Tag Archives: Zucchini

An Awesome Wave of Veg

First Tomatoes
First Tomatoes

The garden is really hitting it straps now. With warm / hot sunshine and every day another jamspangler, it has been so easy to keep the weeds under control. The key has been keeping the veg and borders alive.

While prophylactic action against rabbits and caterpillars continues with sweeps of cabbages and brussels by gardener (result: several hundred eggs and 20 caterpillars destroyed) and hunting of vermin by dog (result: nil rabbits, nil moles, one hot and bothered dog) might ensure a good winter harvest, the real work is about the summer harvest that is getting into full swing.

And what a glut.  Sugar snap peas, mangetout, purple sprouting, broad beans and continued salad leaves are all bumper crops.  Yesterday we picked our first tomatoes and cucumber.  We even had our first two blueberries (bushes a 50th birthday present from the Ladies of the Lane last October) and our autumn bliss raspberries provide just enough for a daily summer cereal accompaniment. And today we picked our first handfuls of runner beans and french beans with plenty on the way.

In addition, the concerns voiced to me by Piers and Hazel about the number of courgettes that we might have to contend with are being realised, as all the plants look like they are coming well and truly into blossom with courgettes turning from small pencils to police truncheons almost overnight.  So we will shortly be entering the storage phase of the Smallway harvest season when I remember parents spending hours peeling, shelling, podding and slicing veg to be blanched in vats of boiling water to then be cooled, bagged and frozen.

Thundery Showers forecast...
Thundery Showers forecast…

But we are looking to be a little more creative with what we have and are thinking of making “ready meals” based on our excess produce.  So if anyone has a favourite courgette, runner bean or french bean recipe they would like to share with us we would love to see them.  Preferably with garlic and shallots included as I am not convinced I will be able to store my home-grown for too long.  But I did manage, after a little trial and error, to plait them reasonably effectively.  Even Verity seemed quite impressed which is high praise as she is still scarred by the memory of going to school with wonky pig tails after my ham-fisted efforts – not that anyone would too pleased to wear their hair like my shallots and garlic.

The Summer in one day

 

Sunshine and showers

With the summer continuing changeable, one is almost taken aback by a bit of warm sunshine.  Wednesday provided the whole of this season in one day, with light rain followed by torrential rain, which cleared to warm sunshine, during which, with masterful timing I took the dog for a walk.  A good walk only spoiled by Fudge going ballistic at a slightly startled elderly rambler; though Fudge had good cause to complain: the lady was wearing full rambling gear, carrying maps, back packs and hiking stick all accessorized badly with what looked like a yellow bin liner by way of waterproofing.  Enough to freak the most laid back canine.

By the time we returned, the blue skies were being invaded by scudding clouds as the wind got up and blew away any thoughts of a leisurely afternoon sunning myself in the garden.

Instead I prepared the ground for, and planted, lines of swede and chard as well as hedging my bets by planting a couple of seed trays of the same in the greenhouse as well as some small pots of cauliflowers.

At the other end of the reap and sow spectrum, I picked more runner and french beans as well as a courgette (zucchini to our north american brethren) which magically went from the size of a small pencil to torpedo in hours flat.  In between times I had trimmed the tomato plants to stop them taking over the whole greenhouse.

Elsewhere around the garden the are plenty of flowers blooming at long last, with cornflowers for cutting looking good – though how on earth you get them to grow straight I have no idea.  At the Olympic Park they have thousands of the beggars standing straight and tall in vast beds.  Fantastic – but how do they do that?!

Blousy? Moi?

The Love in the Mist are finally blooming joining the Nicotiana in the corner bed.  The scent of Nicotiana is so lovely on a warm evening as we go to shut the chickens in.  And lovely set off with the Love in the Mist and the Cosmos.  Elsewhere there are numerous splashes of colour including the infamously blousy Dahlias (The Old Man is very pleased with them – but they stand out in the flower beds like rambler wrapped in flapping yellow plastic).  I don’t know the names of flowers – I am don’t have the brain for it – but they look kinda nice and next year we will hopefully plan and develop the colour schemes a little more.

So yesterday had all the summer in one: sun, rain, wind, cloud, preparing, planting harvesting and just some good old seasonal flowering.

Nicotiana – great performers

Fresh Produce

Ready for picking – runner beans

We are at the time of the year when I remember my parents would begin to repeat the mantra about fresh produce in the garden.  “The beans are ready for picking”, “plenty of courgettes” or “please help yourself to lettuces – or else they will go to waste”.

Waste – anathema to the generation brought up in wartime rationing and post-war depression.  Wasting good produce was deemed a cardinal sin in the garden.  All those delicious vegetables and we don’t seem to want to eat them.  Well, I am now in that happy position when some vegetables are coming to harvest time and the daily habit of picking them has started.  I say “some” because, frankly, this summer has been pretty crappy with the cold wet weather putting paid to many of the early veg like the peas (one bowlful from a row of plants).  But the runner beans are hitting their stride at the moment.

Harvesting runner beans is the equivalent of plate spinning: you check each row every day and try to pick every bean that is of the required size: not too skinny, but not too fat and stringy.  But somehow you always manage to miss a couple so next day you see a cucumber sized bean hanging in the green shade. If you left it another day, you feel it would pull the whole plant over, such is the apparent speed with which they grow.

So today I will be getting out there and trying to reap as many as I can.  And what will I do with all these beans?  Well, I will follow the parents’ example and start slicing, blanching and freezing as many of the blighters as I can.  Suddenly frozen veg in the winter seems a really worth while idea.  If it means they don’t go to waste.

Meanwhile, T.O.M. keeps informing me that the carrots in his patch are ready to pick.  I gladly took some last night – and they are delicious.  Carrots are right up there in terms of veg that truly taste so much better than shop bought.

Pull ’em, rinse ’em, steam ’em and eat ’em.  Stunningly delicious.

And in response to my pompous declarations to The Old Man that there are plenty of runners, he first of all said that he better make some runner bean chutney (what? from my beautiful fresh runners?) then, after we returned from our trip to the Olympics at the weekend, said he hadn’t realised there were any ready.

Now I know how he felt whenever I failed to heed his requests for me to pick my quota of produce.

What size omelette did you want?

Elsewhere, the hens continue to lay well, but who is laying what is a mystery as the three from the other day show: mummy egg, daddy egg and baby egg: double yoker, single yoker and, well, “could do better if she tried”.

The unpredictability of home harvests.

 

 

Shallots?

A final note on my previous post about labelling things.  I decided to lift the shallots, which I did under the supervision of T.O.M.  It was all going well, with him advising which were “banana” shallots and which the ordinary variety (pretty obvious really – no need for labels there) when I found one little clump which had not developed greatly.  We simultaneously realised that this was not a clump of underprivileged shallots, but was a garlic bulb.  How did that get there? I wondered.  Then remembered that all the shallots and garlic had been put in hurriedly at the start of the spring.  So, once agin, you need to be so careful to label things, you know.

Drying in the sun – spot the garlic