Not Starfish

These are fruits from my "Brazilian Starfish" chilli plant.

The only trouble is, they are not Starfish-shaped as they should be. This is what they ought to be like:

But mine look more like Scotch Bonnets, or even miniature "Bell Peppers".

I wonder what it is that determines the shape of a chilli. The seeds for my plant came from a very reputable source - Victoriana Nursery Gardens, in Kent - but presumably some local factor, weather, soil or whatever, has made it turn out different to its parents. For me this has been a disappointment. I grew this chilli specifically for its unique shape, not for its flavour or heat. Still, maybe I should celebrate the fact that it is probably unique!

Last year I had lots of problems with deformed fruit (especially tomatoes and chillies) caused by compost contaminated by weed-killer, and I have had some similar, but fortunately less severe, issues this year, so I rather suspect that the failure of Brazilian Starfish to come true to type is part of this. In any event I won't be saving seeds from the fruits pictured here. I still have some seeds from the original packet, so I will probably have another try next year.

I also grew a new plant from a side-shoot cutting of my Brazilian Starfish plant, and it seems to be doing well. I may be able to over-Winter it and see what happens next year...

This photo is from earlier in the year. The plant is much bigger now!

I will not be posting to my blog for a few days now, because we will be away visiting family. Back soon!

Cloves as an anti-fungal

Big Brassica plants like Brussels Sprouts and Purple Sprouting Broccoli are very susceptible to fungal growths, which seem to thrive in the cooler damper conditions of Autumn. Inspecting my sprouts at the weekend, I saw this:

And this:

It's a type of Sooty Mould, which is a fungus that often grows on the "honeydew" (excretions) of sap-sucking insects such as the Whitefly - a common pest of brassicas. The fungus in itself is not particularly harmful (though it can reduce plant vigour by inhibiting photosynthesis), but it's definitely unpleasant and unsightly.

The leaves and stems of my Brussels Sprouts are mottled with little patches of the fungus.

Even some of the sprouts themselves are affected.

The fungus will only affect the outer leaves of the sprouts, which will be removed before cooking anyway, so this is not a major issue, but I would like to stop the problem getting any worse.

It is alleged that in the case of a mild infestation you can wash Sooty Mould off your plants with water (preferably warm), but I decided to use a remedy I had seen mentioned on Twitter the other day - an infusion of Cloves, which apparently have powerful anti-fungal properties. With little information to go on, I had no option but to experiment. I put about 30 Cloves in a saucepan of water and boiled them for about 5 minutes.

Following a suggestion from Jane (who was initially baffled by the fact that I was boiling Cloves), I added about half a teaspoon of ground Cloves from a jar in the spice rack. This made the concoction a much darker colour.

Later, when the water had cooled I poured it into a spray bottle and gave the Brussels Sprouts a thorough soaking, trying hard to ensure that every surface of every leaf was covered. I don't know whether this remedy will work at all, and if it does how soon I should be looking for results, but even if it doesn't work I can't imagine it will have done any harm - just as long as the sprouts don't end up tasting of Cloves!!

Funnily enough, this year there seem to be far fewer Whitefly around than normal. Certainly not a serious infestation like last year. Last year I tried spraying my Sprouts with a Garlic infusion to kill the Whitefly. I'm not convinced it did much good, so my hopes for the Clove spray are not high.

Harvest Monday - 19th October 2015

Although we are more than half way through October now, there are still plenty of harvests coming in.

I pulled up another big batch of lovely Carrots. These ones are all "Kelly", an experimental variety, with which I have been very impressed. If it is available for next year, I shall certainly buy some more seeds.

I have harvested loads of carrots from this bed, but there never seem to be any less! As fast as I pick them the Carrot Fairy puts more in their place!

This was definitely the very last batch of Runner Beans because the plants have now been taken down.

It's not a huge number of beans, and some of them are rather poor specimens compared with some of the earlier ones, but they are still OK and certainly enough for a 2-person serving. It has been a good year for Runner Beans. I think I may well grow "Enorma" again.

Quite a lot of chillis have ripened, and I have stripped the fruit off several of the plants prior to disposing of them. Having made that big batch of Harissa the other day, I have put most of the recently-picked chillis into the freezer to use on a later occasion. As you can see, some of them are not ripe, but they will get there.

I'm still continuing to harvest Lettuce as and when required, even though I lost four of them this week as a result of the nocturnal badger / fox diggings. This one is a "Devin".

There have been a couple more little pickings of Raspberries. I am getting this amount every 3 or 4 days:

This is my entry for Harvest Monday, hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres. Please do drop by and see what other gardeners have been harvesting this week.

Wildlife corner

There is a corner of my garden that is in dry shade. It is completely overshadowed by my neighbour's huge conifer tree, whose roots also suck out any moisture and nutrients from this space, so it is not a good place for growing anything (although the comfrey seems to be doing OK). I have positioned here two of my three compost bins, and I have built a "Bug Hotel" and a log-pile for creepy-crawlies to live in:

I try to leave this area largely undisturbed, so that insects and small creatures can take refuge here if they wish.

The Bug Hotel was made from a wooden pallet, disassembled and re-assembled as a "2-storey building". The cavities are filled with all sorts of bits and pieces - bamboo canes, fragments of old flower-pots, some horticultural fleece, the odd plastic pot or two... These provide a varied habitat for different creatures to inhabit. As you can see, I have recently distributed nearby some apples that were left over from my earlier jam-making sessions. They had begun to go soft and some of them were mouldy, but I expect they will still be welcomed as food for somebody / something.

A couple of days ago I was digging up some of the ferns (they are spreading too rapidly), when a little Robin came and joined me. He sat on the wall just a couple of feet away from me, and dashed in a few times when he spotted an insect I had dug up. I stopped digging and took some photos - though of course the Robin was reluctant to sit still for me, so it took me a while to get a decent one of him. Was his repeated sharp chirping his way of saying "Thank you", or was it perhaps intended to encourage me to "stop mucking about and get back to digging up worms"!

I wonder what the Robin would have made of this:

I think it is the caterpillar of the Eyed Hawk Moth, Smerinthus ocellata.

That would be a decent-sized meal for a Robin, wouldn't it?

Harissa chicken with vegetable marga

This recipe is one that Jane invented, "once upon a time"... It came to mind the other day while I was making my home-made Harissa.

[Note: a "marga" is another name for a tagine. Not the dish you cook it in, but the stuff you cook, in the same way that we use the term "casserole".]

Harissa chicken with vegetable marga (serves 2, generously!)

 

 

Ingredients

1 small whole chicken

1 large carrot, peeled

1 large red onion, peeled

200g butternut squash, peeled

200g Sweet Potato, peeled (I used my home-grown ones!)

1 tin chopped tomatoes (I replaced this with a tub of home-made tomato sauce and 4 medium-sized fresh tomatoes, skinned)

4 cloves garlic, peeled and left whole

2 lemons

4 fresh Bay leaves

1 tbsp Harissa paste (adjust to taste)

2 tbsp olive oil

Salt and pepper

 

To accompany

100g couscous, prepared according to manufacturer's directions. (I added some chopped fresh Parsley.)

 

Vegetables, prepped.

 

 Method

Set oven to 190C, gas mark 5

Loosen the neck flap of the chicken, ease the skin away from the breast, spread the Harissa paste over the breast and press the skin back in place
Smear a little of the Harissa all over the skin of the chicken

Place chicken in a large roasting-tin

Halve one of the lemons, and squeeze the juice over the chicken. Place squeezed lemons inside the cavity of the chicken

Cut vegetables into 3cm cubes

Place prepared vegetables around the chicken, along with the whole garlic cloves and the other lemon, cut into wedges

Drizzle olive oil over everything and season with salt and pepper

Roast for 75 minutes or until chicken is cooked, stirring vegetables occasionally

 

Remove chicken from roasting-tin, allow to stand for 10 minutes before carving

Meanwhile, remove lemon wedges and Bay leaves from the vegetables

Spoon off as much fat as possible, leaving juices in the pan

Tip tomatoes into the roasting-tin and simmer over a medium heat for 2 - 3 minutes, mixing well with a wooden spoon, and crushing any large lumps of vegetable into the sauce.



 

Adding tomatoes and tomato sauce to the roasted vegetables

 

The "sauce" after crushing most of the veg

 

To serve

Place prepared couscous onto individual plates

Place pieces of carved chicken on top of couscous

Spoon marga (sauce) on top of chicken

Garnish with green salad

Serve immediately! 

I really enjoyed this meal. The soft gooey sauce was full of the flavour of roasted veg, and both spicy and sweet at the same time. The Butternut Squash, Sweet Potato, and Carrot - and to a lesser degree the Tomatoes - are all sweet, and of course the chillis in the Harissa contribute the warmth and spiciness, that tingle in the mouth that lingers for several minutes after you swallow. The chicken skin was beautiful too - crispy and tangy - whereas the meat underneath was beautifully moist.


If you enjoyed this, you might like to visit Jane's blog to read about her "Jerk-ish Chicken", also made with my Harissa...





The Runners have finished

It's been a good year for Runner Beans, but even good things come to an end eventually...

Considering that it's mid-October, the plants still looked pretty green.

However they had definitely reached the end of the road, because after I picked these last few pods there were no more forming.

And anyway, I wanted to take the plants down before the weather turns really bad. It's a job that is much less of a penance when the weather is mild and dry!

I stripped off the foliage and managed to cram it into my compost bins - just - and put the canes away in the garage for next year. I roughly raked-over the soil in the empty raised bed, and I'm sure the birds will now enjoy digging around in it and clear out any lurking insects.

Runner Beans have been a regular feature of my veg plot for many years now. They are one of the most reliable crops to grow, and seldom disappoint. You can see why they appear on almost every allotment and vegetable patch in the country. Even in a poor year we get plenty to eat from them, but in a good year (like this one) we also get a freezer-full of produce to keep us going through the Winter months. I consider Runners to have a very high VSR rating. If you don't know what VSR is, read this...

Meanwhile... The "mystery" beans had finished drying.

When I shelled them, this is what I got:

It's a mere 80g of rather motley-looking small black beans - perhaps enough for one small helping. To be honest, I'm a bit disappointed. I thought they would be better. Maybe if they had been sown earlier in the season and had had more time to fatten-up they would have been better. Or perhaps this is just a variety intended to be used as slicing beans rather than shelling beans. The pods were certainly big and fleshy. I might save a few of the best specimens and try growing them again next year.

There were 3 in the bed, and the little one said...?

...Roll over! Roll over! And they all rolled over and one fell out...   You remember this, of course?

Well this rhyme is what my rather overcrowded Brassicas bed reminded me of. The bed contains 3 types of brassica - Purple Sprouting Broccoli, Cabbage and Brokali.

I had removed the net temporarily whilst I tied-in my three Purple Sprouting Broccoli plants one more time. They are enormous and I don't want them toppling over.

PSB before 2nd tying-in. 1st tie visible close to ground level.

I initially put the net over this bed to keep the butterflies out - in which it has been largely successful - but even though I think we have seen the last of the butterflies for this year I'm leaving the net in place to deter the foxes / badgers. These days I have to protect just about everything, otherwise the foxes (or badgers) trample all over it and/or dig it up in their search for worms. I'm never really sure which animal is the culprit, because the damage occurs at night time.

Around the edges of the raised bed, underneath the PSB, I have planted four "Mila" Savoy Cabbages, and eight "Endeavour" Brokali plants, both types grown from the seeds kindly provided for me to try by Marshalls. My arrangement here is definitely what is termed "underplanting". The cabbages and Brokali will probably never grow big because the massive PSB plants block out most of their light and grab the majority of the nutrients. However, they will hopefully still deliver something worthwhile.

The cabbages are forming nice firm hearts now. Since they are destined to feed only two people it is quite nice that they will never be huge. Sometimes quality is better than quantity.

I'm not really sure what the Brokali is going to do. I am hoping that it will produce little spears like Tenderstem Broccoli, but so far there is no sign of anything like that.

To be honest, they look very much like little PSB plants, though the crinkly leaves are reminiscent of Cavolo Nero (aka Lacinato Kale).The seed packet shows harvests starting in December, so there is plenty of time still.

If everything goes according to plan the Brokali will mature and be finished before the PSB crop is ready, so we should get a long period of Brassica harvests - and that's without mentioning the Brussels Sprouts, the first of which are not too far off ready now.