We had our first frost of the season last weekend. Both Saturday night and Sunday night the temperature dropped below zero, only by a few degrees but enough to make the plot look quite pretty under its white frosting.
Everything seems to be okay, I haven’t anything on the plot now that isn’t frost hardy, at least to a point, so what’s there should take us through the winter in terms of vegetables.
The rest of the week has been pretty wet, with rain most days at some point, so this hasn’t been conducive to getting much done on the plot, but then that’s fairly normal for this time of the year. I’m hoping to keep on top of the plot as much as possible, this last year has been a great one for me on the allotment, and I really want to build on that for going forward, trying to be much more self-sufficient and live a simpler life.
As I was peeling parsnips for dinner last night I was reminded of watching “Hugh’s War on Waste” that was on BBC TV earlier in the week.
The programme highlighted the statistic that as a nation on average we throw away the equivalent of a days food per week per household. Quite a shocking statistic, and one that I am determined won’t apply in this house. I feel that we are already pretty good in terms of making sure we don’t throw away anything that is still good to eat, but there is always room for improvement and I’ve therefore signed the pledge at http://wastenotuk.com, I encourage you to do the same.
I think what shocked me more though was the further statistic that supermarkets reject over 40% of produce grown by farmers each year for being the wrong shape or colour. Parsnips were the example used in the show, and the shocking story of one struggling farm that has 20 tonnes of parsnips rejected by Morrisons every week because they don’t fit the supermarkets exacting standards. (Here’s what Morrisons had to say)
Cosmetically, this is the supermodel of parsnips, but it has no flavourNow I mostly grow my own veg, at the moment I have a gap in my parsnip supply due to poorly timed seed sowing on my part.
My first sowing have all be harvested and although I have plenty of parsnips growing, but they’re not yet ready to harvest, so I had to buy some this week.
They are cosmetically very pretty – unlike the ones I normally grow, which tend to be a bit misshapen and odd looking, however they have absolutely no taste to them. My first harvest of parsnips this year from the allotment were sweet and very tasty, despite their outward appearance, the ones that I bought from the supermarket to supplement the allotment supply are not.
Now I know that won’t come as a surprise to many other allotment holders or those that grow their own veg, and I’m sure that it is as much to do with the time from harvest to plate that is as important, as well as the growing conditions, than how the parsnip looks, but for heavens sake why does cosmetic appearance matter? It’s taste that counts.
It’s the time of year when you can forage for Sweet Chestnuts either to eat now or to save for Christmas time. They can be used as a tasty snack or for stuffing in the turkey on Christmas Day.
As with all foraged food if you don’t know what something is, don’t eat it!
Sweet Chestnuts are very different to Horse Chestnuts (Conkers) which are poisonous. They have a much thinner and spikier outer casing than the Horse Chestnut.
If in any doubt, leave them be!
We gathered ours and brought them home. There they were washed, their skins nicked (to allow them to expand a little without exploding in the oven!), and roasted on a baking tray in an oven at 200ºC (180ºC Fan), 400F, Gas 6. For about 20 to 30 minutes, depending on how large the chestnuts are.
They can also be eaten without roasting, however beware that under the harder outer case there is a thinner membrane that surrounds the nut kernel. This can be quite bitter when they’re raw, so you may want to remove this too.
Once cooked, allow to cool and then simply remove the outer case (remember they still might be hot to touch, so don’t burn yourself!) and eat. They should be soft and crumbly and slightly sweet.
Out early for my dog walk this morning, the sun had yet to properly rise, but the sky was already looking quite red and foreboding. Seagulls were flying inland, which is often a portent to inclement weather.
Before 9am the heavens opened dropping big, heavy raindrops. Good for the garden and allotment.
I returned to the next article I’ve been preparing for my Regatta blog, got it finished and submitted and then thought that I would make some of the courgette muffins that I’d just been writing about. Thirty minutes later muffins are emerging from the oven, so that will be what I’d be having for lunch.
By 2 pm the rain was gone and the sun was out, and it was a pleasant, relaxing afternoon.
I’ve been a little slack posting here, so by way of a couple of videos, here’s an update on some of what I’ve been up to. I hope to have some news on the job front soon, and will cover that separately when I do.
We took the dogs to Emsworth for a swim yesterday. Only really the first time that Ruby has properly been swimming. The video is fairly low quality as I didn’t want to take my expensive camera out over the water with me, so I was using an older one, that I was less worried about dropping, but the quality isn’t as good.
Our garden seems to have become quite popular with a certain juvenile magpie, he’s taken a shine to one of the fatball feeders (rain or shine) and his acrobatics trying to get to the fastballs is quite entertaining. He’s fascinating to watch, particularly recently as he’s been trying to work out if he can dislodge the feeder from the tree branch to forgo his acrobatics (he hasn’t succeeded yet).
I wasn’t going to grow any tomatoes this year. The previous couple of years, have resulted in such a dismal crop of fruit, that it really wasn’t worth the effort, so I thought I’d take a year off from tomatoes and just grow cucumbers instead.
That was until two separate people offered me a couple of plants. I changed my mind, not because I was particularly expecting any greater success, but because I thought I’d just give it a go, and I never like to turn down a gift of plants.
Now the first lot had the label in the picture to the left, not very revealing. The second, the person who gave them to me was honest and said, he had no idea what they were, but he knew he’d sown a cherry and a beefsteak variety, so they would be one or the other. So I took them, grew them on, and eventually planted them into their final spot, when the first flowering trusses appeared.
They’ve grown quite successfully, and I now have green fruits on both plants. It looks as though the cherry / beefsteak are in fact both beefsteak, or some kind of weird heirloom beefsteak, as they have grown some interesting fruit.
Weird Fruit
The others are slightly more interesting. They rapidly grew fruit, and at first I thought they were going to be the good old gardner’s staple, Moneymaker. However, something weird started to happen. The fruits grew to a standard tomato size and started to ripen, turning from green, to yellow. They did not however reach the red that you would expect from a tomato. Instead they seemed to hold as this golden yellow for days. Eventually I realised that perhaps this was their final show, so I picked one. Now slightly over-ripe, they were a great tasting tomato, but they were never going to be red, only ever a golden yellow.
Never Going To Be Red
I’ve still no clue as to what variety they really are, just that they taste great. Always a bit exciting to grow a new plant, even when it’s only the humble tomato!
Electronic Scrapbook 