Good marrow to you one and all

As we are sick of the sight and taste of courgettes, my attention has turned to marrows. Yes I know they are overgrown courgettes but it is the green ones that have turned to marrows so they look different and once you peel them and take out the skins they, sort of, taste different.

So today we have a receipe with a difference. The ingredients came from the back of the store cupboard but are most definately in date if a little dusty.

Vegetarian sausage and apple stuffed marrow
One packet of Sosmix (vegetarian sausage mix)
Half a packet of dried apple rings (soaked for 3-4 hours)
Two home grow peppers
Four home grown yellow tomatoes
One home grown onion (large white)
Two medium sized marrows (or overgrown courgettes)

- Lightly fry the onion, peppers and tomatoes.
- Chop the apple rings and add to the pan.
- Follow the instructions for mixing the Sosmix and add that as well.
- Mix it all together to a nice mush.
- Skin the marrows, cut in half and scoop out the seeds.
- Put two halves side by side in a dish and fill with the sausage mixture.
- Do the same with the other marrow to use up the sausage mix.
- Cover with foil and put in the oven at 200ish until it looks almost done
- Remove the foil and either crisp the sausage or add a layer of cheese.

Serve with home grown new potatoes for a perfect meal for a family of two plus one your local British Gas engineer.

Catch up time

We seem to have been very negligent of the allotment over the last couple of weeks, partly due to needing to catch up one bowls matches and also because we have spent so much time watering even when we have been here. Today is an update on what is growing where.

The pumpkin patch on 53 is doing wonderfully and we have three potential giant's mainly due to the regular dosing with comfrey tea.

We have supported them on dustbin lids but I am concerned that they are a non-porous material andthat water could gather underneath and rot the bottom of the pumpkin. I am going to make some pillows out of ground cover which will let any water through but will be a nice soft cushion.

The melons in the small greenhouse and doing well but it was a mistake to grow them in pots as we can't keep up with watering and the leaves always look limp. It won't be long before they need support so the nets are being prepared with strings long enough to suspend them from the roof. I am worried that the greenhouse will not be strong enough to support the weight of so many melons. We may need to build some sort of frame inside the greenhouse with melow supports. It is already bowing under the weight of the cucumbers.

Another fruit which has taken us by surprise is the fig. You may remember that Katy bought me a plant for mothers day which we put in a pot outside the small greenhouse. Well, there are tiny figs appearing at all the leaf joints. I don't think there is enough summer left for them to mature this year, but if we move it inside over the winter the fruit should stay to mature next spring. It has almost outgrown its pot but aparently (according the Bob Flowerdew) they like their roots restricted, so when we move it to its final home on 53 we may bury a dustbin in the ground and plant it in that.

We have more colour on the allotment this week as the sunflowers have burst into flower. We decided on dwarf varieties that grow no more that four feet tall. This was mainly due to the wind that whips across the allotment as people who grow full size seem to have to support and we need every tall cane we can find for the runner beans. Maybe next year we will go large as they are very good to grow to put the seed heads out for the birds in the autumn and winter.

A final note for this week is a warning to all would be allotmenteers. It is wonderful harvesting fruit and veg and we brought home a load of courgettes, some peppers, onions, tomatoes, french beans, an aubergine, a bunch of fresh basil and three ridge cucumbers. The problem is you have to do something with all this produce so you need a good supply of pans to pickle the ridge cucumbers as gherkins, blanch the courgettes for freezing and cook the rest. This leads to a lot of washing up.

Congratulations to Katy

The biggest news of the week is Katy's success in becoming Corgi registered and is now a fully qualified British Gas engineer.

We are all so proud.

Prizewinning gardeners and cooks

1st for Cheese straws
No real competition here with the double twist they certainly looked the best. All the others were straight and one was suspiciously orange. Aparently when the judge bit into those she was nearly sick as they had used so much paprika to make them look better without much consideration for the taste. We won on look and taste.


2nd for beetroot
We had to pull a lot to get some that were of even size and shape but it was worth it. We also had very few rings and as this is a sign of woodiness that made them a winner.





2nd for peppers
This category was two of any other vegatable not specified in individual categories. The winner was two very large aubergines that were like twins. The trick is to find two alike to prove that it was not just a fluke with one.




2nd for cheese scones
This was a bit of a surprise as they didn't rise as well as I would have liked but much better than all the others except the winner.









3rd for individual rose stem
This was the biggest shock of the day as there were a lot of entries. We nearly didn't enter as the rain the day before had battered the roses quite heavily. Luckily some other people had suffered more that we did.

Update on the week

One of my birthday presents will be a great asset at the allotment as it is a rhino carrier. The amount of weeds we remove and the amount of manure to be moved will be much easier now that the rhinos can be wheeled around rather than carried.

We have had our first shallots and wished that I had grown more as they are really strong and a lot more useful than I expected. This moves nicely on to today's recipe.




Picalilli
A large pan full of mixed vegetables: Home grown - shallotts, gherkins (small ridge cucumbers), courgettes. Bought - cauliflower.
Teaspoonful - turmeric, ground ginger, mustart powder.
1.5 litres vinegar. Tablespoon sugar. Cornflower.

Chop the veg really small and leave overnight in a pan full of salt water.
Mix the vinegar with the spices and sugar and bring to the boil. Add the vegetables and boil until cooked but slightly crisp.
Mix cornflower with a small amount of vinegar to thicken and bottle while still hot.

What do you do with a rain gague in a drought?

We haven't done much at the allotment this week as we seem to spend all our time watering. It is so long since we have had any rain that the water troughs are vital to the survival of our crops. Nick has two seven litre watering cans and I have two five litre ones and we just trudge back and forth for over and hour.


One of my birthday presents this week was a rain gague. The fact that we have been suffering from a heat wave and are in a drought situation it is possibly the most useless present ever received. Until today!

Our first rain for weeks so we rushed out to put the gauge in the plant pot by the front door and can officially say that 5mm of water fell from the sky this afternoon. It actually felt like a lot more than that as I was playing bowls at the time and was a lot wetter than I would expect from 5mm of water. The match was the club mixed pairs and my partner and I won convincingly 24:14 so the weather change was to our advantage in a sporting as well as gardening way.

The burning of 53

Now that the trauma of the judging has passed we have decided to tackle No 53 ready for planning and tree planting in the Autumn as this is going to be fruit bushes and trees. Nick has worked like mad to cut all the grass down by sickle and raked it into three neat piles the first of which became bonfire number 1 on Sunday. Unfortunately, the slightest breeze takes the smoke where it shouldn't go and as there were some people working on their plots in the direction of the smoke I would think we were fairly unpopular.


The rest waited until last night with more cut and raked to make three small hay stacks. The air was so still that the smoke just hung in the air. It wouldn't really have mattered much as it was 10p.m. and nobody else was daft enough to still be at the allotment. We finished about 10.30 and have three lovely piles of ash which is great for the soil and especially good for fruit growing.

We haven't quite finished for a daylight photo of it in its glory will follow later in the week.

Today's harvest

Another good harvest day. Carrot thinnings have given loads of small sweet carrots which will be lovely raw in salads or used in a stir fry, and a couple of bigger slicing carrots that may go in the freezer as I am making up stew packs which already have some of the baby turnips and will have leeks and swede when they are ready. We have also made our first picking of rainbow chard which aparantly is treated like spinach but more colourful. From one packet of seeds we have at least five different colours. There is bright red, pale pink, yellow, orange and green. Another hugh cucumber and lots more courgettes as well as our first pickings of French beans. Back to the recipe book tomorrow for this lot.

There are three ridge cucumbers ready for picking and I am going to treat these as gurkins and slice and pickle them but no until after Sunday when we intend to enter the show at The Walled Garden, Down Grange and one of the categories is 'two cucumbers'. It is a shame that we haven't got two of the long straight ones as they are impressive.

We are also intending to enter the following categories:
Vegetable Class
5. Five white potatoes of one variety
9. An odd shaped vegetable
11. Eight pods of dwarf or climbing french beans or stringless beans
15. Four beetroot with tops trimmed to approximately 7.5cm/3ins
18. Two cucumbers
23. Two vegetables of the same variety which is not listed above
24. A collection of four distinct kings of vegetables presented in a box or tray
Home Produce Classes
65. Five cheese scones (recipe provided)
70. Five cheese straws

This will all be good practice for the Old Basing Show in September and so that we can get some inside knowledge about presentation.

Courgette glut

I have decided that as well as being a log of what is happening on the allotment that I need to keep a record of what happens to the produce, so, from today this is also going to be a recipe book and an aide-memoire to what to cut back on growing next year.

Yesterday was too hot to garden so I stayed in the kitchen cooking (there must be some logic there somewhere).

First was pickling three jars of beetroot. I would have been four jars but I kept munching on the little ones. I cooked them first but think I should have left them a little bit crisper as the vinegar will soften them more. Then what to do with all these courgettes.


Courgette flan
Shortcrust pastry
Home grown - courgettes, onion, garlic, rocket
Bought - tin of tomatoes, mixed herbs, cheese for the topping




Vegetable layer bake
Home grown - courgettes, onions, garlic, potatoes, basil, thyme and sage
Bought - cheese topping




Courgette pasta bake
Home grown - courgettes, garlic, tomato (only one small one), spinach, rocket, oregano
Bought - six tomatoes, two tablespoons natural yogurt, cheese



In the style of all the best cookery books, you get a picture with each recipe. What you don't get is quantities as I haven't got a clue how much I use of each thing as I make it up as I go along or just keep cramming it in until the dish is full.

Note: Home grown garlic is a lot stronger than shop bought which has been dried. The smell in the house and on my hands may take a while to clear. At least it is pleasant unlike the comfrey tea.

Another note: You may be curious at the lack of green in the pictures, this is because we seem to have a lot more yellow courgettes than green ones and I am leaving some of the green ones to grow into marrows.

Yet another note: When you put grated cheese on the top of everything it looses its impact photographically. Believe me, apart from the courgetteness they are all quite different.

Where's my beret

We have decided to start pulling onions. They have started to fall over and look ready to eat. We did not anticipate the smell in the car on the way home and had to open the window as our eyes were watering so I can't imaging what it is going to be like chopping them.

Friday report from the small greenhouse is that the melons are taking over. They have grown tremendously since their move and and putting out tendrils that are hanging onto anything then can get hold of. There are loads of flowers and couple of tiny melons are setting so I don't think it will be long until I have to get the hammocks out.

Liquid Gold: The Lore and Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants (Paperback)

I felt I had to share this with you as this is possibly not the ideal coffee table book but who could resist flicking through.

This is a direct quote from Amazon.co.uk and is available for £4.95. Click here for more details.

Liquid Gold: The Lore and Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants (Paperback) by Carol Steinfeld
Synopsis
Don't flush it down the loo - save your pee and fertilize your garden! Because it is not recycled, our urine is wasted and pollutes the water system. Yet it could provide 50 per cent-100 per cent of the nutrients needed to grow our food. Use your pee to make a liquid manure: recycle, save water and energy, and prevent pollution, all at the same time! In the 19th century you could sell your urine for a penny a bucket - or 1.5 pennies if you were a redhead Early Romans used urine as mouthwash In some cultures, urine is used to clean wounds and as a health tonic Urine can be used in curing leather, and as a tattoo pigment Discover the delights of the urine-diverting composting toilet, the activists' urinal, and the urinal for women; find out about customs and rituals connected with urine, the science and technology of its use, and profiles of liquid gold at work all over the world in farms and gardens. Take to the fresh air when nature calls and fertilize your garden for free with Carol Steinfeld's entertaining and fact-filled book!

More excitement from home

Pottering around the salad patch at home and pulling out all the leaves that had bolted to make room for the little lollo rosso that are being swamped by the spinach, I found the garlic that I had planted in the autumn. Last week we had been chatting to John (the Italian, husband of Maria and brother in law of Baptista) who was on his way home with a wonderful head of garlic that he had just dug. He grows over 200 on his plot, all from cloves saved from the previous year. In fact Maria never buys seeds she always saves her own, including tomatoes, cucumber, garlic, various assorted beans and spinach.

Anyway, I decided to dig one of the garlic stems to see if there was anything on the bottom of it and - hey presto, our first garlic bulb, and very impressed I am - not the largest ever seen but not bad for a first attempt. This was actually the smallest so a good indication of how well the others will be doing. I will leave them a little bit longer and hope that the rain over the last couple of days has done them good.

I have had a bit of success in the garden as well with flowers. Never having success with sweet peas I said that this year would be my last, but I did something slightly different. I sowed the beans in the autumn to over winter in the cold frame, and it certainly seems to have done the trick. Along with the pelargonium’s which were all from cuttings of last years and over wintered on the bedroom window sills, we have quite a display on the decking. The tin bath that you can see on the left is one that I found a the allotment and thought it would be ideal to keep the mint contained in the herb garden.

I have also grown nicotiana for the first time and would recommend it as it gives a bit of hight and a wonderful range of colours.

The harvest

I know I keep on about the harvest but it still amazes me that we are actually getting product from the allotment. Every day there is something new. Yesterday it really felt like we were reaping the benefits.

A hugh cucumber, courgettes, pes, beetroot, a couple of carrot thinnings and loads of fruit. More raspberries, more loganberries and we have discovered the gooseberry bushes that were overgrown on 53 are dripping with fruit, one bush green cooking berries and one laden with red sweet berries.

As our blackcurrent bushes are first year we will not have any fruit so Ted gave us a couple of branches of one of his bushes laden with hugh currents.

I have cooked together some of each fruit, with a teaspoon of sugar and a table spoon of water to make a tasty sauce to go on our ice cream this evening - can't wait!

If we can get that amount of fruit from a derelict plot (No 53) imagine what next year will bring when we have it up and running and a strict prunning regime in place. It is really overgrown still and is not helped by Frank's enormous cherry trees, which don't actually product many cherries and the few that it does are eaten by the pigeons, so we need to do some careful planning to align the bushes and trees to get maximum sunshine and drainage.

I feel quite smug about our acheivements especially when you realise that it has been less than five months since we took on the plot and Ted tried to persuade us that No 13 (Jerry's plot) would be the easiest option but we insisted on these. He passed by yesterday and did actually say how good it all looked. Coming from Ted that is the ultimate accolade so we have given ourselves a well deserved pat on the back.

Anyway, back to those peas. I am always worried that there is a hugh pile of pods but not much in them. There was the odd maggot but along with a hugh bucket of shells for the compost heap (full of nitrogen so very good for the soil) there was a good crop of peas. These are for the freezer and there were enough young ones for out salad lunch boxes and supper this evening.

Salad lunch boxes comprise of four different types of salad leaf, spinach leaves, rocket which is so mature that it either blows your head off or anesthetises the inside our your mouth so that you lose the power of speech for quite a few hours after eating, beetroot, peas, new potatoes, cucumber and the first tomato of the season. The only think that is not home grown is a little bit of cheese which I found in the back of the fridge.

The tomato was hiding in the greenhouse and is barely a mouthful. It had to be photographed but strangely it looks like one of those retro ketchup bottles that are all the rage again if anybody is looking for ideas for birthday presents. Maybe that is a sign that it is a perfect tomato!

Talking of tomatoes, and not neglecting what is going on at home, we have a hanging basket near the front door which is looking magnificent. I think the reason for its success is that it gets the left over water from the flask and water bottle that we cannot do without at the allotment. Every time we get home they are emptied into the basket so I am sure that the warmth of the water does it good rather than the cold stuff that comes out of the tap or water butt.

Along with the traditional petunias, trailing geraniums and lobelia, I included a couple of trailing toms. They are loaded with little toms which are still green but a bit more warmth and sunshine they should soon be glowing red. I only hope that the postman can resist helping himself in the mornings.

Finally, but possibly most importantly, today is Rebecca's birthday and at 25 finally a grown up. Also today I am no longer twice her age - not sure if that makes me feel good or not.

Like peas in a pod

They are peas in a pod but not at all alike, they are all different in their own way. We should have picked them earlier as some are getting too big. The variety that we planted are supposed to be sugar snap peas but we forgot to pick them so they have grown into normal peas, and delicious they are too.

We both come away from the allotment now with tummy ache from eating too many raspberries and peas!

Plot 53

We have finally taken some time to start working on plot 53. Some grass has been cut down and we have used an old water butt with holes in it, cut in three, to grow pumpkins. Filled with manure they seem to be enjoying the space. One of them has a couple of fruit already but the other seems to be only producing male flowers which is worrying and no use to anyone.

We have now laid down a tarpaulin and weighed it down by sorting out the spoils that we collected back in the spring from the chicken man's vacated plot plus the pallets that we collected from Country Gardens. They have a stack of them with 'help yourself' so we did. One was used to make the coffee table and the strawberry box and we have a couple left over that are going to be used for the raised bed in the leisure area outside the gate of No 52. It had become so overgrown that we had forgotten what we had, but with the judging on Monday we need to get it ship shape.

It was when we were clearing the space for the tarpaulin that we discovered the loganberries. We have picked two boxes full already and there are loads more that need ripening and picking. I think 53 is going to provide a few more surprises before the summer is out but we have to have it cleared ready to be marked out for tree planting in September.

Still life with French bean

A picture says a thousand words, or at least a lot of raspberries, loganberries and courgettes. Guess what we are having for supper this evening.

What a scorcher

Mad dogs and Englishmen was true yesterday but not today. We had an early session but had to give up by 11.30 as the heat got to us, so we returned to the allotment at 9 and got home just as the clock changed to 22:22. We must be mad, especially as we have to be up at 5 in the morning and we had not eaten. It was worth the wait as, to accompany our salmon, which was farmed in Norway, we had home grown new potatoes, courgettes and broad beans. A veritable cornucopia of tastes and absolutely wonderful. The potatoes came from one bin at the allotment and one at home. The whites seem to have cropped better than the reds but we decided to have a mixture in our meal. We were a little disapointed in the crop but between them we had a sinkfull.

The broad beans were from the crop sown at home in October. We had been a bit negligent in watering and the plants were very limp, so the decision was made to remove everything and replace with tomatoes. The courgettes are the first pickings. There are so many new ones I decided to cut a few to let the new ones develop. Sliced and lightly sauted with an onion and a bit of home grown basil, they were yummy.

Back at the allotment, I plucked up the courage to bottle the comfrey tea. It is amazing how long you can hold your breath if you need to. Words cannot describle how disgusting it smells but the tomatoes love it. It is a bit cloudy as I have left it so long but it made 6 bottles which should last us about 10 years as it needs to be diluted about 30/1. Strangly Ted calls it comfort!!!!! We always though this was because of its healing properties but he must have known something that we didn't.

If you are wondering why the bottles are not filled to the top, it is so that I didn't get any on my hands. It would actually be a way of getting a seat on the train as it would clear the carriage. Once you get it on your skin, soaking in bleach is the only thing that will get rid of the smell (one bitten and all that...).