Stripy beetroot

I've had my first harvest of beetroot.

4 chioggia beetroots and one boltardy beetroot

The dark one on the right is a normal beetroot (boltardy) and the lighter, brighter red ones are stripy beetroots (chioggia).

I didn't actually cut up the chioggia to see their stripes in their raw state, as I had read you were supposed to roast them whole to retain the stripes, but after roasting them for about an hour (possibly too long for such small specimens) they looked like this:

Roasted and peeled chioggia beetroot

They looked a bit better like this:

Roasted, peeled and chopped chioggia beetroot

We made beetroot tagliatelle with the beetroot though, and their residual stripyness was completely lost in the creamy sauce. The tastiness of the recipe also somewhat lacking. I think I'd have been better off using all standard beetroots, which taste stronger than chioggia, or better still adding some bacon. The mouth feel of the dish was good (i.e. satisfactory fat content), but the taste was a bit bland and I'm usually a fan of what other people call bland, so coming from me that suggests it really could have done with a little something extra in it.

Flowers in the vegetable garden

Cucurbit flower with bee

Although it doesn't look much like I have many flowers in my vegetable garden when you look from a distance, if you get up close and peer through the leaves (and don't forget the non-grass parts of my lawn), in fact there are plenty:


Winter squash "sweet dumpling" flower (probably, might be a courgette or butternut squash, they've all grown a bit together)

Flowers growing in the lawn:

Chamomile

Normal purple clover

Fancy red clover, presumably from the seeds my Mum bought me

More vegetable flowers:

Runner bean flowers

Pepper flower - maybe bell, maybe chili, I didn't check

Onion flower

Some sort of blue flowers that came with the garden

Ornamental poppy that just grew next to the peppers

Moneymaker tomato flowers

Moneymaker tomato flower

Cucumber Chinese Slangen flower

Radish flowers

Bumper vegetable crop

I've had rather a bumper vegetable harvest today. First off there's the massive courgette:

Huge Tondo di Piacenza courgette

Peeled huge Tondo di Piacenza courgette

Halved huge Tondo di Piacenza courgette

Apparently they're not as tender when they get that big, but the creamy courgette and bacon tagliatelle recipe my other half is cooking tonight called for grated courgette and we figured that being a bit firmer/tougher might actually be an advantage there and it seemed a shame to waste it.

Then there's the full-size cucumber I harvested for lunch.

Cucumber Chinese Slangen

Cucumber Chinese Slangen

Cucumber Chinese Slangen

It's really spiny. It even hurt my fingers when I was just carrying it – I assume that's also what kept it safe from my resident slugs and snails. So I decided to peel it before eating. It was deliciously coolly cucumbery and the perfect texture, which surprised me. A lot of what I grow in the garden turns out a bit tough (probably because I pick it too late or don't water it enough).

Cucumber Chinese Slangen peeled and sliced

What was a bit too tough was my kohlrabi. I let it get too big because I didn't need it until now (I should probably have started eating them earlier when they looked too small to me, or watered them more):

Purple kohlrabi - actually pale green on the inside

This is roughly the size you chop it to for a salad - although it could probably have been left a bit thicker if it had been less tough:

Cucurbits or triffids?

Cucurbits have taken over the garden. They've now escaped their allocated area (where they were given all the room the packet said they needed) and have spread over the path and onto the grass. I've noticed that they've also pretty consistently spread towards the centre of the garden, where there's more sunlight compared to the shadier area by the fence, so I'll take that into account in next year's planting.

25 July 2015

19 July 2015

11 July 2015

28 June 2015

16 June 2015

I also notice that my peas are now more yellow than green - next year I will leave more space between each plant in case that's the problem, but it could also simply be their natural growth cycle. Either way, I think more space would be a good thing, they seemed quite crammed in. My runner beans, on the other hand, are more than happy.

Beneficial beasties come to the garden

Bee on an onion flower

Bees of course are always welcome.

Ladybird

Ladybirds have also arrived. This is excellent, as I have a major aphid problem and have been going round spraying everything with diluted washing-up liquid (probably about 1/2-1 teaspoon per litre of water), which kills them, but is very time consuming. By the way, because I live in the EU where using untested pesticides is illegal and washing-up liquid is an untested pesticide, if anyone asks, technically I'm washing my aphids not trying to kill them. The fact that a washed aphid is a dead aphid is purely coincidental, honest.

Harvesting enough vegetables to actually be saving some money

I've been growing enough salad that I've only been having to supplement with tomatoes, houmous and toast for some weeks now, which I reckon is a good couple of quid a week, but just recently I've got to the point of harvesting onions, peas and courgettes too. The onions are still a bit on the small side, but other than that they're fine, I harvested a yellow one and a white one (which is surely at least 60 pence worth):

The problem with the onions is that several of them decided to flower instead of producing a decent sized onion (it's one or the other with onions, no having your cake and eating it):

Onion flower

Onion flower

I've also harvested a rather oversized courgette,

which I used in a warm, lemony courgette salad fir lunch, a recipe adapted from this one, due to me not having all the ingredients:

Ingredients (for my version):

2 normal-sized/1 huge courgette(s)
1 tbsp olive oil squeeze of lemon juice
1 garlic clove, crushed
some basil leaves,
roughly torn

Method:
1. Use a vegetable peeler to slice the courgette(s) into wide strips, discarding the central, seedy part. 
2. Heat the oil in a large frying pan, add the garlic, and fry over a medium heat for 1 minute.
 3. Add the courgette strips and cook, stirring regularly, for a further 1-2 minutes until the courgettes are slightly softened.
 4. Add a squeeze of lemon juice and toss the basil through.

It was quite alright and really not a bad way to eat courgette. I think lemon zest (like the original has) would probably have been an improvement, but I only had lemon juice in a bottle and no actual lemons.

I've also been harvesting peas. You need a heck of a lot to get a meal's worth. Here's a picture of the amounts of peas I got from a recent harvest on the left (just about two portions) and the pods I shelled them out of on the right. It was practically every pea on all my pea plants (both sorts) that was already large enough for me to harvest. I don't get how they can sell frozen peas for so little money. They must definitely be able to shell them mechanically, otherwise even frozen peas would surely cost a fortune, as I reckon shelling them took me at least ten minutes. Based on the price of frozen peas, I'm thinking that's probably only 40 pence I've saved myself there, although luckily I had some of the peas back when they were still mangetout, and they sell for more, so that's probably about £1.40, which is heading towards me having nearly made half the price of the seeds back!

The two sorts of peas looked more different than I expected when cooked. I think the paler ones are probably the Carouby de Maussane (mangetout) peas, as they're the ones with the paler pods.