Archive for September, 2010
Just out of the oven!
The Cape Gooseberries are being so prolific that I wanted to try and use a large quantity at once. The only recipes I could find on the internet are for cape gooseberry jam, which I didn’t fancy making, so I came up with this instead to use up a few at a time. It’s a simple upside-down cake, and you could use whatever is your normal sponge cake recipe. Enjoy! Read the rest of this entry »
Sprouts in September
It seems winter is approaching rapidly, and some tasks highlight the fact even more so. Chopping wood is something neither us like doing, but having received a load of wood from our friendly farmer we needed to get it split and stacked so that it could begin the long process of drying out for future use. We have plans to build a proper wood store, but at the moment we are making do with old pallets and tarpaulin to keep the rain off. It’s not ideal, but at this stage in the seasoning process, as long as the worst of the rain is kept off the logs, they should be fine. Now that we’ve got two wood-burning stoves, and plans for a third, we need an awful lot of wood to keep them going. We still have to buy most of our supplies in, but we keep our eyes peeled for possible free supplies so that we can build up our wood store for future years.
Another sign that winter is around the corner was our first crop of sprouts. I hadn’t expected to get any this early, despite the variety being an “early” type. I’m not sure how long these will continue producing for, and for some reason I didn’t plant any later varieties, so we may not have any fresh ones for Christmas Day. I’ll try freezing a few so that we have an emergency supply, although I can’t imagine frozen sprouts taste nearly as nice as fresh. Read the rest of this entry »
Not weeds... honest!
Now some of the vegetable beds are clear and with no plans to plant anything in them until next year, it seemed an ideal opportunity to try sowing some green manures. There are a number of different green manures you can use depending on what you want to achieve, and when you want to plant them. Some are designed to add nutrients to the soil (e.g. nitrogen), while others are used to keep the existing nutrients in place. In most cases the green manures will also add bulk and content to the soil when you come to dig them in – something that is lacking in much of our new vegetable garden. Here is a lot more information on the different green manures available at www.greenmanure.co.uk.
I decided to try winter grazing rye, as I want to keep the nutrients I’ve got in the soil ( I added plenty of manure earlier this year, so I don’t think I need to add nitrogen). I also want to try and stop any weeds developing, now that the beds are clear of them, so planting something fast growing like rye will help to suppress them. Read the rest of this entry »
We managed to harvest our first couple of aubergines this week, so I got to make a ratatouille in the end. It was worth the wait, as the aubergines had plenty of flavour. Interestingly now that I had kind of abandoned the aubergines I can see a few more fruits forming – maybe this is one of those plants where neglect is better.
Cape gooseberry
Cape gooseberries are little orangey fruit that I had only ever seen as a garnish on puddings, in much the same way as parsley is used as garnish on savoury dishes. However, when a friend gave us a couple of cape gooseberry plants I thought we had better show willing and give them a go.
They are quite tender plants (originating from Brazil), so do best under cover. They are also perennial plants, so once established, if looked after, could continue to produce fruit for some time to come. Read the rest of this entry »
We need some light
Now that summer is over, and the days aren’t going to be getting any hotter, the tomatoes are going to struggle to set fruit and ripen. There are still loads of flowers on the tomato plants, and a lot of foliage that is shading the tomatoes that have already formed, so to give them the best opportunity to fully ripen and swell up, I’ve given the tomato plants a haircut.
The first thing was to snip the top off the plants so they don’t waste their energy in growing any taller. I was then quite ruthless with any flowers that were still present and snipped the majority of them off – it’s too late for these to turn into tomatoes anyway. I then snipped off any leaves that were getting in the way of any fruit, so that the light could get to them to ripen. Once I’d started snipping I realised there were quite a few more fruits on the plants than I’d originally thought, with many of them hidden behind the foliage. Read the rest of this entry »
Is that an aubergine?
Ratatouille was one of the dishes that I had hoped to have copious quantities of this summer. The tomatoes, peppers and courgettes have all performed above expectations, however the one key ingredient – aubergine – has not.
It looked like it was going so well. The plants seem to thrive in the warm polytunnel with lush bushy growth and plenty of pretty purple flowers, which should have provided us with the final ingredient for our ratatouille. The fruits though just did not appear. None of the books mentioned any difficulty in getting aubergine flowers to set (the initial process of the flower forming a fruit), however a quick look on the internet soon revealed I’m not the only one having difficulty with this plant. Read the rest of this entry »