February 2017 harvest summary

Garden harvest total 1.042 kg

Garden harvest shop/market price £7.36

TOTAL SHOP/MARKET PRICE £7.36

Garden crops	Weight g	Shop price
Cavolo nero	610	£4.12
Brussel sprouts	318	£1.13
Parsnips	280	£0.56
Curly kale	106	£0.85
Swiss chard	88	£0.70

Winter food

I'm finally catching up with postings, harvest summaries and photos from the last few months. Many of the photos I've posted on Flickr and Facebook but have not yet got around to uploading them here.

I love winter food and this meal is an example of how wonderful veg can be at this time of year: vegetarian haggis with veg from the garden and Reading Farmers' Market. Cavolo nero and mashed squash from the garden; red cabbage, potatoes, leeks and celeriac (mixed in with the squash) from the market.

At this point in the year we were down to our last three home grown squashes. I called them traffic light squashes because of the colours and I am always reluctant to cut into the last of our autumn harvest. Pretty though they are they are grown to be eaten so it was the orange one that went into the haggis meal.

December 2016: brassicas, artichokes, parsnips and Christmas

The brassicas - brussel sprouts, kale, cabbages, cauliflowers -  and swiss chard are well established now and promise good harvests for the next few months. They can, of course, withstand frost and December saw the first of the really heavy frosts of the winter here in caversham.

Parsnips, I am always told, benefit from a heavy frost and taste sweeter. To be honest, I've never noticed much difference!


A crop I nearly forgot about were the Jerusalem artichokes.They are grown in a potato growing bag near the back of the garden and once the leaves have died back I tend to forget about them, as I did this year. I remembered in time to dig out enough for about 4 meals. I am sure there are more in the bag and I need to empty it to find them all. Some will go back into the bag for next year but I noticed this year that the foliage looked overcrowded, so time to thin them out.

The main event of the month was Christmas and the main Christmas meal. The brussel sprouts, kale (cavolo nero) and very wonky parsnips came out of the garden. The potatoes were from Paget's at the Reading Farmers' Market.

I was really pleased with our parsnips despite their "wonkiness". They were grown in a part of zones 2/3 that has only this year been brought back into use so they did well to grow at all.

Work on preparing the horseradish sauce started about three weeks before Christmas and is the subject of a separate posting. Suffice to say it was head-blowing stuff and perfect.

And we broke out the Quince Vodka and Damson Brandy with the brandied damsons served with ice cream, cream and hazelnuts.

Christmas fare

Frost on the garden fence

November 2016 A few surprises lurking in the undergrowth

We usually gather in the remains of the summer and early autumn annual crops by the end of October at the latest but leave the squash and courgette foliage for a few weeks more. This is mainly to provide some continuing ground cover while we sort out an overwinter mulch for the beds. There are generally a few surprises lurking in the undergrowth, and this year's prize goes to a queen squash that was hidden amongst the branches of the cherry plum tree. Not exactly a monster but a respectable 482g. 

Elsewhere and at ground level we uncovered a small patch of carrots and beetroot. This was at the bottom of the main part of the garden and an area that has only just been brought back into cultivation after the removal of the three sycamore trees from the other side of our boundary. This part of our zone 2/3 has not been used for about 4 years because of the shade from the trees and the mass of tree roots that were close to the surface of the ground. 

We are steadily building up the soil level with compost and mulch and earlier this year I scattered some leftover carrot and beetroot seeds at random over the ground. Leaves from a nearby squash in a pot quickly covered the ground and I forgot about them. There were enough for a meal and it shows that the soil is becoming productive again. 

The main crops at this time of year are swiss chard, curly kale and cavolo nero. The brussels are maturing nicely and we should have enough for Christmas and the New Year, with a second variety due to come to maturity later in January. 

Indoors, we were drying the tea bags and soil samples that had been retrieved from the garden and preparing them for despatch to the Tea Bag Index project at the University of Reading. The project aims to measure the rate of decomposition of organic material in garden soils across the UK. 

Details of the project can be found on the TBI website and Facebook.

An interesting alternative to the Tea Bag Index has been tried on pastures in South Dakota. See Tighty Whities Can Tell You About Your Soil Health « On Pasture for details :-) 

November 2016: Inventory of chutneys, jams, jellies and pickles

August 2016: the harvest and foraging begins in earnest

August seemed to be especially busy this year. As well as harvesting the crops from the garden, we went out foraging for blackberries, elderberries, apples and damsons. See the August harvest and foraging summary 2016 for details of what and how much we gathered.

A lot of the blackberries were eaten as we picked - they were especially sweet this year - and the rest eaten fresh with ice cream, made into a pie with some of the elderberries and damsons, and included in elderberry, damson, blackberry and apple jam.

Around half of the elderberries were made into syrup to help alleviate the symptoms of winter coughs and colds. Some of the damsons and berries were also "brandied" for Christmas liqueurs. Depending on their type and flavour the apples were eaten, added to jams and chutneys, or incorporated into fruit pies.

Our own damson tree produced some fruit for the first time. It was not a huge harvest but more than we had expected. The tree was planted about two and half years ago and the frost had burnt off much of the blossoms so we were pleased to have the handful that made it through. The variety is Merryweather and they taste more like plums than tart damsons, so they were reserved for eating "straight" rather than being made into preserves and pies as were the foraged ones.

We had our first grape harvest. There were plenty of bunches and although the fruits themselves were quite small they were very sweet. We've had plenty of advice on how to improve the yield and size of the grapes, ranging from removing some of the bunches early to reducing the number of grapes in a bunch with nail scissors. I'm not sure either of us has the patience for the latter and it seems a shame to lose entire bunches. We'll see how it goes next year but might thin out the number of grapes in just a couple of bunches to see what effect that has.

The cucumbers went berserk. I went away for a couple of days and came back to find that several monsters had materialised. Similarly, some of the courgettes both yellow and green had decided to try and imitate marrows. 

The runner beans are in full flow, the cavolo nero is doing well and we have some green peppers, which we are particularly pleased about as they are being grown outside against the south facing fence. A few of the golden beetroot were of a size that made it worthwhile pulling them up, and the tomatoes are finally ripening en masse. Our potatoes, which are grown in pots and Marshalls Gro-Sacks, are now finished. We generally had good yields and they always taste better than shop-bought so it was worth the effort. It is a shame we do not have more space that we can use for growing them. 

The most prolific of the tomatoes at the moment is a yellow/orange cherry variety. It is one of the plants that emerged from the compost that we put on the Gro-Beds and as we have not bought any seeds that fit the description it must have originally been bought from our local supermarket. I do vaguely recall buying a pack of variously coloured "speciality" tomatoes that were on the reduced price shelf. They were described as extra sweet and flavoursome but when we tried them we ranked them a big fat zero in the taste stakes. I think we put them on one side and they were eventually consigned to the compost heap. Unlike the parent fruit, the ones that have now emerged really are indeed sweet, which I can only assume is down to the growing conditions in our garden. 

Our strategy of cutting the cabbage heads and leaving the stems in the ground has paid off as we are still harvesting small heads of pointed cabbage. It will be interesting to see how long the plants keep regenerating. Kale, brussel sprout and cabbage seedlings have been potted up and are in an area next to the north facing fence that I call the brassica nursery. They will soon be planted out and so far they are looking good. The main problem is that the wood pigeons have identified our garden as a source of tasty cabbage snacks so we've had to put up some protection against the feathered varmints! 

Our sole gooseberry bush (Whinham's Industry) has settled in against the north facing fence and produced a few berries for us. It's a lovely sweet dessert gooseberry. We have taken some cuttings but have yet to decide where we shall eventually plant them.

It's not all been good news, though. The large sycamore trees that blighted our own and our neighbours' gardens have been cut down by the council but the roots are still there and very much alive. We spotted leaves sprouting from one of the roots on on our side of the fence and it was increasing in size daily. Some people recommended that we just keep cutting it back and it will eventually give up and die. But that would mean checking on the wretched thing daily and it could take years to give up the ghost. Another approach that I found on the web, and which would be especially satisfying, is to drill holes in the wood, fill them with kerosene and set fire to the whole lot. While I am sure this would be effective, it would also probably be effective in burning down several fences along with the gardens in the immediate vicinity. So we have gone for the chemical option and applied tree stump and root killer. I suspect that one treatment may not be enough and it will try and spring up elsewhere along the root or from another one, so constant vigilance will be required.

But to end on a happy note, here is a photo of part of our zone 1 alongside the kitchen and bathroom extension. Beans, tomatoes and chillis are flourishing, and the squashes are rampant and clambering up the garden wall. I may have overdone the comfrey juice! 

Brassicas

We have an abundance of brassicas in the garden at this time of year. The curly kale, purple sprouting broccoli and cavolo nero are all doing well, although it looks as the cavolo may be starting to go to seed.

Not ready yet are the pointed cabbages and overwintering cauliflowers.

No brussel sprouts this year as I was having to rethink the layout of a big chunk of the garden after the sycamore trees had been removed and couldn't quite think where to put the sprouts. I shall definitely be putting them in this year; as well as the sprouts they usually produce a lovely "cabbage" on top and, if left long enough, mini-cabbages or "blown" sprouts from any that have been left behind.

First of the winter brassicas

We picked the first of the winter brassicas today: some cavolo nero and leaves from cabbages, kale and sprouting broccoli. 












For lunch we had some bean casserole left over from yesterday (with onions, garlic, tomatoes, swiss chard stems and herbs from the garden), a small yellow/green acorn squash picked a few weeks ago, the cavolo nero, and brassica leaves and mash.