Courgette, potato and sage soup

We have a glut of courgettes* in the garden from just two plants. In fact, they keep ending up the size of marrows before I get round to picking them. So I'm now experimenting with courgette and marrow recipes. This is a pleasant recipe for soup that uses up a lot of courgette (or marrow), presumably making it pretty good for you in terms of getting your five a day, but tastes almost entirely of garlic and potato, meaning it's also palatable for people who like neither courgettes nor marrows.

Courgette/marrow, potato and sage soup

750g courgette or marrow, peeled & diced (seeds removed if using a marrow or marrow-sized courgette)

1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped/minced

1-2 tbsp olive oil

400g potato, peeled & diced
4 fresh sage leaves
750 ml boiling water (more for a more liquid soup - I like mine more towards the puree end of the spectrum)
1 vegetable or chicken stock cube
Salt & pepper
10 g chopped parsley (optional)

1. Peel the courgette or marrow. If using a marrow or a courgette the size of a marrow, then remove and discard the seeds, for normal-sized courgettes leave the seeds in. Dice the courgette/marrow, then set aside for later.

2. Peel and chop the onion and garlic (or just use frozen). In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil then cook the onion and garlic gently until tender. Stir occasionally.
3. While the onion and garlic are cooking, peel and chop the potatoes.
4. Add the courgette/marrow, potato and sage leaves to the pan and stir. Sweat over a low heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
5. Add the boiling water, stock cube, salt and pepper and bring to the boil.
6. Put the lid on and simmer for 20-30 minutes until the vegetables are very tender.
7. Cool slightly (by adding ice cubes if in a rush), fish out the sage leaves and discard these.
8. Liquidise the soup in as many batches as necessary.
9. Taste and add more salt or pepper or boiling water as necessary. You can also optionally add some chopped parsley.

Serve with courgette bread if your glut of courgettes is as huge as mine! Serve with the bread of your choice if you're not racking your brains over how to use up all those courgettes that suddenly grew.

* Courgettes are known as zucchinis in US English

The benefits of watering the garden

The garden is very green and beautiful this year. There's hardly been any powdery mildew on the cucurbits yet - just a few spots, and I pulled the leaves off to stop it spreading.

The cucurbits are absolutely huge as well. Some of that will be down to the fact that I spread large quantities of composted stable manure over the soil before planting. Cucurbits love a good bit of composted manure. I can't imagine all the warmth and sunshine we've had this year hurts either. But I ascribe a lot of this healthy appearance to the fact that I've been watering regularly. In fact, I've been watering on most days when it doesn't rain. For comparison, here were my cucurbits last year on around 17 July 2016:

17 July 2016

It's not just my cucurbits, it's also my sweet corn (although admittedly this year I'm growing a different variety and kept it in the greenhouse for longer than I kept 2016's in the house). Here's the corn today (4 July 2017):

4 July 2017

4 July 2017

And here it was on around 17 July 2016:

17 July 2016

As people keep pointing out, it looks much healthier this year. You'll also notice that everything's in a different location because I've been rotating my crops.
In case you were in any doubt, here are the sunflowers I've been watering most days this year:

 

And here are the sunflowers I left to their own devices:

It's hard to believe those photos were taken on the same day, but they were.

I've also discovered that when packets of seeds tell you you need to water regularly until established, they mean "if you want all your seedlings to grow and not just die of thirst shortly after germination". I didn't lose all the seedlings I didn't water daily, but I got fewer gaps in my rows that I did water every day.

What brought on all this watering? Well, two things. The arrival of the new shed with its guttering to catch all that water and the arrival of the water butts to store it in.

We had enough rain to fill the first one fairly soon after it was plumbed in, so I started watering to use it up, because I was worried we'd have so much rain that the overflow would be large enough in quantity to damage the garden.
Watering was a revelation. Everything in the garden looked so healthy and grew so well. I couldn't bear to let it dry out again when the water ran out. So I started watering with the hose every day when I didn't have any water left in the water butts. I do have some environmental guilt about that, especially as I'm using water that's been processed to a drinking standard. But I've carried on anyhow and soothe my conscience by eating the vegetables and using water from the water butts whenever it's available.

Sweet corn cob at an early stage

Sweet pea

Sweet pea

Up the garden path

The beautiful vegetable garden

I decided to grow more flowers in the garden this year.

In particular, I decided to scatter the loose seeds I found in the bottom of my flower seed bag in the tomato bed. My theory was that based on what happened last year, the tomatoes would soon swamp them, but I might get some nice flowers before they did. The seeds had fallen out of the envelopes and packets I had them in, so I didn't know what they were, only that they all looked a lot like poppy seeds. It turned out that a lot (but not all) of them were poppy seeds. We've now had over a week of poppy flowers. They look lovely and the bees are delighted (seriously delighted, they buzz happily around them). The tomatoes though, are the ones that have been swamped, so I suspect I've deprived myself of maximum yield.

Our decision to plant roses has also paid off. The iceberg climbing rose produces clusters of bright white roses. 

Iceberg climbing rose flowering just after the bud stage

Iceberg climbing rose, flowers fully open

Unfortunately, only one of the two iceberg roses we planted either side of the gate has produced any flowers this year and, strangely, it's the one that's always in the shade because the sun can't reach that corner of the garden - although if it grows another metre or so it'll get a fair amount of sun, and if it reaches the top of the fence it'll have all-day sun.

On the plus side though, this is the rose that can be seen from the house. The other one is hidden by my raspberry bush.

You may notice from the above photo that my corn has grown a lot. The above photo is from 23 June. It's actually growing like mad at the moment and has got even further since then. Here's a photo from today (Sunday 25 June):

Here they are a mere 11 days earlier on 14 June 2017:

And here they are another 11 days earlier on 3 June 2017:

My cucurbits (squashes, courgettes and cucumbers) have grown even more impressively over the same period. It's a jungle out there now.

They're even taking over the herb patch.

Yet they were still this small on 14 June 2017:

And here they are back on 4 June, when the leaves were so small you could still easily see the flowers:

They are still flowering, but even though the flowers are huge, the leaves are even huger, so you have to get close up to see them.

My onions though, which decided to flower instead of producing decent onions, are clearly visible.

I've spent a lot of time already this year declaring that the garden has reached the best it's going to look this year and it's all downhill from here. I've not been right yet. I think it might partly be because I've been watering the garden every day on which it hasn't rained, and vegetables love to be watered and hold up better against disease and pests because of it.

How the sun moves across the garden

19 June 2017

20 June 2017

Two days. Different cloud patterns. Lots of birds on 20 June. This garden is very popular with birds.

The garden is beginning to provide food

The garden as a whole is looking possibly the best it's going to look all year, as nothing is visibly diseased yet from a distance and the plants are all growing nicely (there's plenty of green and black fly visible close up, but I'm not too stressed about that, as I remove it whenever it gets too much).

I even decided to reduce the amount of mustard I was growing and tie the rest neatly together, because it was looking messy and I wanted an attractive garden more than I wanted the maximum possible number of seeds.

Even though most of the plants are still small, several of them are beginning to produce food. We've had a fair amount of lettuce already. I don't understand why this year's crop hasn't been ravished by slugs, but I'm delighted. I seem to be getting less slug and snail damage in the garden in general this year. Theories on why include that April was so dry and that I removed so many of the shrubs from the garden that they didn't have anywhere to shelter in winter.

The blue love-in-a-mist self-seeded there from the front garden and I left it as part of my policy of having more flowers this year.
We're also already on the second crop of radishes (if I'd put more effort in or organised myself better, I could possibly even be up to the third or fourth by now, but I have two long lines of them and am satisfied with my harvest so far).

I've also had an entire bowl of strawberries. I'll be growing more of them in the greenhouse from next year. I'm using shredded paper under them instead of straw. You need to be a bit careful with your watering or it can go mouldy, but otherwise it seems like a decent alternative to straw.

My first mangetout are ready.

And I just tried my broad beans to see if they've got big enough to eat the beans rather than eat the pods whole.

They just had, but only just. A bit bigger would have been better - although if you leave them to get too big, they become tough and unpleasant to eat.

Also, we've already eaten some rocket (we probably won't be getting much more unless I resow, as most of it has started growing flowers). Slugs love it, so it will have to start in pots away from the slugs or under some form of protection, such as copper slug rings.

We're also getting close to being able to pick some chard.