Sunday 13 July 2014

Plants.......Real Control Freaks!

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post here about the sensory awareness of plants. We had planned to go away this weekend, and stay near Cotehele Manor, with a view to finally visiting this beautiful and historic house and garden, but unfortunately (or fortunately as it turned out), our plants had other ideas. We were due to leave at around Friday lunchtime, having worked extra hard, with the assistance of younger daughter Rebecca and son-in-law Dom to get things in all of the gardens up together. Thursday evening came around, and after dinner we both walked down to the allotment to make sure things were watered enough to keep them going for a few days (hopefully), but when we got there, our little veg patch had decided that it wasn't ready to let us go just yet. We had paid our deposit on the accommodation, but it became apparent very quickly that due to everything growing much faster than we had anticipated, we would have to cancel, due to the work that our 'children' now demanded of us.
 
 
It was much too late in the day, and we were far too tired, to try to water AND harvest the crop that we were thankfully faced with, and so we decided to enjoy the weekend in a different way. I telephoned our accommodation to cancel, we watered everything copiously that evening, and we returned home to make our new plans for the weekend.

 
It's time consuming, because not only must we pick all of the crops that are ready, but they must be prepared for storage in whatever way is necessary. Courgettes, both yellow and green, are picked and cooked with onions, herbs, fresh garlic, peppers and tomatoes into freezable portions of ratatouille. This is then frozen, and is used as a base for later dishes with aubergine etc. Some were left to chargrill on the barbecue later. Purple beetroot are roasted, and then half of them frozen as they are, for whatever way we wish to prepare them in the future. The remainder are added to vegetable stock, carrots, celery, thyme and orange, to make a delicious beetroot soup, all of which is now also in one of our freezers.

 
It took most of our weekend, and we made sure that the 'work' was mostly playtime. There were of course plenty of tea breaks, we are gardeners after all, and tea is what keeps our blood flowing!

 
To us, an allotment must not only be functional, but also something that is pleasing to the eye. Wherever we spend time amongst plants of any kind, there absolutely MUST be a peace brought to the soul, and a beauty to the eye, however small. To this end, we plant different coloured sweet peas alongside our runner and French beans.

 
And choose  Mangetout 'Shiraz', instead of the usual green varieties.

 
The sweet corn is moving on well, and we are trying a couple of new things this year.

 
Purple Amaranthe (Amaranthus cruentus), grows to about six feet, and the leaves can be cooked, or used in a salad. Once the flowers go to seed, these too can then be used. Used as long ago as 4000BC, it can only be a winner, if only for the summer due to it being an annual.

 
And Tree Spinach (Chinopodium giganteum), growing to about eight feet tall, is used in the same way as common spinach throughout Asia.
 
As well as the purple beetroot, we are growing 'Burpees Golden'. Although a little behind the purple, we have picked a few, and the flesh colour is something quite special.

 
Chard, Yellow and Green Courgettes, Redcurrants, Blackcurrants, Purple and Gold Beetroot, Marrow, Broad Beans and Black Mangetout, all in all not a bad weekend haul. It's now Sunday evening, and all is cooked, prepared, frozen or eaten.

 
Oh, and we didn't forget the cats. Hobie found our little gift of some Catmint most.....hmmmm....invigorating!
 
 
I hope your up and coming week is a good one.
 

20 comments:

  1. That was one colorful harvest. You certainly are getting some good produce. A weekend in the garden sounds good. Have yourself a good week too!

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    1. Thanks Sherlock. Although there are some weekends when we just simply have to escape, working in a garden of any kind is always a fulfilling alternative.

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  2. I'll say your garden was calling you. You have a great harvest of choice stuff. Now there is a theory that plant communicate with each other.

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  3. Good morning Red,
    Our allotment is going to keep us busy this year, and the freezers are almost full already with some leftovers from last year. Plants do indeed communicate with one another, and very specifically in some cases. Did you take a look at the post I put a link to in the first sentence?

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  4. Beautiful veg. Mine always used to get eaten by creepy crawlies or get nasty fungal infections.
    You could always do a farmers market when the freezers are full. I used to run my stuff through a blast freezer. They come out perfect then and not mushy like they do dropped in a home freezer.

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  5. Never heard of a blast freezer Adrian, do they look like conventional freezers? And are they expensive?

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  6. Gary,

    The sheer volume and beauty of your harvest is glorious! And your description of preparation and usage has my mouth watering and tummy growling. Truly there had been a hard decision to make but it sounds the right one for the time was made and enjoyment had. As always, ending you post with “His Lordship”, Hobie delights me greatly.

    Since I have been a little preoccupied with the goings and comings of summer I had not read your two posts prior to this latest entry. I will admit (please don’t tell A) the parsnip post gave me a gook chuckle and I do hope you did not get into much trouble for it. I sincerely hope that by the looks of the next post your attempt at a most poetic apology should have been received with great joy. However, personally I would have had to faked irritation for at least a two glass apology (lol). – gary

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    1. Good morning Gary,
      Thank you for such nice comments. I am thankful to say that Amanda has now fully forgiven me, especially since I posted a photo of youngest daughters failed sunflowers on Facebook.

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  7. What a beautiful harvest. I think Sweet pea are an very overlooked and beautiful flower.

    cheers, parsnip

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    1. Hello there Gayle,
      Oddly enough, having been a gardener for 35 years, I have never grown a sweet pea. They are indeed a lovely flower, and compliment the runner beans quite nicely.

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  8. Now me old son
    Do you want to enter something in our flower show?
    A novelty veg?
    A long runner bean
    A home made card?

    I will accept postal entries?

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    1. Haha, thank you John, but my chard would wilt by the time I got it there. Also, I don't you need a passport for Trelawnyd?

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  9. wow! fresh vegetables are so beautiful. I especially like the coloured peas and i've never seen golden beetroot before.
    You must have worked like trojans to get all of that done, i hope you had a beetroot juice somewhere in there. yum

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    1. Good morning Kylie,
      The 'fresh' vegetables in supermarkets are so tasteless nowadays, and in a lot of cases unripe. Also, one never knows what they have been grown in or sprayed with. Although we spent the weekend mostly at the allotment, we did do things slowly. Have a end of week.

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  10. GORGEOUS veggies!! We are trying a few new things in the garden too. .my new one was a spaghetti squash. .apparently chickens like them too. .cause when we came home from vacation Saturday. .they had eaten the biggest two on the vine. .I'm thinking CHICKEN SOUP is sounding better and better :-) Enjoy your week!

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    1. Hello Melanie,
      Haha!.....It sounds as though chicken soup may well be on the menu at your house doesn't it? I hope you had a good vacation.

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  11. I rake my hat off to you both, I am not sure that a weekend away would have been sacrificed as for me but then again my harvest would have been better bought in Morrisons! Even supermarket veg is far better than my poor efforts. keep on harvesting and perhaps one day soon we will have the time to meet up again. Keep on keeping on!!!!!!!!

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    1. Peter....hello there.
      Never give up on trying to grow your veg, I'm sure there must be some allotments near Looe. We certainly will keep on, keeping on, in so many aspects of our lives!

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  12. You are dedicated, that's for sure. But what's the point of planting it if it all goes to rot, right? I think other gardeners completely understand your choice. What an awesome garden you have, so many healthy gorgeous varieties of food!

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    1. Good morning Rosemary,
      Thanks for such a nice comment. It would be such a shame to let all of the hard work growing the stuff in the first place go to waste, not to mention the money we will be saving in the long run. I am enjoying your blog.

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