Sunday lunch from the garden

Yesterday's Sunday lunch - a risotto - was mostly from the garden. Apart form the rice, salt and pepper everything came from overwintered vegetables and new spring growth.

Swiss chard - beginning to bolt but there are still plenty of leaves and stems from last year's sowing

Celeriac - last year's sowing did not get very far and only produced leaves but I left them in over winter and they started to bulb up a couple of months ago. We picked the last one for yesterday's meal and also used some of the leaves for flavouring.

Florence fennel - like the celeriac, this did not produce the harvest we had hoped for but I noticed earlier this year that small fennel bulbs were forming at the nodes on the now prostrate stems of the plants. I cut off a few of these for the risotto.

Spring onions - the autumn sown spring onions survived well in the mild winter and are now reading for picking

Herb fennel - this is growing well again and has a much stronger flavour than the leaves of the Florence Fennel

Lovage - I planted this last summer so this will be its first full year. I picked two small leaves to add flavour to the meal and that was more than enough. A little lovage goes a long, long way!

Ramsons - used the chopped leaves in the risotto and the flowers as an edible garnish

Comfrey juice decanted

Time to decant the comfrey juice that has been squeezed out of the autumn harvest of comfrey leaves over winter and start a new batch.

Comfrey has a deep taproot and an extensive root system that pulls nutrients from the soil and subsoil, where most other plants cannot reach. Comfrey is high in nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium and accumulates essential trace elements. It is therefore an excellent fertiliser for the garden.

The leaves can be used as a mulch around the base of plants or added to your compost heap. The leaves can also be rotted down into a liquid fertiliser.

Many different techniques for extracting the liquid are described on the web but, whichever one you choose, under no circumstances soak the leaves in water or add them to your water butt. I am told that you end up with something that stinks like a sewer!

I use an old pedal bin with its plastic lining as the main collecting container for the liquid that is produced as the comfrey leaves rot down. I put the leaves in a large plastic flower pot, which by chance happens to fit inside the bin perfectly. I don't bother removing the stems as recommend by some people - it all seems to rot down perfectly well.

The rim of the flower pot sits on top of the plastic inner lining of the bin. This leaves several inches free at the bottom of the bin for the comfrey juice as it drips through the holes in the pot.

I weight down the comfrey leaves in the flower pot with a couple of large stones in a plastic food tray. Then I cover it all with the pedal bin lid.

When enough comfrey juice has collected at the bottom of the bin it can be decanted off into a bottle or similar container. I use old liquid fertiliser containers. I add the residue in the bottom of the flower pot to the compost heap.

I dilute the comfrey juice about 15:1 with water and use it every couple of weeks, mostly on the tomatoes and chillies that are in pots.

Saturday Lunch

I was going to try and make a lunch only using ingredients that had been gathered from our garden on the day and over the past 6 months, but was tempted by the fresh squid in the Smelly Alley fish shop in Reading. In the end the ingredients were squid stir fried with dried chilli flakes and tomato sauce (made and jarred about 5 months ago), garlic, parsley and chopped leaves from my young Babington's Leek plants. On the plate to the right is a parsnip rosti seasoned with ground coriander seed and a salad of mustard greens (Golden Frills), red veined sorrel, chopped celeriac leaves, and flat leaf parsley. The tea was made from fresh herb fennel.

Had I not succumbed to the lure of the squid I would have used some dried beans, harvested last September, in a sauce made a few months ago from tomato, onion and sweet pepper.

February 2014, Windowsill gardening

As the rain and gale force winds continue here in Caversham outdoor gardening and even general tidying up is impossible. There is still plenty to do indoors: planning the sowing calendar and checking through the catalogues for seeds I've forgotten to order. In any case, it is the time of year for starting off some of the plants and vegetables indoors. Potatoes are chitting on the kitchen windowsill alongside the Babingtons leeks that I have started off in pots. The kiwi plant - 'Jenny', a self fertile variety - has arrived but will have to stay on the sill until there is a lull in the stormy weather and we can plant it out. 

On my office window sill I have sown the chilli seeds in a propagator. The varieties I am growing this year include:

• Habanero Fatali HHH+ "Brightyellow, very hot, fruity"
• AJI Pulsar HH "Nearly white, erect fruit turn orange then red. Low growing"
• Bulgarian carrot HHH "Hot and fruity "Carrot coloured and shaped"
• Nepalese Bell H-HHH "Jumbo sized version of Friars hat" [Friars Hat - "2" (5cm) flange shaped fruits. Slow to mature but worth it. Heat strength variable."]
• Habanero 7 pot yellow HHHH+ "Fruits mature pale yellow with wonderful flavour"
• Scotch Bonnet Bahamian Goat HHH "Pale green, slightly ribbed, fruit ripen peach/orange"

All came from Simpsons Seeds.

Next onto the windowsill will be the aubergines. 

Harvest 2013 - what's grown and what hasn't

Slightly leaning tower of runner beans!

The weather this year has been unpredictable and the changes from one week to the next have sometimes been extreme. Cold, wet and windy at the start, then a warm spell, late frosts that knocked back anything that dared to poke it's head above ground, and then several weeks of very hot and dry weather. The weather has affected different crops in different ways and reinforces that it pays to grow a wide range of vegetables and persevere with successional sowing.

Pests, in general, have had minimal impact here with the exception of the turnip sawfly, which chomped its way through most of my sprouting broccoli seedlings (http://cavershamgarden.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/die-sawfly-die.html). Snails have been everywhere but controllable with eggshells, beer traps and by consigning them to the compost heap. There seem to have been fewer slugs this year and I put that down to having used Nemaslug (http://nemaslug.co.uk/) last year. A couple of friends have said that its effect lasts into the the second year and sometimes longer.

So, here is the state of our harvest so far. 

Beetroot. Six beets from three sowings of different varieties. Dreadful :-(

Cabbages. The autumn/winter cabbages are doing well and it looks as though there'll be a good crop. There was minor slug and snail damage to some of the early leaves but the cabbage white butterflies seem to have left them alone. There were plenty of the blighters flitting around but I found only a couple of patches of eggs and those were easily rubbed off. I'm not sure what put them off. I had placed eggshells around the plants to deter the molluscs, but I have read that the white of the eggshells also discourages the cabbage whites. They're fooled into thinking that there's another butterfly already there and move on. I also used a garlic wash on all of the brassicas so that could have discouraged them as well. Spring cabbages have been sown in trays and will soon be ready for planting out.

Carrots. Not a good year. I think the first sowing was too early and the second was probably hit by the late frosts. The third sowing was partially successful but then we had the prolonged hot, dry spell. I had hoped to try out some new varieties such as Purple Haze but I'm not sure how many I'll finally harvest.

Cauliflowers. Nothing to report on these, yet, as I am going to try overwintering them this year.

Celeriac. A disaster. Plenty of leaves but no "bulb". The leaves are edible, but in small doses as they have a very strong flavour. The harlequin ladybirds seem to like them, though.

Chillis. I planted these out too early and about half were killed by the frosts. The ones that survived are doing well so I expect a reasonable harvest.

Courgettes (zucchini). Another good year for courgettes after a slow start.

Cucumbers. A good harvest after a slow start and there are still plenty maturing on the plants.

Dwarf french beans. It's been a mixed harvest with the later sowings faring better than the first.

Florence fennel. Like the celeriac, a disaster. Tall thin sticks and leaves and no bulb.

Garlic. The cloves that I planted last year in the spaces left by harvesting did well, but then garlic is very easy to grow.

Horseradish. I decided to try growing horseradish this year and judging by the number and size of the leaves it seems to have established itself well. I'll see later in the year how well the roots are doing. It is growing in a container as I do not want it invading the whole garden.

Jerusalem artichokes. I have been growing these for several years and it is another vegetable that never fails. Harvest time will be later this autumn. You may think you have dug up all of the roots but there are always a few left behind ready to start growing next year. Like the horseradish, I grow them in containers to stop them taking over.

Kohlrabi. I love this vegetable.The leaves can be eaten like cabbage and the bulb can be shredded and added to salads, steamed or stir fried. We have another good crop this year, having treated the plants in the same way as the cabbages to protect them from pests.

Lettuce. We have had plenty of lettuces this year and I'm going to try overwintering some Winter Density. The spell of very hot dry weather badly affected the germination of a couple of sowings but overall it has been a good year.

Mustard. This is the first time I have grown mustard since I was at primary school, where we grew it along with cress on wet blotting paper. I could never see the point of the exercise as grown this way they taste of nothing. Sow mustard in the garden, though, and you get an abundance of peppery leaves ideal for adding  to salads.

Onions. It has been at least 15 years since I tried growing onions and I'm pleased I decided to give them another go. I didn't plant many sets but they did very well indeed and were very tasty. I shall definitely try them again next year.

Parsnips. I didn't have much luck with these this year. I have a pathetic three plants from the third sowing, the first two sowings probably having been killed off by the early bad weather.

Peas. Three sowings and three plants emerged from the second only to succumb to who knows what. Never had such a terrible failure with peas before :-((

Potatoes. I tried four varieties in pots and containers, and was pleasantly surprised with the yield and taste. The trick, I was told, is to keep them well watered and it worked.

Ramsons (wild garlic). This is the first time I have grown ramsons. The flowers and leaves appear at a time when there isn't much in the garden and are a delicious addition to salads and my breakfast scrambled eggs!

Runner beans. Great crop this year from three varieties, and still going strong.

Spinach and swiss chard. Great crop, as always. I've never had a a failed crop of either of these.

Sprouting broccoli. Only two of my seedlings survived the onslaught of the turnip sawfly. This is the first time I have had problems with sawfly on brassicas and I initially thought it was slugs or snails stripping the leaves off the stems. It was when I saw an adult sawfly on a nearby herb fennel that I discovered the cause of the devastation. A quick check of the seedlings at night revealed the sawfly caterpillars munching their way through my plants.

Tomatoes. These got off to a slow start but are now producing a bumper harvest. Time to start making the chutney!

Overall, a good year and much better than last.

Harlequins take over

Most of the ladybirds in our garden this year are Harlequins, which probably explains why we haven't had any problems with aphids. Harlequins are not native to the UK and were introduced as a biological control for aphids. They breed more quickly than our native species and have a voracious appetite, making them ideal as a means of pest control. The downside is that they out-compete and now pose a serious threat to other ladybirds. When aphids are scarce harlequins will eat other ladybird eggs, larvae and pupae, butterfly and moth eggs and caterpillars.

Below is a photo I took of a Harlequin next to its pupal case on a celeriac leaf.

Harlequin ladybird next to its empty pupal case

This example seems to conform to the standard descriptions I have seen on various sites, but they are very variable in appearance. There is information on how to recognise the Harlequin on the Harlequin Survey site at http://www.harlequin-survey.org/recognition_and_distinction.htm, and there is also an identification guide for Harlequins and common British ladybirds. The larvae, on the other hand, are very distinctive and the Harlequin is particularly spiky. The Ladybird Survey has a good identification guide for larvae of UK ladybirds.

Harlequin ladybird larva

So, given that Harlequins have almost reached pest status in the UK, am I doing anything about it? I'm afraid that at the moment I am going to be selfish about this and leave them be. They are doing a good job of keeping the aphids at bay and I'm having a hard job finding non-Harlequin ladybirds in the garden. I may change my mind, though, should they decide to take up residence in the house for the winter.

Further information on Harlequins and other ladybirds can be found on the Harlequin Ladybird Survey and UK Ladybird Survey websites. There is also a good overview of the issues involved in an article on the Wellcome Collection blog Ladybirds: friends or foe?

Die, sawfly, die!

So there I was, in the garden taking photos. An interesting orangy-brown insect sitting on the herb fennel caught my eye.

It flitted from one floret to another and I managed to capture a side view of it, reminiscent of Alien.

'Alien' it isn't but what it's offspring do to brassicas is devastating. I later identified from the photos that it is the turnip sawfly (Athalia rosae). Sawflies are very, very bad news. There are numerous species  - gooseberry sawfly, rose sawfly, apple sawfly, turnip sawfly - and their larvae can strip the leaves from a whole plant or bush in one overnight feeding frenzy.

This is what a single larva did to one of my broccoli seedlings.

 I squished the larva but too late to save that seedling :-(.