A Purple patch

Isn't it true that at certain times of the year flowers with a certain colour predominate? Here in the UK Spring is characterised by yellow flowers - daffodils, primroses, Forsythia, Gorse, whereas early Summer is all about blues and purples. Our neighbourhood is currently full of clematis, lilac, wisteria and bluebells.

My garden is having a purple patch.  I have Chive flowers that are just opening.

The Oxalis "Red Burgundy" has just started to put up its leaves. All this lot appeared in the space of about a week. One day there was a pot of bare compost, then up pops one little leaf

and a week later there was this:

The little green seedling at the top of the photo is a self-seeded Winter Savory, so I shall let that get a bit bigger and then transplant it.

Watching the TV reports about the Chelsea Flower Show this week I see that Heuchera is very much in fashion. Alan Titchmarsh was singing the praises of a variety called "Pacific Purple", which looks quite similar to the one I have, which is "Palace Purple". Its leaves are a very dark colour, almost chocolatey:

Heuchera has never really done well in my garden, so maybe my soil doesn't suit it. I re-located it to a new position last year, so perhaps this year it will do a bit better...

Aquilegias are also in fashion, which is nice because I am currently having a bit of a craze on them. These are leaves of Aquilegias grown from seeds sent to me by my blogging friend David Ford. In the absence of an official name for them I have called them after him.

They haven't flowered yet, but this is what they are going to look like (very much in keeping with the Purple Patch theme...)

Photo courtesy of David Ford

This is another Aquilegia, one which has been in my garden for years. It may not be new and exciting, but I love it.



My Cotinus is not yet "fully clothed", but is already displaying a huge splash of purple:

The very young leaves are quite red, and almost transparent, but as they mature they go a deep purple colour.

Unfortunately the beetroot which might have added a veggie note to this purple post are a long way off being ready.

Broad Beans - successional sowing

"Successional sowing" means sowing the same type of seeds at different times, in order to be able to harvest the crop over a longer period than if the seeds were sown all at once. I know this is a good thing to do, but normally I'm not very good at it. I always start off with good intentions, but get impatient and sow too soon. This year I am trying harder!

I have sowed my Broad Beans in proper successional sowing style. I have three rows of these beans, of three different varieties, and I waited until one variety had germinated before sowing the next one, in other words several weeks apart. Even though the later-sown ones always catch up a bit, it ought to mean that I harvest beans over a period of at least a month - perhaps six weeks.

The evening sun was a bit harsh when I took this photo, but I still think it shows quite well the difference in size between the three rows: at left "Bunyard's Exhibition" (20 Apr); in the centre "Witkiem Manita" (29 Mar) and at the right "Aquadulce" (15 Feb).

In between the rows of Broad Beans there are rows of fast-growing Radishes, which will mature before the beans block out their light.

In my photos you can see the network of soft green string which is going to provide support for the growing beans, which are always a bit vulnerable to wind damage.

By the way, the successional sowing technique is also strongly recommended for salad crops, which mature quickly and often don't hold in good condition for long when mature. Vast rows of Lettuce may look nice, but there is only so much salad you can eat - and it doesn't freeze well!

Mark's Veg Plot in May

At this time of year, my plot aways looks busy. It is crowded with pots, seed-trays, mini-greenhouses etc - lots of things in temporary accommodation, being "hardened-off", that's to say being gradually accustomed to outdoor life.

Most years, by the middle of May I have put my frost-tender plants like chillis, tomatoes and cucumbers, outside in their final positions. This year the weather has been very disappointing so far. Apart from that brief spell of glorious weather (miraculously coinciding with the May Day Bank Holiday weekend), we have had precious little of the classic Spring conditions. Today is typical: grey sky, strong breeze, temperature at midday 13C. Not conducive to rapid plant growth!

The Early potatoes in pots have done well inside that plastic coldframe thing, but there is no sign yet of the Pink Fir Apple ones planted in the big black tubs seen in the foreground here:-

Beyond the water-butt seen in the previous photo is this. Lots of potted herbs; chilli plant acclimatising; tomatoes in the big terracotta-coloured pots, and peas climbing up wigwams of canes.

Having been in those pots for several months already, the peas are finally beginning to look as if they feel like climbing. I had never intended to grow peas at all (these are ones originally intended for consumption as peashoots), but if they keep going as well as they are doing now I should get a nice little harvest. Few things are more delicious than home-grown peas eaten straight off the plant, eh?

There are more potatoes in pots behind the very under-utilised gas barbecue (in its black cover). The big pots of herbs like Sage and Lavender are slowly coming to life, with soft green shoots replacing the stark grey twigs. In the foreground is my Baby Salad crate - complete with anti-badger precautions.

Then there is the massive Woodblocx raised bed, currently looking rather sparsely populated (just 3 "Maskotka" tomato plants at present), but soon to play host to cucumbers and sweet peppers. The Build-a-Ball system is seen here loosely supporting a net to keep the wildlife off.

Likewise here we see more Build-a-Ball items and netting covering a bed containing Shallots, brassicas (6 x Tenderstem broccoli and 4 x Brussels Sprout "Brilliant") and Parsley. To the right of the photo is the Asparagus bed. If you look really carefully you might be able to identify one or two spears poking up.

This wider-angle shot shows the Broad Bean bed at the right, covered with the tall netted structure. Beyond that, alongside the fence you can see the fruit trees and the Raspberry canes - already a couple of feet tall.

In the distance are the cane supports ready for the beans, hopefully going in shortly. Here they are from a different angle.

Seen above to the right of the bean-poles is this bed covered in netted hoops:

This bed has Beetroot, Parsnips and Turnips, with two rows of Radishes in between as a catch-crop. The big leafy ones are the Radishes and you have to look very closely to see the others. The germination rate of the Beetroot has been low, and I'm currently thinking about sowing some more.

Finally, there's this - the Strawberries in boxes in the foreground, and the Blueberries in pots behind, with my new Gaillardia and Rudbeckia in the square terracotta pots.

So there we are; a complete tour of the (edible) plot for you! The ornamental bits will have to wait for another day.

If I'm growing salads, does that mean it must be Summer?

I'm fed up with cold, grey windy weather. I want it to be Summer. I want to sit outside in the garden in the evening to eat my dinner, with a glass of cool white wine in my hand and eat salads!

The big plastic crate in which I sowed all sorts of salad seeds, on 1st April, is yielding its first leaves now. The ones that have grown fastest are the Rocket and the Greek Cress. The slower-growing Lettuces are finding it hard to compete.

I'm cutting the biggest leaves first, to allow the smaller seedlings to get some light. Actually, I'm very pleased with the quality of leaves I'm getting. I find that Rocket is particularly vulnerable to damage by Flea Beetle, which makes its leaves very tatty, but these seem to be perfect. Perhaps the beetles didn't think to look in that crate!

Around the side of the house I have established a Salad Farm on the contraption that serves as my potting-bench, using any old containers I can lay my hands on:

There are a few each of four types of Lettuce: Green Oak Leaf, Valdor, Fristina and Delicato, and 12 individually-potted "Pancalieri" Endives (only 6 in the pictures - they won't all fit on the worktop).

I've just realised that according to Sod's Law, these are bound to be at their best at the time we head off on our holidays (12 June)! I'm not going to sow any more Lettuce seed until we get back from our holiday, because my Garden Helper team is going to have enough to do already, without having to tend to vulnerable little seedlings.

Lettuce "Marvel of Four Seasons"

Roast Lamb with lemon potatoes

The title hardly does it justice, but this post is about a meal I cooked on Saturday. Jane was away in London at a club committee meeting, so I had the kitchen to myself all day: bliss!

I started by baking some bread. Having been so successful with this the first time round, I followed Paul Hollywood's basic recipe again, but this time I made a "tin" loaf:

It worked - and I even remembered to grease the tin! I think the result proves that my first-time success last week with the Bloomer was not just a fluke. This time I paid particular attention to getting a nice crisp crust.

The bread subsequently became part of our Starter, some of it used to mop up some of our best olive oil, and some of it buttered, to eat with these - home-grown radishes, dipped in salt:-

Here is the Starter then:

Main Course was leg of Lamb, roasted on a bed of lemony, thymey, garlicy potatoes. I had got the butcher to remove the bone from the meat and "butterfly" it - in other words make the joint into a fairly thin, flattish piece of meat. I marinated it for a few hours with olive oil, garlic, black pepper and lemon juice:

The meat marinating

When it was time to cook, I peeled and roughly chopped about 750g potatoes, quartered two lemons, peeled and lightly crushed 5 cloves of garlic, added them to the pan and then sprinkled them with a good handful of fresh Thyme from the garden. I placed the meat on top of a "trivet" made from a large onion thickly sliced, and poured in two dessertspoons of white wine vinegar and a generous glass of white wine. Then into the oven it went for about 90 minutes, on a medium heat. At one point I added a bit of water and another splosh of wine, because I felt that the potatoes needed more moisture to avoid being burnt. Incidentally, the Rick Stein recipe on which my dish was loosely based recommended cooking some "traditional" roast potatoes as well, because the ones under the lamb might not be useable. I followed this advice, but it turned out to be unnecessary. The potatoes infused with the lamb juices and all the other flavourings were actually the star of the show!

Ready to go in the oven

The Rick Stein recipe suggested cooking the meat to the Well Done stage, and since I do tend to like my meat slightly beyond the Medium stage, this is what I did. In retrospect I think the meat would have been nicer cooked slightly pink. It wasn't half tasty though!

The end result

So then the Dessert - Rhubarb Cream made with home-grown Rhubarb.

I cooked the Rhubarb in a covered pyrex dish, adding a tablespoonful of water, some peeled raw root ginger, a squeezed orange and about a dessertspoonful of Sweet Freedom (a sugar substitute suitable for diabetics). While this was happening I softened a couple of sheets of leaf gelatine and put them in a pan with about 200ml Elmlea Light (reduced-fat cream substitute) and gently warmed it until simmering. By this time the Rhubarb was cooked and I added the warm "cream" to it, stirred it in and decanted it into some glasses before putting it into the fridge to set.  This is the result:

Just for completeness, I want to mention the fact that I also cooked some Good King Henry shoots, and served them as one of our veggies, alongside the Lamb. As ever, we were totally underwhelmed by this vegetable. It has some similarity with spinach, and some similarity with PSB, but is nowhere near as good as either. I think I'll just treat it as an ornamental plant from now on.

Should I add that the meal was complemented by a nice bottle of "our own" (Wineshare) Cabernet Merlot? No, you probably guessed that for yourselves!

Harvests at last!

Slowly, slowly, the harvests are beginning to arrive... I have put together here a little collection of photos to illustrate what I have harvested in the last week, purely so that I can participate in Harvest Monday over at Daphne's Dandelions.

Radishes. These are "Flamboyant 5", a variant of "French Breakfast".

Baby Leaf Salad. My own mix, but with a strong element of Rocket and Greek Cress.

Rhubarb "Victoria".

Good King Henry. Treat these shoots as you would Purple Sprouting Broccoli. In other words, cook very briefly. You can use the leaves as you would use Spinach.



Well, it's not a huge harvest, but at least it's a start! (And of course I don't count the herbs; we're always using herbs. We take them for granted.)

Cucumbers. Dare I plant them out?

My cucumber seeds were sown on the 26th April, and since then have been living under the Growlights. This has made them grow exceptionally strong and even. The Growlight House has been a real boon in the poor weather conditions we have endured so far this year. I don't know how I managed without it.

I have eight cucumber plants in all - four each of "Melen F1" and "Iznik F1" - both Lebanese or cocktail types, whose fruits only grow to about 6" / 15cm in length.

However, the plants are getting quite big now and it is time they were planted out, or at least began their process of hardening-off. I'm feeding them regularly with Baby Bio plant food, because there can't be much nutrition left in the compost in their tiny 3" pots.

Last year it took my cucumbers a long time to get going, because I think I planted them out too early and they hated the cold conditions, so this year I'm being more careful. I had been hoping to put them out in my big Woodblocx raised bed, this weekend, with protection from some bell-cloches, but with night-time temperatures still in single figures I think this might be premature. Instead I will put them outside in one of the mini-greenhouses during the day and bring them in at night, for at least a while longer. Maybe by the end of next week things will have improved?

In due course I plan to have two sets of 3 plants each, growing up wigwams of bamboo canes, with one plant of each variety held back in reserve - as is my normal practice. Last year my "Iznik" plants grew a lot taller than the info on the seed packet had led me to believe, so this time I will probably provide them with 6-foot canes instead of 4-foot ones. (That's if I have any canes left over after building the wigwams for the beans!).

On a totally different subject, since several of you expressed an interest in Good King Henry when I wrote about it the other day, I would like to show you some photos of it being prepared for culinary use. (Just don't build your hopes up concerning its culinary merits!)

As harvested. Lots of leaf - use like spinach

Trimmed - stand the shoots in water until ready to use. They wilt quickly

Ready for cooking- stems are a bit like PSB