Chili Weather is Here!

     Autumn arrived this year on the allotment at a nice gentle pace. There was a pleasant overlap as summer held on well into October. The food from the allotment follows this slow transition in a lovely natural way. Basil mixes with the first tomatoes in late summer, chillies show up just as the nights get cooler to add some heat to your dishes, and then the squashes slowly replace the tomatoes in your soups and sauces as Autumn settles in.


     This year tomatoes were in danger of losing a guaranteed 
spot on the allotment. But after finding a few varieties that seemed to tolerate outside conditions, I have decided to double my effort next year to ensure I have a steady supply for the kitchen.  Super Marmande, Tumbling Tom, and Roma varieties will feature heavily in next years plans.
      I planted approximately 5 different varieties of chili and about 5 plants of each one.  Being still a bit of a novice at documenting however, I mistakenly wrote the variety and date in pencil on my biodegradable pots, which vanished very quickly after repeated waterings!  All of the chilies that were harvested were delicious and provided some nice warmth in pastas, curries, and even a homemade chutney!
     Squashes can really make you feel like a professional gardener.  The picture to the left is the result of about 1 or 2 plants that I had scrambling about underneath my corn this year.  There is both a Barbara Butternut and an Avalon variety.  Other than clearing a few weeds, they were virtually effortless.  They are the best case for the idea that vegetables want to grow, your primary role is to let them!  I have put them to good use in an absolutely delicious soup recipe from Jamie Oliver.  Anyway I have quite a few posts coming up on how to use all this great food we are getting from the ground! 


PS I found a great blog for Chili lovers in the UK http://blog.chilliupnorth.co.uk/ .

The Best of Both Worlds

Late September has got to be the best time of year for Veg gardeners! Fresh food still pours into our house daily; potatoes, tomatoes, chilies, courgettes, lettuce, rasberries, etc. all being enjoyed in some form at almost every meal.

However it may seem strange, but my favourite pastime in the veg garden is clearing out last years crops and starting again with a gorgeous new, freshly overturned vegetable bed full of freshly turned crumbly brown earth. I can finally get rid of all those tired looking leaves or those annoying weeds that escaped my much too infrequent attempts to clear them . Yep, no more delicate and careful hoeing, just indiscriminate ground clearance with my biggest fork!

A topping of well rotted manure and some leaf mulch (my other autumn obsession), and this old potato bed (see previous post) will transform nicely into my experimental companion planting next year. Reservations are yet to be confirmed, but I am thinking this full bed will be for what can be known as the three sisters; sweetcorn, beans and squash. Unlike most humanly sisters they get along wonderfully! The thick leaves of the squash (could use courgettes as well) keeps the weeds to minimum, the sweetcorn doesn't cast much of a shadow over them and provides support for the beans, whose roots, in turn provide much needed nitrogen to their companions.

The added benefit of planting three crops in one space ticks all my boxes for efficiency, harmony and balance.

When do we Start?

It is hard to define a new season on the vegetable patch. Ideally there are always times when something is growing or needs harvesting or clearing. For me, the start of the new season is always kicked off by the planting of my autumn garlic, shallots and onions. There are still plenty of things growing and indeed plenty of plants that have just been planted out recently, broccoli, Chinese leaves, cabbages etc but all of them will always play second fiddle to my allium family! Spring (green) garlic is one of the reasons I wanted a vegetable patch in the first place. It is rarely in the grocery store but it is truly a garlic lover's treat. Roasted whole with a bit of nice extra virgin olive oil and sea salt and crushed onto some rustic bread or mixed, finely chopped with chilies, into pasta or crammed into some little slits, with some rosemary, into a leg of lamb (sorry but I cant seem to stop this sentence!) ....

I planted my first cloves of garlic this year on the 20th of September. I felt like this was a little bit early but a few reliable sources advised that it is best to get it in the ground and established before the really wet weather sets it giving it a great potential to rot in the ground. I chose a variety call Early Purple Wight. It had very large cloves in a nice big bulb. This year I will also make my first attempt at planting a crop from cloves from last years crop. I had a very nice batch of garlic (see photo) from last year and so I will begrudgingly set aside two of the bigger bulbs for planting. If anyone has a better method for plaiting garlic point me to it! The best I could manage was plaiting three stems together then plaiting three plaits together. It all got rather bulky and so I just stuck it on a nail in the wall right above my chopping board where it is within very easy reach! I can already predict that my winter's supply of garlic will last me until about the end of October. This year I am not going to be shy about quantity. I will probably add to my autumn planting with another planting mid February. This should also allow me to indulge in taking lots of spring garlic (May/June) while still having plenty for July main harvest.

Raw Materials

My number one priority in having an allotment is about supplying my other passion (cooking!) with high quality, fresh and seasonal ingredients that are either too expensive, bland or very limited in variety at the grocery store. Here are a few results from my first two seasons of vegetable gardening.

This (above) was my first real harvest from the allotment in year one. Around mid July I started getting about 1 or 2 yellow courgettes a day. Onions, garlic, carrots, beans (from my plot neighbor) and throw in a few herbs, hmmm I think a stir fry is in order! Recipe posts coming soon.

Potatoes, strawberries, lettuces and more herbs (below), all low maintenance must haves. They are easy to grow and very versatile in the kitchen.

Some more yellow courgettes (pasta, stir-fries, on toast etc) with my first successfully formed red cabbage. The shredded cabbage mixed with carrots, apples and shallots kept me in fresh coleslaw all summer! Recipe posts to follow soon.

All of this looking at food has made me want to cook something for lunch!