Wild Women do...

...and they don't regret it. I'm talking about Wild Food of course. Who can possibly not resist free food? Yesterday we went for a bike ride into Cambridge and on the way we kept seeing trees laden with green and red fruits. I know you have to be careful not to pick unknown fruits in case they are poisonous, but these just looked too edible to ignore. Finally curiosity got the better of me and I picked a small round cherry shaped fruit and had a nibble. It was sweet and sharp with a texture and taste like an apricot. I let the kids try a bit and they totally loved them. We grabbed a handful and went on our way. A few yards down the road we found a street with about 10 trees full of these fruits all in different colours, ranging from green, yellow with a red tinge, to a deep purple. Sure that these were some some of plum or damson, we filled up our lunchbox (having eaten the contents earlier!) and took them home for identification.

I discovered (I think...) that what we had were wild cherry plums! A bit of digging around on google told me that these small fruits are indeed edible and a bit of a of an old fashioned delicacy, popular in the Victorian times. I decided to opt for a wild plum jam using the small stash we carried home from the City and it made 4 pots of delicious jam which we all love. It seems that we are also very lucky in Histon and Impington as there are also many trees locally heavy with wild plums and my plan is to get a load of these babies and make a whole batch of jam to last us all winter!

Salad Days

Despite the awful weather so far in July, we have enjoyed some lovely salads from our Valmaine lettuce. This is a cut-and-come-again lettuce which is small and crisp rather like a cos. Served with our first harvest of spring onions and some fresh tomatoes, the salad was divine. Still waiting for the cucumber to get to a reasonable size and then that will get the chop and be added to our side salads.


I also harvested quite alot of our runner beans this weekend. Too many for us to eat and not wanting to live on them for the next 3 weeks, I decided to prepare, blanche and freeze some ready for the winter.



When my Dad came over a few days ago, he noticed that my Early Nantes Carrots were ready to be pulled up. Low and behold, he was right and we managed to get some really beautifully tasting carrots that were perefectly shaped, sized and no invasion by the dreaded carrotfly. Next time however I will definately use the wondermesh over my brasicas as I had to pull out my failed cauliflowers. The wondermesh is a microfine netting which allows sunshine and rain to get to the plants but not the insects. The biggest pest was the notorious Cabbage White Butterfly which ravaged my plants.

Tomatoes, Peppers, Cucumbers and Pumpkins

The greenhouse has been such a success and we can now really look forward to a huge crop of tomatoes. Each of the 19 plants is weighed down with trusses of green tomatoes all ready to start ripening.

We've also had a huge success with our pepper plants. Check out this monster growing here. Its a whopping 18 cm long. The only problem we have is knowing when to eat it! We're still ploughing through lots of courgettes. (We probably cut 3 or 4 new ones each day so courgette is permanently on the menu right now!)


Check out this knobbly little guy too! Our first home grown cucumber. Its still a bit early to pick being only 10 cm long but I guess it won't be long. If they give us as much fruit as our faithful courgettes and tomato plants, I guess we'll be making lots of mint raita!


Tom is thrilled with the progress with his pumpkins too. We have two beautiful pumpkins about the size of a large cricket ball which are looking really strong and healthy. Some people have great success growing pumpkins (and other large fruits such as melons) on a trellis which is what we are doing. I read somewhere that you can support the large fruit using netting or even (clean) tights! So if you visit our garden in the coming weeks and see some fishnet stockings among the vines, don't worry, we've not been up to unspeakable things, we're just hoping for nice big pumpkins. :)


The Chili plants are hanging in there too despite a poor start to life and here you can see 2 really healthy green chili's growing well. We cut one and added it to a vegetable concoction last night but could not taste any heat at all. Perhaps they are a very mild variety? Next time I'll add more.


Its hard to see from this photo but these french beans are so tiny! I haven't had much success from my Dwarf French Beans. The first sowing rotted in the compost. The second fried in the heat of the greenhouse. The third, planted in a pot on the patio only gave about 5 tiny seedlings despite about 8-10 seeds being planted. Then to add insult to injury, our dog was caught chomping the growing heads off the tiny plants last week. I never knew she likes legumes!
Still I harvested 4 (yes only four!) itsy, bitsy beans this morning and will be adding them to a medley of mange tout, garden peas and runner beans.

Onions bursting up through the soil. Not sure when I'll harvest these. Need to do a check on google!

Spanikopita

A couple of weeks ago I harvested the remaining spinach and made a delicious Spanikopita; a Greek spinach and ricotta cheese pie. Served with our home grown courgettes cooked with garlic, tomatoes and Basil (also home grown), it was another culinary delight straight from the garden! For a great video on making Spanikopita, check out Eva.

Spud-U-like

Finally harvested some of our new potatoes this week. It was a slight disappointment to get such a low yield from the plants but the taste was out of this world. The pure white potatoes were like nothing I have ever tasted before. I cannot even put into words the purity of that taste. Simply served with butter alongside a piece of fresh salmon. yummmm........

Huge Bumble Bee

Today we found a huge Bumble Bee sniffing around the flowers. Evie was just about the swat it with her Dads shoe when I realised it was actually a rare species....

Toms Pumpkin

Tom was so excited when I asked him if he would like to grow something in the garden back in February. His immediate choice was a Pumpkin!
He showed a great interest in his seedling in the greenhouse during the early spring and here it is in the garden and it even has its first fruit on it.

Tidy up time

Today we needed to do a bit of general housekeeping on the veggie plot.
The onions needed tying back as they were flopping over and covering the lettuce. This was simple job of adding some small canes and string around the onion bed.

Chris had the more laborious task of trying to train the Black Forest Courgettes up the pea netting. We bought this variety because it was a trailing variety. Its unique climbing habit, is supposed to save space. Courgette Black Forest's climbing habit, needs supporting and tying. Stems can be trained and tied to a trellis, stout cane, or netting. However up until now we have neglected to allow it to train UP and let it spew out over everything else. We have now teased the main growing stem up and hope that it will now live up to its name.

June is Bursting out all over!

The garden in full edible glory!
View of my office and my bargain £5 basket.
View From My office...

Oh my goodness. How did I ever imagine that those tiny little seedlings would provide enough vegetables for us to actually make a meal from? I am so awe struck at how nature can provide such wonderful delights from a tiny little seed.
Now almost at the end of June, we have had 2 huge harvests of spinach which resulted in spinach and ricotta lasagne for 6 meals (and stored in the freezer for those nights when I am too lazy to cook from scratch!)

Peas, Mange Tout and Cougettes

We have had probably about 10 courgettes which have been delicious.
However, the pièce de résistance has to be the amazing mange tout and garden peas. For the last 3 weeks our crop has given us enough for 2 people twice a week as a side dish. I have found a great dish to make which is simply pasta, bacon, mange tout and Garden peas with a swirl of fresh cream and a liberal sprinkling of Parmesan cheese to top it off. Totally divine.





One problem we have encountered is a high level of black fly. The damn critters LOVE my growing runner bean plants and courgettes. After daily rubbing the pests off with my fingers or a soft clean paint brush, I finally had to resort to chemicals last week. I used an organic and vegetable friendly spray from Homebase but it doesn't seem to have done the trick yet. I need expert advice on controlling these pests urgently!
Leeks and Red Onions
Carrots
Parsnips with french beans behind
The first nobbly bud of a cucumber!

Beef Tomato
Sweet green pepper
The bumper crop of tomatoes
...and you can just about see the plant pots with a variety of chili plants at the end of the greenhouse.

The Beautiful Month of May

Its a truly beautiful late May afternoon and I've finally planted out the last of the greenhouse crops (apart from my cucumbers).
The spinach is doing so well and is looking lush and deep green in colour. The cabbages and cauliflowers have now also been transplanted outdoors and we must now finish putting the protective netting over the brasicas to keep away the invasive bugs!...Talking of which, today I found this ugly looking character! I think it must be moth Chrysalis.
I am so proud of may garden peas too. They were always the strong seedlings when I started this project and they have continued to delight me with the way they are growing so vigorously.

The green plants have burst into flower and we even have a small handful of pea pods. Still need the peas inside to fatten up and hopefully not get eaten by any birds!

The highlight of today was our first tasting! Yes we eat our first strawberry. It was fat and warm from the sunshine but delicious with a sweet and tangy flavour. It hardly made a grand meal for a family of four! (we cut 2 strawberry's into quarters and shared them but it was still a lot of fun!)


Most of the tomatoes are insitu in the greenhouse beds. We still have a load more compost to collect from Donarbon on the A10 so we can fill the rest of the beds and get the last few tomatoes and pepper plants in. It was looking so likely that my poor little tomato plants were not going to survive after a neighbour failed to water the tender little seedlings last month so I gratefully accepted some plants raised by our good friends and neighbours over the road. These are growing away nicely and instead of our small crop of one type of tomato, we now have a huge mixed selection of varieties growing: Beef tomato, Gardeners Delight, Cherry Tomatoes and juicy Italian Plum tomatoes. I cannot wait for the first signs of fruit.

Oh! I almost forgot... my basil seeds have also survived and are still growing nicely. Lets not forget the chilli peppers which were also damaged but the warm sun and light and good soil have proven to be the best medicine.

Sunshine and water are always a pleasure and not only for the plants... The kids loved the paddling pool which had its first outing of 2009!

COURGETTES

Courgettes... Oh how excited I am about growing my own. Perhaps this is ore exciting because the courgettes were the first of my seedlings to sprout up and looked good and strong and healthy.

From the first leaves, I have watched them progress. Seeing them growing so quickly I dream of Mediterranean baked tomato and courgette with chili and garlic, and all grown with our fair hands. Now that can't be bad can it?

Square Foot Gardening

Chris's research on vegetable growing lead him to an interesting technique called Square Foot Gardening. This is an easy to follow system using raised beds and planting in Square feet of a perfect soil mix. The mix is one third compost with one third peat moss and one third vermiculite. I could tell you all the benefits but Mel Bartholomew's does it much more justice than me, so here is a link to his site if you want to read more.