopped growing appreciably, but when I brought them in the day before yesterday, I realised the largest were nearly knee-high! That was a shock - they are absolutely big enough to plant in their final positions already, which is on time in fact (I set the dates in my computer's calendar), but it's amazing nevertheless.

My brother visited for the past couple of days. He has a car, so I was able to buy 8 grow-bags, in preparation for the finishing of the greenhouse towards the weekend (work was halted for his visit). I haven't decided yet how to divide them up - they are meant for three plants (which is too meagre), but I will either split them, or use one per plant (I need to try both). Maybe a combination, to see which is best over the season.

Spinach, chard, shallots, broad beans, peas, flowers and weeds grow apace - a great deal of weeding, digging, planting - and a little harvesting - are the order of business in May. And my next building project: an outdoor pizza oven!

Big plate chicken (大盘鸡)

2011-04-25T19:00:00.000+01:00

For a food blog, I haven't written much about the stuff recently! To be honest, I've been concentrating on the garden, and unusually for me, I've not been flicking through cookery books for a good few weeks. Well, I've dug out a few in the past couple of days, but this recipe doesn't feature in any of them.

In fact, this is another recipe I owe to my brother - in a manner of speaking. The last time I visited him in London (to help him move into his new flat), he recommended we visit a restaurant he'd been to before. It was unusual - focusing on the cuisine of Xinjiang, the largest and least Chinese region of China. My brother and I have long been fascinated by Central Asia and the Silk Road, so it was perfect. A review had appeared, I think in the Guardian, and had attracted the attention of my brother's colleagues. He went, and liked it, despite the spiciness and exoticism of a lot of the food.

We went, and had "big plate chicken", much the best main course according to my brother. Incidentally, I tried tripe for the first time - skewered, char-grilled, and spiced. It was flaccid and bland. But the chicken was great - rich, hot, copious. It turns out, this is the definitive dish of the region - a fusion of Chinese and Turkic. Effectively it's a chicken and vegetable stew, with spices and noodles. Potatoes and rustic, hand-drawn noodles hint at the harsh simplicity of landlocked peasant food, and the Chinese influence is felt in the inclusion of soy sauce, Shaoxing rice wine, Sichuan pepper and star anise. Like most of my favourite recipes, it can be altered to suit many tastes, and a lot of the ingredients are optional.

"Big plate" chicken • Dàpánjī • 大盘鸡

ingredients

chicken
potatoes
onion/spring onion
bell pepper (Capsicum)
garlic
ginger
tomato (tinned, fresh, or puréed)
oil
chilli (fresh or dried)
soy sauce
Shaoxing rice wine/sherry/beer
noodles
star anise
Sichuan pepper
Xinjiang spice mix*

*This spice mix is a combination of cumin, Sichuan pepper, black pepper, salt, chilli powder, ground ginger, and garlic powder, ground together. Alternatively, just add toasted cumin seeds, salt and pepper to the main stew, and extra chilli if necessary.

method

Peel and roughly chop the potatoes. Finely slice the onion or spring onion. De-seed and chop the pepper. Peel and finely chop the garlic and ginger.
Heat oil in a wok or large pan. Fry the Xinjiang spice mix, or substitute spices, for a minute, to release the fragrance. Add the chicken, and brown for several minutes. Add the potato, onion, garlic, pepper, chilli, and ginger, and cook for another few minutes - do not allow to brown.
Add a generous glug of rice wine and soy sauce, a spoon or two of Sichuan pepper, two or three star anise, and the tomato. Add enough water to cover the potatoes and chicken, and bring to the boil.
Lower the heat, cover, and simmer for two hours or more, until the potatoes are tender, and the chicken is well cooked.
Add the noodles. Fresh noodles can be added straight in; dried should be rehydrated according to packet instructions before adding. Serve immediately.

notes and substitutions

I use chicken on the bone. Today I jointed a whole chicken, cutting it into ten pieces - halving each breast, separating the wings, the legs and the thighs. You could use chicken legs, thighs, breast, or any combination - but meat on the bone will take longer and add more flavour (and it's more authentic).
Most of the vegetables are optional, except the potatoes. I added carrot today, but used no onions. Any colour pepper is fine, though I believe green is most common.
Any oil is acceptable, as the strong flavours will overpower even something assertive, like extra virgin olive oil. Peanut and sesame are most authentic, I suppose.
The noodles are traditionally handmade, rough 'la mian', or pulled noodles. I've done a simple wheat and water noodle, but today I used prehydrated egg noodles for speed and simplicity. Coarser noodles work best. You could omit them, and serve it as it is, or with bread.
I rarely use rice wine or any alcohol - it's not essential, though will obviously add some complexity. White wine, sake, or even a dash of mirin might work as alternatives.
I often add a little sugar, especially if the chilli levels are too high. The spices can be adjusted up or down to your taste. I do recommend tracking down star anise and Sichuan pepper (unrelated to black pepper), however - both are widely used in Chinese cooking, featuring in five spice mix (along with cloves, cassia, and fennel seed).

It's a great dish for cold weather - rich, warming, satisfying. You can make in in the oven or a slow cooker, too - after the ingredients have been pre-fried. Slow cooking in particular renders the meat incredibly tender.

Abundance

2011-04-24T15:31:00.000+01:00

The first broad beans are flowering well - and no sign of blackfly (yet)!

We've been very lucky with the weather this spring, though I fear we may pay for it later. It's been very dry, often sunny, and unseasonably warm on and off for weeks, as I've mentioned in previous posts. The plants are loving it - everything has bloomed and burst into leaf a week or two earlier than last year (when we had another miniature heatwave in April). The lack of rain hasn't been a problem here - heavy clay soils, and rapid growth (mainly of weeks) have kept the soil moist. I've tried to capture it with my new camera, but to be honest there's been so much going on, I've missed a few key things, like the plum and pear and apple blossoms in local gardens (including mine), and no doubt the blossom and wild flowers down the local woodland gardens (I keep meaning to go and harvest wild garlic; I need to get a move on if I'm to make it this year).

There was rain, finally, on Friday night, after a week of building heat. My thermometer registered 41.5ºC in the old greenhouse, and that's missing half its roof, walls, and door! The first batch of Cosmos is now in there, and thriving, and it's been joined by a few shallots I've yet to plant, nasturtiums, and sweet peas - I haven't got on with clearing the ground for them yet, and I've been too busy buying wood for the new greenhouse to have got grow bags (I have to bring everything home on foot, so it's a slow process). Indoors, everything is thriving - new arrivals include the first pumpkins and summer squash, which have germinated over the past couple of days. Three trays of tomato plants are now living outdoors during the day, but now the heatwave has passed (Saturday brought more temperate conditions, and night-time temperatures are set to go quite low for the foreseeable future) they need to be brought back in at night. Still, the first flowers are growing on one of the 'Jaune Flammée' plants; this is an early variety, but flowers in April is just nuts - I can only assume it's a favourable sign.

Can you see it? The first, tiny truss of flowers nestles in the centre.

The second greenhouse, meanwhile, is looking good. Today I am cutting the roof battens (which I had been mentally spelling 'batons', until I read about roofing) to size and shape, and will screw them into the frame later. I need to paint the whole frame before I attach the polycarbonate panels, and I haven't yet finished repairing the wall it's built against - and I need to do the part above the roof line before I put the roof on - or I won't be able to reach it (this is something I've learnt from my experiences with the last greenhouse project). It's tough to stop myself starting the 'glazing' now, just to see how it will look, because although it may feel like I am progressing faster, I have to do things in the correct order if the structure is to last and look good.

The wall is yet to be stripped of ferns and recoated, but the first four battens are up! (Note, they aren't attached to the wall, they are 'floating')

Dark days, sunny days

2011-04-20T21:15:00.000+01:00

A quick post. I've had a bad day today. Without going into details, I have suffered with depression for all my adult life, on and off. Today was a bad day. It was sunny, incredibly warm (for any time of year, let alone April), but I could face going in public - even being in my garden made me feel very uncomfortable. I did go out, but all I could manage was weeding. I wanted to go to the timber yard, and Wilkinson (for cement), but I couldn't. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

The last couple of days, however, I did get a lot done. If I'd managed to get cement (I bought the last Wilko's had, and they've not restocked since) and paint, I'd've done more, but as it was, I managed to level half the new greenhouse site, prepare the wall as much as I could, and erect the corner posts and one end wall frame. The polycarbonate sheeting arrived, so once I've finished the frame, I will be able to 'glaze' it in half a day. I am being good, and putting the whole frame up (minus the door), and painting it, before I put the 'glazing' on. I learned a lot last year, building my first greenhouse (a much more complicated project), and that, combined with using a mains-powered drill (not a battery one) and a staple gun (more on that in a future post), should cut the work down a lot.

Anyway, the weather is set to stay unseasonably warm (like, 10 degrees above average for the time of year) for the foreseeable future, so I will hopefully meet my goal of planting out my first tomatoes next Monday.

The Housewife's Lament

2011-04-17T11:44:00.000+01:00

The folk song 'The Housewife's Lament' could have been written for me! But of course, it's for everyone who has to do their own (or somebody else's) housework. I thought about it again as I inspected the slug and snail damage on my crops, and saw weeds springing up all around the garden. Coming indoors was no better - there always seems to be a sinkful of washing up to do, no matter how much or how often I stand there and scrub. Having to keep up a whole house alone does grind you down. I sometimes think about those men who go from home into a long-term relationship, without living independently in between - their mothers, then their girlfriends or wives do the domestic work for them, so they never know how much of life is drudgery. I'm very lucky to have a house to myself, of course, but I think people who don't live alone often fail to see there's a flipside. If I don't want to clean, nobody will do it for me - the dishes will sit, the rubbish will fester, the dust will stream down. That's the essence of the song, an endless, meaningless, soul-destroying strife with decay.

Anyway...

The heatwaves continue! BBC Weather is fairly unreliable for my location, and I think this is because it's set for the centre of town, which is on the coast. Here, just 1100 metres inland, it's often quite different - warmer, drier, and much less mist and fog. Having two south facing gardens helps (how is that possible? Well, the front of the house faces south, and the back garden slopes upwards, so gets almost as much sun, especially at the top). Having said that, the 5-day forecast looks so good, it's worth sharing (max day/min night temps): 14/9, 17/7, 16/8, 19/10, 22/11. Those are respectable summer temperatures here, where the sea moderates heat and cold alike (I suppose the night-time temperatures will be a little higher in a month's time). So far in April, there's been nothing close to a frost here - last frost dates being very important when growing tender vegetables, as I am. The reason for this is apparent in the pressure and wind stats: high, and blowing gently from the south-east. A couple of weeks ago I read that air was coming up from the Sahara, bringing dust, something which happens a couple of times a year, apparently. Well, I haven't noticed any dust (or particularly colourful sunsets), but the air is warm. Light winds make a big difference, too - especially on the coast.

So, what's happening? Despite the weeds, the garden is a good place to be now. I put pots of tulips around, to bring some colour against the green of nettles, strawberries, shallots and so on. The first variety, 'Candy Prince', bloomed from mid-March - I'd planted them last autumn. The rest I stuffed into pots before I flew to Iceland, early February, but they grew fast, and started colouring as the first pot faded. 'Purissima' were the least exciting variety, so I thought - I bought them for 30p a bag in the local super-discount store because I couldn't pass up such a bargain. Three bags, three pots. They are, in fact, gorgeous - pale cream, yellow inside, glowing things in low light, on cloudy days and at dusk. 'Blue Diamond' are short, double, paeony-like blooms in rich magenta. 'Shirley' are off-white, speckled with pink, especially round the petal edges. I love them, but they aren't fully open yet. Finally, 'Angelique' haven't started blooming yet. I tried to pick varieties that would give a long season - and I'm already determined to have more next year.

The broad beans have started flowering. Turnips, sown nearby, have germinated. I've squeezed Calendula in wherever I could. No sign of life from Jerusalem artichokes, which is worrying. If they don't come up, I'll put something else there. Strawberries are coming into bloom, as are the raspberry canes, the cherries are in full sway, and the grape vines are bursting into leaf. I get the impression everything is early this year - comparing photographs taken now and 12 months ago, the perennials seem a good week ahead in 2011. And of course, I got started on sowing much earlier, too, so the garden by June should be looking great.

And today, the first batch of tomatoes, those chosen few plants I will keep and grow here, have gone outside - to soak up the sun (and free some windowsill space), and acclimatise to outdoors (even though I hope to put them in the new greenhouse). The largest have what I think are tiny, embryonic flowers, which is startling, but I may remove them as some growers recommend, to allow the plants more energy to grow larger. On the other hand, the temptation to get an earlier crop is strong...

The chosen few: about 15 large, strong, healthy tomatoes, soaking up the sun.

The sunny weather priorities: finish the wall against which the new greenhouse is going, build the greenhouse (the polycarbonate 'glazing' panels have been ordered), and tackle those weeds! Oh, and sit in the sun, reading and drinking coffee and wine.

Taking stock

2011-04-11T14:06:00.001+01:00

The front windowsill: tomatoes, castor beans, chayote, Lobelia and Nicotiana

We had another heatwave this weekend. I was partially bedridden with a bad cold, but yesterday I forced myself out, to take advantage - I needed to start repairing the wall against which my second greenhouse will stand. Well, I started last year, but right at the end of the summer, and the weather stopped me finishing. This wall is old, old as the house (approaching 100), and facing west, it gets a lot of weather damage. I painted it the best part of a decade ago, but the bricks are rough from frost damage, and the mortar had almost completely crumbled away in places. So I'm doing what I did to the similarly-damaged house walls last summer: scraping, brushing down, then filling up with cement ('exterior filler'), and painting to leave a rough but weatherproof surface.

The wall has to be dry before I start, and takes a good day to dry, so I need long periods of dry weather to attempt it. That's why, even feeling as rough as I did, I was at the top of a ladder, with a hawk (the flat tray on which you mix and hold plaster) and a pointing trowel in hand. I got enough done to feel some satisfaction, and a bit of digging, levelling, and sawing through the ancient privet I intend to finally eradicate this year.

Anyway, the heat was surprising. We're lucky here to get two consecutive plus-20ºC days even in midsummer, so in April it's a real bonus. It was even warm enough Saturday night to be outside in a t-shirt after dark. Sadly, the weather broke, and this morning it has rained a lot. But that's okay, it contributes to the fast growth we've been experiencing, the green that's taken over everywhere. Meanwhile, indoors, things are getting difficult. I have more plants lacking a place on the windowsill than squeezed on there, and some are starting to suffer from a lack of heat and light. So I'm going to set up a table in another room, that gets a little light, though is nowhere near a perfect solution. I simply need to get the greenhouses fixed up - not too easy without a cordless drill (the one I used to build the first greenhouse last year sadly died over the winter), but I'll have to make do (another reason I need dry, fine weather. (The preceding paragraphs were written on Monday; the following are from two days later - hope that's not confusing! I've been pretty ill).

So how many plants am I harbouring now? I though I'd do another list, to compare with this one a fortnight ago.

Basil seedlings, ready to be pricked out

Indoor plants and seedlings as of Wednesday 13th April:

305 tomatoes
24 beetroot
61 chicory
14 okra
14 calabrese (broccoli)
15 Delphinium
7 melons
142 basil
1 chayote
36 aubergines
46 Cosmos
24 Eschscholzia
32 castor beans
13 shallots
19 nasturtiums
14 mixed herbs (dill and parsley)
12 sunflowers
8 cabbages
6 peas
5 beans
20 chillies

Total 818

Today I sowed the first pumpkin ('Uchiki Kuri') and summer squash ('Crookneck'), and potted up the okra; later I'll do the 'Sub Arctic Plenty' tomatoes, which are living up the their reputation and growing fast. I expect I'll hit 1000 plants by the end of the month...