This morning’s picking!

Carrots, patty pans, celery, tomatoes, kake, sweetcorn, french beans and the last of the broad beans

Abbie’s patch – all change in the garden!!

OK, I admit it… I was wrong (this does not happen often!) When Abbie said she wanted to plant a pink fur apple potato in her 4 inches of soil, I scoffed at the idea. And then we dig it up (upon her insistance as the flowers had died)… around the base of the plant were 15 beautiful and large salad potatoes. Then to add insult to injury, I think that my plants might be ready so we dig one up – these potatoes are about the size of my thumbnail. Abbie says… ‘Does this mean I win, Mummy?’ Had to admit that yes, yes it did!

Abbie bragging about the size of her potatoes

Once the potato plant was out and we had picked the last of the pea pods, it was time to rejuvinate the patch. So in have gone, 2 climbing French bean plants up the third leg of the wigwam, 4 bok choi and 4 kale plants. These were ravaged by slugs on day 1 (after the photo) so now I have put slug pellets down. I have previously avoided doing this as Abbie tends to pick and eat, but now we have talked about washing everything first. I have used beer traps in previous years and these are great, but had no cheap beer to hand and was desperate to protect what the slugs had left.

Book choi at front, kale and French beans on left

Now to the peas – I cooked the last of our peas and a few small broad beans for 1 min in salted water and added them to garden salad leaves. A quick balsamic/olive oil/chopped mint dressing and we had a great salad to celebrate the end of a fabulous crop! If anyone has any ideas about how/if I can grow another crop now, please let me know!

Summer minted pea salad

Garlicky chicken, roast turnips and turnip greens… hooray for the garden!

Abbie was really keen to get out in the garden today after spotting all the strawberries on our plants. Whilst we were there, we thought we would see how our garlic was doing as well as I had heard about ‘green’ garlic, which just means that you pick it whilst the leaves are still green instead of wilted. You can see that our looking turned to pulling!

Ta da!

I separated the cloves from the stems. I put the stems into the cavity of the chicken (instead of herbs)before roasting. I boiled the cloves, with a head of cloves from a garlic I already had, for 5 mins and then put them in the roasting tray for the last 15 mins. Whilst the chicken was resting (I took out the ‘green’ garlic for us to eat), I made a gravy by adding a glass of wine to the roasting pan, squashing the soft cloves into the juices and the boiling to evaporate the alcohol. I then sieved this into a jug, squishing the wonderful garlicky flavours through the mesh! An amazing gravy – no thickening needed.

We also picked some of Abbie’s turnips. I separated the roots from the leaves, discarding the larger, partially eaten ones. The roots, I parboiled with our new potatoes and then roasted with oil and a splash of balsamic vinegar for 20 mins at 200C. The leaves were boiled in a little bit of water for 4-5 mins and then tossed in a little butter. Great use of the whole plant!

Roast chicken with garlicky gravy, roast potatoes and turnips, broad beans and turnip greens