The "allotment" three weeks in

Green pak choi.

Has it only been three weeks? It seems a lot more, especially seeing how much my friends' garden has come on. I hadn't been for a fortnight, in fact, because I was too busy at home. But yesterday was the last of a long line of unseasonably warm, sunny days, so I headed over to see what was afoot.

Aside from helping to paint a fence (that will hopefully be clad in sweet peas this summer), I checked on the progress of the seeds we'd sown, and took a few photographs.

The most pleasing sight was seeing the outdoor seedlings had germinated. Two rows each of spinach 'Medania', beetroot 'Boltardy', and carrots 'Amsterdam 3 - sprint' were all visible, the spinach quite large and the carrots tiny. I thinned the first two, leaving about 50% - further thinning will take place in a few weeks, as the plants get bigger. The carrots I left, partly because they were so small, and partly to avoid releasing any scent that might attract carrot root fly. The catch-crop radishes I sowed a few days after the main crops here were showing no signs of life - but they were old seeds.

Spinach after their first thinning.

The tray of pak choi I sowed just over two weeks ago was full of large seedlings, already getting their true leaves. The difference in colour between the two varieties, 'Green boy' (green) and 'Santoh' (yellow) was apparent. I spent a pleasant 10 minutes thinning these to around half their number too. I had sown them thickly, not knowing how good the germination would be, but even so, we will have far more than we need - which is never a bad thing.

Yellow pak choi - compare their colour to the green, above.

A few things in the greenhouse looked forlorn, because of the recent heatwave. Some radishes 'White icicle' had been scorched, and the onions were dry - but they should come to no harm. They were ready for planting out, so I soaked them, then packed the fourth quarter of the first raised bed with as many as I could, and the rest went into the second, shadier bed. I planted them close, since we don't have endless space - perhaps too close, but I'll see they are well fed and watered. Whether they sulk in the shadier, east-facing bed, remains to be seen. Altogether, there were over 40 plants.

Onions in their new home, under protective netting.

Elsewhere, two trays of mixed salad leaves aren't far off their first harvest trim, and a tray of mispoona (a mizuna-like oriental leaf) sowed a few days later is also lush with growth. The basil and sweet peas are germinating, but small. A period of much cooler weather is upon us, so hopefully the greenhouse plants will get some respite - but it's been a foretaste of the potential heat of the summer (in the greenhouse at least), so perhaps a drip-watering system will be worth setting up after all.

Mixed salad.

June harvest: week one

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!

Mid-May harvest update

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

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

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.