Growing low FODMAP vegetables in the garden in the UK

It's October, which means the vegetable garden is winding down and it's time to start planning next year's garden, or at least you need to start now if you're going to plant any onions or garlic that need to spend the winter in the ground. As onions and garlic are both high FODMAP, this isn't so much a concern if you only want to plant low FODMAP vegetables (to find out what FODMAPs are and why you might be interested in low FODMAP foods, click here). I'm thinking of going largely low FODMAP food next year, so I've compiled a list of vegetables and fruit that have no or only traces of FODMAPs in them that will grow in the UK, divided by crop type:

Brassicas

• choy sum
• collard greens
• kale
• rocket
• radish

Root veg (carrot family)

• carrots
• parsnips

Root veg (beetroot family)

• Swiss chard
• spinach (but less than 150g of baby spinach)

Cucurbits

• cucumber
• kabocha pumpkin (also known as Japanese pumpkin)
• pattypan squash

Daisy family

• chicory (leaves)
• witlof 
• endive (leaves)
• cos lettuce (also known as romaine lettuce - maximum serve unclear)
• butter lettuce
• iceberg lettuce
• lollo rosso (red coral lettuce)

Legumes

• bean sprouts

Potato family

• bell pepper (allow to go red/yellow, do not eat green)
• potatoes
• tomatoes, common (not cherry or roma)

Other

• bamboo shoots 

Fruit

• grapes
• rhubarb
• strawberries

And here's a list where 75g is OK, but you need to check the Monash app for how far you can go if you want to go above that level:

Brassicas

• bok choy
• broccoli (calabrese, not purple sprouting or tenderstem, no data is available on those)
• cabbage, common
• Chinese cabbage
• red cabbage
• kohlrabi
• swede
• turnip

Root veg (carrot family)

• celeriac

Cucurbits

• spaghetti squash

Daisy family

• chicory leaves
• raddicchio

Legumes

• green beans

Potato family

• aubergine 
• cherry tomatoes
• roma tomatoes

Fruit

• canteloupe melons (you can eat 120g, grow in greenhouse)

Additional notes: you can also grow chillies, as people who react to FODMAPS can typically eat up to 28 g of red or green chilli without it being a problem, and most recipes are likely to use less than that. Also, if you're not eating it, FODMAP is irrelevant, so you can grow loofahs (often spelled loufa or luffa when you grow them).

I'm not planning to go fully low FODMAP next year. For instance, I'm still planning to grow onions. But where there's a low FODMAP alternative to vegetables I generally like to grow, then I'm thinking about taking it. As for the raspberries, a serving size of up to 60 g of those can typically be tolerated, so they're already good in the quantities you usually get off by plants each day.

Making the lawn more bee-friendly

Our lawn is already fairly bee-friendly. I never use any pesticide there and although I pull up dandelions (because I find them really ugly - sorry bees, I know you love them) and anything prickly (so I can go barefoot on the lawn), I positively encourage other flowering plants there. This includes daisies, buttercups, clover - both white and red - and chamomile. OK, the chamomile never gets tall enough to flower, but the others do, leaving bees buzzing happily in their midst. You can't much see this in my blog photos, but you can if you walk out on the lawn in summer after it hasn't been cut for a while.

This year, however, I came up with a plan to make the lawn even more bee-friendly and to save me having to strim the edges. What I did was buy some bee-friendly meadow flower seeds. These include yellow rattle in the mix, which suppresses grass.

I then dug out a few centimetres with a spade all along the edge of the grass where I have to strim and turned the grass over. That done, I thinly scattered the seeds along the newly turned earth.

Cross your fingers that this goes well for me and we have beautiful flowers next year - or at the every least a return of grass. My other half is deeply unimpressed with me for destroying his neat edges, so a profusion of beautiful wildflowers buzzing with bees is just what I need to bring the smile back to his face. If not, watch this space for my desperate efforts to encourage back the grass!

Harvesting winter squash

I thought the squash on the left on the tray was the largest squash I'd grown this year. I'd been checking for squashes all summer and it was the largest one I could see. But then I checked the undergrowth in the middle of the squash patch, and discovered I was wrong. A monster squash was waiting for me.
I harvested it today because I wanted to bring in all the squashes that were sitting directly on the soil after my experience last year when two of my squashes split. It's possible sitting directly on the soil wasn't the problem and that too much rain was. Either way, I wanted to preempt the loss of my squashes by harvesting some of them before they turned fully orange, particularly the very large one.

The Internet seems a little unclear on the rules for harvesting winter squash, and in fact, websites often say that it's hard to tell when the squash are ready. Here are the rules I've managed to glean:

• winter squashes are ready for harvesting from September to October
• make sure you retain as much of the stalk as possible on the squash (ideally at least 3-5 cm), as this helps it stay good for longer in storage. Losing the stem isn't a disaster, though, you just can't store the squash for as long
• hardening of the skin of the squash is a good sign – if your fingernail easily marks the surface, it means the fruit aren’t quite ready to harvest. 
• the stalks drying out is a good sign
• colour changes to the skin indicate squashes are ready to harvest – pumpkins turn orange. If green and grey-coloured fruit may develop an orange or pink patch where they touch the ground, this is a good sign
• it's a good idea to "cure" the squashes for 10-15 days. You can do this my just leaving them outside if it's dry and sunny. Otherwise, you can do this in a greenhouse or polytunnel. However, in the past I have simply brought them into the house and kept them somewhere light and this has worked fine.

My experience is that it's fine to harvest winter squash sweet dumpling when they look like this:

They can be eaten like this as well. For extra reassurance, this one's bottom had started to go orange where it was sitting on the ground:

Eventually the whole winter squash sweet dumpling will turn orange if you don't eat it first and some of them might even turn orange while still on the plant, although none have for me yet this year. This is a picture from 2015:

Unfortunately the huge squash I harvested was so heavy that I ended up dropping it (albeit from a low height) onto the concrete. Hopefully any bruising won't ruin the whole thing, as it would be a shame to lose all that squash. I'm clearly going to have to start making squash recipes. Experience tells me that the little stripy ones (winter squash sweet dumpling) will last all winter indoors, but the long green ones, whose name I don't know, will go putrid after a while. For that reason I'm also planning to store them on plastic trays, so if they leak any putrid black liquid the tray will catch it all and it won't stain my table, like happened last year.

I highly recommend this savoury gruyere and pumpkin pie recipe from the Guardian, it's delicious.

Also, there are several delicious squash/pumpkin recipes in this blog, including:
Warming roasted squash and pepper soup

Leftover turkey curry with winter squash

Squash, lentil and onion soup

Autumnal winter squash and ginger soup

Smoky roasted pepper and squash soup

Cheat's version of Jamie Oliver simple baked lasagne