salad, lettuce, nasturtiums, rocket, spinach

Summer is, allegedly, with us. My sockless feet aren't convinced!!

Only two lettuces survived the slugs and birds, but don't they look great? They are a form of Iceberg, but can't remember which vairety. They are crisp, but not as tightly hearted. I pick just a few leaves at a time, and they carry on growing - great!

I always pick a few nasturtium leaves and flowers to add a touch of pepperiness and colour to my salad. Nature is fantastic - a forest of beautiful, glowing orange flowers, and green, lily-pad shaped leaves. The flowers have a velvety texture, which some people don't like, but as part of the salad plate, it's great. You can also eat the seed pods as they form, for a more concentrated heat.

For further colour I have some purple spinach. This shot shows the flower spikes, which are a delightful pinky, purple. You can see some of the heart shaped leaves through them. I always allow one or two of my spinach and chard plants to flower so that they provide seeds for next year's crops.

vegetable update, runner beans, broad beans

A brief update on the runner beans, which are running away lengthwise! I've been cropping every other day, but now, I shall have to increase to picking them every day - no point in letting them grow long and stringy, is there?

You can see them, dangling down in varying lengths. So far, the slugs have largely left them alone, thank goodness. And isn't it lovely to see the beans alongside the flowers? Pods ready for picking, and beautiful flame orange flowers promising further beans to come. Bliss.

The broad beans are also flourishing. The pods are swelling, and the embrionic beans are beginning to show as slight bulges through the soft lining of the pods. When young, the pods are small and erect, as they grow, they remain erect, almost upright, sometimes. Finally, they become flacid at the junction with the body of the plant, and begin to droop. all their youthful vigour has gone. They are best picked just before this happens, whilst still firm and relatively upright.

How delicious they are, steamed or boiled for a very short time, and served either nude, or with just a grind of salt/pepper, and maube a drizzle of oil, though they really don't need it, they are so tasty just as they are. Many people eat them raw, but I'm not too keen.

It's all a matter of taste, and luckily, there's no-one to judge us on that, is there? Enjoy your food however you like it - cheers!

free potoatoes update

A couple of weeks ago I had some potatoes that were sending up small shoots, chitting, in their basket under my hand-made kitchen trolley.


David was, at that time, carting carefully sieved top soil down to the bottom of the garden where all the hard core had been stored. It's amazing how much space had been taken up by the sprawling mass of broken bricks, concrete, tiles etc.



The top soil was in bags which had contained a ton or so of sand from the building of the vegetable beds. Huge things, about a square metre, I suppose - like giant's shopping bags.



In previous years I have tried the trick of planting one potato in a bucket in summer, earthing up the shoots as they appear for a few weeks until the bucket is full, then by Christmas, voila - a bucketfull of lovely new potatoes.



This time, the giant sacks of top soil are taking the place of the buckets - a huge experiment. The top photo is of the growth so far - quite impressive, I think you'll agree.


The second photo is of a further batch, in a second bag, with just a couple of shoots through so far, but encouraging, nonetheless :) It's surprising how dark the new leaves are, and how prickly their appearance.



As the grow, they become paler, and no longer look quite so spiky. I showed you a photo of their flowers in an earlier blog, but here it is again, for those of you who didn't read it. Such a pretty, star-like flower, these are pink, some are more white. The flowers will become berries - DO NOT EAT the berries, they are poisonous!


Isn't it strange that a plant that provides one of our staple foods, the potato, below the ground, grows poisonous foliage, flowers and berries above the ground?


I wonder if this is a protective measure on the part of the plant? If that which grows above ground is poisonous, it won't be eaten, and it thus protects the hidden tuber swelling below the ground - its own food-store for the next year. A mystery!

tomato plants, flowers, free food, compost

I mentioned how to provide yourself with free potatoes in an earlier post. I've also got free tomatoes growing in the garden, which is looking quite lush, I'm pleased to say.

These free plants are courtesy of my "home grown" organic compost. Since I was a small girl, my mother has always had a compost heap - even when all we had was a back yard we kept a pile of tea leaves, egg shells, potato peelings etc in a corner, and the compost was used for plants in the small border.

Naturally, I too have always had a compost pile, or three! In my first small garden, it was about a square meter, and fed my tomatoes and potatoes - the only vegetables I grew in my first small garden.

In the large house where we lived for 19 years, we created compost bins out of pallets, so they were a very good size, and grew very hot - nighbourhood cats loved to settle themselves down on the top in the winter when it was cold.

Since my divorce, my garden has shrunk somewhat, but, as you've seen, David has built me three lovely raised beds to grow my vegetables in, and I have three largish compost bins to provide the nourishment that my organic vegetables need. .....................................................................................

Clearly, however, these bins are not reaching the same high temperature as the older ones did, as the seeds are obviously surviving - hence the tomato plants. The seeds have lain dormant in the compost until it has been spread onto the beds, and there they have sprouted along with the seeds I have sown.

So ............. more free food:-)

First the sunny, starry yellow flowers, then the tiny green fruits follow on. (You did know that tomatoes are fruits, not vegetables, didn't you?) See how tiny they are? They haven't ripened yet, as the beds weren't finished until summer was already upon us, but they will. Nature is abundantly kind this year:-)

vegetable, runner beans,

The runner beans are running away with themselves now that they are well established. Some of them are aiming for the stratosphere, sending twisting tendrils way above the supporting arches, which are, themselves, tall enough to walk under!

I've taken three croppings so far of tender, succulent young beans. Som much better than buying them in the market or supermarkets, where the available beans have been grown for length and proclivity rather than flavour.

As so many plants this year survived to adulthood, I am able to pick them whilst they are relatively short in length, at about six or seven inches, before they have formed the stringy bit that would normally need to be peeled out.

All I need to do is wash them, boil for a few minutes, then serve with a drizzle of oil and a grinding of salt and pepper. Delicious :-)

broad beans, flowers

I harvested my first broad bean yesterday. Not a very exciting piece of news, I hear you say, but the way I ate it was - at least for me!

My broad bean plants grow to about 3 feet in height. They are sturdy, and produce lovely white flowers with a black throat, as you can see in the photo.

If I'm lucky, and they are pollinated, the flowers blacken and melt away, leaving a tiny green bud - the new pod. This one, by my thumb, is quite new, but the flower has just about been washed away. At this stage is is very firm, but could easily be dislodged, so I'm careful not to knock them.

After a couple of weeks, the pod has increased its size to the length of my thumb, and is developing a rounded wavy outline, where the beans themselves are swelling within the protective outer shell. You can see a few of them on this plant.

I've always taken the full, swollen green pod, when you can feel the outlines of the rounded beans through the pod, peeled back the soft, furry lined shell, and popped the beans off their yellow fixers, boiled and eated them.

However, the other day I read an article which suggested that broad beans could be eaten whole, like mangetout, pod and beans. This seemed a little strange to me, the insides of the pods are delightfully soft and furry, as you'll probably know from when you've podded the ones you've bought from the market. I couldn't imagine how they would feel in the mouth!

So, yesterday, I picked one pod. Yes, I know, it was wimpish, but I was really, really not convinced I would like it. I boiled it along with some mangetout for a few minutes, and bravely took a bite.

I didn't experience the shock sensation I was expecting with regard to texture, but neither was I blown away with excitement. It was a pretty neutral experience. There wasn't the depth of flavour that you get with the actual beans, and since the flavour of broad beans is what I love, I shall stick to my usual method of eating them.

Have any of you eaten them like this? what did you think? do you agree with me that the flavour is less pronounced?

cars, problems, value for money

David bought an estate car after his previous saloon car had been written off in a car accident, which, incidentally, left me with a broken wrist. I'll never forget that Valentine's Day!!!

The idea of the estate car was to enable him to take more stock to the car boot sales he enjoys doing. To be, in effect, a workhorse. It has done sterling service, working hard not only for car boot sales, but collecting and delivering furniture to auction houses, collecting sand, cement, plasterboards, paint and other DIY paraphanalia from various emporia.

It's also ferried huge granite cobbles from David's house to mine without complaining once, nor asking for hay!

It has had to have the odd part replaced, and small parts have cracked, like the frame that holds the passenger door handle in place, or the courtesy light fitting. A pane of glass still needs replacing from when he bought it - the piece of plastic serves the purpose wonderfully, and it was never a thing of beauty!

About 3 weeks ago, there was a puddle of liquid under it, and the man at the garage said it was the power-assisted steering tube which was leaking. David tracked down a second-hand tube at a breaker's yard, and paid to have it installed. This week, the puddle returned.

The man at the garage was authorised to order a new part from abroad, and yesterday morning, it was fitted. All done, no more leaks.

Yesterday evening, I waved David off as he drove home - he lives about 40 minutes away. I sent him a text to say "goodnight", as you do, and received a reply. I wasn't sure if it was a joke, it said "car broke, serious engine prob, may be scrapped". You can imagine I was suddenly wide awake!!

Apparently he had been obliged to call out the RAC - we're both members, thankfully, and they had taken him home.
Poor David! One problem solved, and another raises its ugly head.

I'm waiting for further details to discover just what is the matter with it. It's only about 5 weeks ago that it passed its MOT with no problems, now it may be dying. How fragile life is, not only for humans, but for our possessions too.

It's an elderly car, a P reg, I think, and he's had it four and a half years. Would it have been better to buy a new car? Would that have worked out cheaper? Who can say?

I buy new, because, as a woman, I need to have a reliable car. Or that was the case whilst I was working. Now, my car is about to celebrate its third birthday, so will need its first MOT. It's only done just over 6000 miles, so you can see how little I drive now that I don't work.

I take a bus into town for uni, and walk back. It's cheaper and easier than finding suitable car-parking, and the walk home keeps me fit. I don't really need the car at all, but if I sell it, I'd probably never buy another one, and would lose the skill of being able to drive, along with the convenience of just being able to go where I want, when I want.

I consider myself to be quite a "green" person, so should I sell it? I really don't know. What do you think?