Pear blossom

Last year my "Conference" pear tree produced no fruit at all. Because of the atrocious weather it was a bad year all round for fruit, but I think my tree probably wouldn't have produced any fruit even if the weather had been OK. Sometimes a fruit tree adopts a biennial fruiting pattern if it gets insufficient water and nutrients, and I think that's what has happened to mine. The soil in my garden dries out very easily and it is hard to keep it moist. Maybe this year it's my turn to get a good harvest. There is certainly some blossom on the tree - if perhaps not as much as I would like!

I am hoping that we won't get any more frost this year, though a couple of degrees of frost is probably less damaging to Pear blossom than strong winds and heavy rain. We haven't had much rain for quite a while now, and I have actually been out with the hosepipe to give the fruit trees a good soaking.

At least it looks as if pollination won't be a problem...



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P.S. Yesterday I had my first-ever go at bread-making. The other day we bought a copy of Paul Hollywood's inspirational book "Bread", and it definitely made me want to try my hand at this skill. Now, as you probably know, I'm not normally one for slavishly sticking to a recipe, but Jane had told me in no uncertain terms that "baking is a science, not an art", so I decided to follow Paul's recipe precisely. He suggests that a novice baker should start by baking a white Bloomer loaf, so that is exactly what I did. This was the result:

I have to say that Paul's recipe was very clear and easy to follow. If I can make a loaf like that on my first attempt, he must be a magician!

We ate a slice of the bread about an hour after it was cooked, with lots of butter on it. It was amazingly tasty, and though I say it myself, the balance between crispy crust and springy crumb was perfect. Later on, we ate more of it as a starter with our dinner - pieces dipped in our best olive oil, with a few drops of balsamic vinegar. Then this morning, with home-made Seville orange marmalade... As Jane said to me "home-made bread just doesn't keep, you know!"  :-)

First Asparagus of the season

This is always a satisfying moment for me: the harvesting and consumption of the first few spears of Asparagus of the year. The first batch is never very big - this one is only 5 spears - but My Goodness, they are delicious, and all the more so for the eager anticipation we have endured these past several months! I'm sure that if Asparagus were available in my garden all year round I wouldn't enjoy it nearly as much.

Once Asparagus starts pushing up its spears they grow very rapidly - several inches in a day is not unusual. Sometimes I inspect the Asparagus bed before I go out to work in the morning and think "No, there's nothing there that's worth cutting", yet when I get home in the evening a whole load of them are ready!

These spears posed on a dinner-plate give you a good impression of how big they are. When you buy Asparagus in the shops it has always been trimmed. The lower parts are generally considered too tough and fibrous to be worth eating - though you can use them in vegetable stock, or possibly in soup as long as you're planning to pass it through a fine sieve.

The flavour of fresh Asparagus is quite strong, so even a small quantity is a viable ingredient. These 5 spears went into a pasta dish that Jane made, along with pesto, toasted pine-nuts and shavings of Parmesan cheese.

I hope these five are just the first of many!

White Hart cheese and Medlar Fruit cheese

Here are some more gorgeous local products sourced at the Hampshire Farmer's Market held in Fleet last Saturday:

This is "White Hart" from Loosehanger Cheeses near Winchester. It is rather reminiscent of Camembert. This award-winning soft cheese, made with milk from Ayrshire cows, is mould-ripened, with an outer skin described by the maker as a "white velvety coat". This particular specimen was for us at the perfect stage of ripeness - silky smooth, oozy and almost walking away of its own accord! In terms of taste, mild and mellow, certainly not as "in your face" as Camembert. We loved it.

To accompany this cheese we bought some Medlar Fruit Cheese, from J4Jelly. This is a product akin to a very intense fruit jam, and supposedly of a consistency that makes it sliceable. The ingredients list mentions medlars, spices, oranges, lemons and sugar. I think it is very similar in concept to the Spanish quince cheese called Membrillo. On the jar it says "Slice thinly and serve with meat." When we tried a sample at the market it was indeed firm enough to slice, but the substance in the jar we bought is definitely not. It is nice, yes, but just not sliceable. Not a big problem though, since it is easy enough to spread it on a cracker, or even to serve a spoonful of it alongside meat like you would with Redcurrant jelly.

We weren't overly impressed with the Medlar Fruit Cheese. Pleasant enough, but unremarkable. It tasted to me mostly of the spices, rather than fruit, but then again I don't think I have ever tasted a Medlar on its own, so I'm hardly qualified to judge!

I had a look at J4Jelly's website, to see if I could find some more about them (like for instance where they are based - presumably not far from us), but to be honest the website is remarkable for the paucity of information it divulges! [P.S. Used the postcode shown on the jar to establish that they are based in Farnham, Surrey, about 4 miles from us.]

In my final photo you can see that we chose to serve our cheeses with some miniature Artisan Swedish Crispbreads from Peter's Yard., which were perfect hosts for the two other products.

Just for the record, I would like to add that to put me in the mood to enjoy the cheese I started off with a glass (or two) of my delicious home-made Sloe Gin, which somehow seemed in keeping with the general theme...

Strawberries and Carrots

No, I'm not suggesting eating strawberries and carrots together!

I've never had much luck with Carrots. They always get riddled with the maggots of Carrot Root Fly. My current strategy for minimising this problem is to grow the miniature "Finger carrot" varieties, in plastic crates in a raised planter, which puts the carrots three feet or so above ground level:

Opinions vary on this, but some people say that Carrot Root Flies fly at a very low altitude, so maybe my planter will be out of their reach. Results last year were not bad, considering the poor weather, so maybe it's not an Old Wives' Tale.

This year I am growing a mixture of "Mignon", "Mini Finger" and "Amsterdam 3 Sprint". Hopefully at least one of these varieties will do well. They are still tiny, but the germination rate seems to have been OK:

I have been considering whether to try to protect the carrots with Enviromesh. My emerging plan is based on supporting some mesh over some wire hoops. It's not really required just yet, so I have plenty of time to try out a few prototypes.

Meanwhile, in the Strawberry patch...

This year I have the grand total of 13 strawberry plants (if you discount the Alpines). Not a lot, I know, but more than three times the number I had last year! For want of space I'm growing them in containers:

On the left is one of the wooden wine-boxes from Majestic Wines, and on the right two plastic storage crates (£1.69 each from Tesco!) They are the same type as the ones I'm using for the carrots.

The reason why I'm growing the strawberries in containers is not simply lack of space elsewhere: it's also because when the berries are ripening I will be able to move the crates under cover where the birds will not be able to steal them!

The strawberry plants suffered badly from the severe weather in the Winter, but they are beginning to revive. They are certainly all alive, though a couple of them lost almost all their leaves (bottom right in this next photo).

In addition to these I have about 20 Alpine strawberry plants, but I'm realistically not expecting a harvest from them this year, since they have been grown from seed, and most of them are still very tiny. Maybe I'll get a few berries from the three bigger plants that survived the Winter, which are now growing away nicely in my other wooden wine-box:

Propagating Primroses

Inspired by Sue's post on her blog Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments on this subject, I have been increasing my stock of Primroses and Polyanthus. [Polyanthus is the type which has multiple flowers on each stem, whereas Primrose flowers are borne on single stems.]

Last year I bought a mixed pack of six Polyanthus from my local Garden Centre, and they performed very nicely. I put them in pots so that I could move them around the garden, adding a splash of colour here and there. When they had finished flowering I transplanted them to the border at the bottom of the garden, where there were already a number of Primroses which I had had from previous years. The other day I noticed that several of the plants had produced babies:

Since I'm always on the lookout for free plants, this was an opportunity too good to miss. I dug up several of the tiny plants, noting with satisfaction how strongly rooted they already were, despite their small size:

Some of them were still attached to their parents, so had evidently been propagated via the root systems, but others were completely detached, so must have been produced by seeds.

The little babies have ended up in a rectangular stone-effect planter which I have had for many years. I had earmarked it as a suitable container for placing next to the big Woodblocx raised bed in order to soften its rather harsh outline, but I hadn't yet got anything to put in it. Now the solution has produced itself!

Unfortunately, the clump of "natural" Primroses that I like so much hasn't produced any babies, but it is certainly a lot bigger than it used to be. Just look at these two pictures of the same plant two years apart:-

April 2011

April 2013

This year has been a good year for wild Primroses. All the banks along the sides of the motorways and roads here in Hampshire are absolutely full of them. Really beautiful!

Goat Curry

At the weekend we went to our local Farmers' Market, and as well as some of our regular purchases like Loosehanger cheeses and Trout pate, we also got the first locally-grown Rhubarb and Asparagus. I have heard that goods sold at this type of market have to be produced within (I think) a 50 mile radius, so this Asparagus will certainly have travelled a lot less Food Miles than the stuff from Peru that our supermarkets persit in selling. In addition to all these things we also bought some goat meat. I have been wanting for some time now to make a Caribbean-style Goat Curry, and now I have had the opportunity.

Goat meat is available in the Asian butchers' shops in the big towns round here - like Reading, where there are big Asian and Caribbean communities, but it is not commonly found in either the supermarkets or our local butchers' shops. Fortunately, there is a stall on our Farmers' Market which sells goat meat. It is called Devese Farm Animals, and their business is based in Wickham, near Southampton.



As you can see from the photo above, we bought 340g of diced Goat Mutton, a quantity perfect for feeding two people. The meat is lovely and lean, and very dark coloured. It's rather similar to very well-aged Lamb.

Goat meat has a reputation for being tough, so I planned to cook my curry for a long time - about three and a half hours. So here's my recipe:-

Caribbean-style Goat Curry (serves two)



Ingredients

Approx 350g goat meat, diced

1 large onion, peeled and roughly chopped

4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed

As many fresh red chillis as you like (or for authenticity, a Scotch Bonnet if you have one), roughly chopped

1 bunch spring onions, separated into white parts and green parts, roughly chopped

1 5cm piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated

1 Tbsp Dunns River All-Purpose Seasoning

1 Tbsp Carribean curry powder (one with lots of Fennel and Allspice in it)

1 Tsp dried Thyme

1 Tsp ground Allspice

Several sprigs of fresh thyme (leaves only)

Several twists of freshly-ground black pepper

1 litre of stock (I used beef)

Approx 3 Tbsp vegetable oil, for frying and marinating

Method

1.Make a marinade

Put about 1 Tbsp oil in a large bowl, along with:-

the crushed garlic

the grated ginger (grate it over the bowl to avoid losing the juice)

the All-Purpose Seasoning

the curry powder

the dried Thyme, black pepper and Allspice

about half of the white bits of spring onion, and half of the fresh Thyme

[the rest of the fresh thyme and spring onions are used in the accompanying Rice and Peas dish]

Mix the ingredients to form a gooey paste

Add the meat to the bowl and massage well to ensure it is thoroughly coated with the marinade

Cover with clingfilm and place in the fridge for a few hours

2. Make the curry

Heat 1 Tbsp oil in a  flameproof pan and brown the meat, having removed most of the marinade from it

Remove the meat to a bowl and keep it warm

Put the final 1 Tbsp oil into the hot pan and soften the onions over a low heat (approx 5 mins)

Add the remaining marinade and stir it into the onions; cook for another couple of minutes

Return the meat to the pan

Add the chillis, and all of the green parts of the spring onions

Add the stock

Bring the pan to the boil, and then cover it and put it in the oven

cook for about 3 hours or until the meat is very tender, adding more stock/water if required to achieve a nice consistency of sauce.



Just before adding the stock

At serving time



3. Serve

My curry was accompanied with Rice and Peas (home-grown black beans in this case), cooked with coconut milk, fresh Thyme and the white parts of some spring onions (see above), along with some plain-boiled Spring Greens (like Collards) - on this occasion pretending to be Callaloo!

Well, so much for the stereotype. The Goat meat was meltingly tender and beautifully tasty. We shall definitely be buying it again. Very impressed. I was a bit disappointed in the lack of heat in the curry (it really needed the Scotch Bonnet), but the taste was lovely. I particularly enjoyed the flavour of Allspice - a current favourite of mine. And what can I say about the rich coconutty Rice and Peas? Heavenly!

Transplanting Broccoli seedlings

I have planted out the Tenderstem broccoli seedlings that I showed you in yesterday's post. Tenderstem is for me the Summer equivalent of the Spring's Purple Sprouting Broccoli. As the name suggests, it is eaten more for its stems than for its flowers, though the young leaves are also nice - a bit like Spring Greens or Collards. I have planted six seedlings in the bed which already has the Shallots and Parsley in it, spacing them at intervals of roughly 35cm.

I planted the seedlings quite deeply, ensuring that the soil level was about where the cotyledons ("seed-leaves") had been. I pressed the soil down around the plants with my hands, since brassicas like firm soil conditions. I then watered them in and protected each one with a "Brassica collar" which will hopefully deter the Cabbage Root Fly from laying their eggs on the stems.

Then over each one I put a plastic bell-cloche.

These will protect the young plants from the weather for the next couple of weeks. In view of the frequent showers of rain and hail we have been having, I think the protection will be very welcome! As you can probably see, the whole bed is also covered with netting, aimed at dissuading the foxes and badgers from rooting around in it.

Tenderstem Broccoli grows very rapidly, and I hope to be harvesting from these plants in about 8 -10 weeks from now. If you want to regular supply throughout the Summer, it is recommended that you sow successionally, but I will probably grow only this batch, because I will want to plant Cavolo Nero in this bed later on.

BTW, note the still-empty Woodblocx raised bed in the background of the last photo. This is reserved for tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers - which of course can't be planted out until the weather warms up some more.