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This week in your Kitchen Garden.

Ron Merlin said:
First garlic of the year. Mersley Wight I think. Best I've grown :)View attachment 328091
Click to expand...
I spotted that my local greengrocer was selling garlic for 60p/head yesterday. Besides the quality and satisfaction of growing your own, the saving really racks up. I have 75-odd heads drying in my greenhouse and maybe another 10 heads that I decided wouldn't store. All from £4.50 of seed garlic...
 
I started lifting potatoes weeks ago coz I have a bad habit of earthing up really loosely so I can pull whole plants out of the ground, pick out the few decent sized spuds from underneath then replant the rest to carry on growing :oops:

Peas are going mad atm, picking loads every few days. So far none have made it back into the kitchen - the variety I'm growing this year are meant to be for podding but they're so sweet I've been eating the whole lot as raw sugar snaps.
 
I harvested the first calabrese head yesterday, which was way too big for the two of us to eat at one sitting.

Will have to make sure I pick the rest of them before they get so big...
 
Does anyone here grow cress? If so, how?

IIRC at school we just put seeds on wet kitchen towel and bingo. Is that the best way?

Thanks.
 
I actually grew some the other year - actual cress - not rapeseed and found it even more inedible than rocket - uncompromisingly firey hot, with nothing else to balance it ...
It does like a substrate - and I used kitchen towel ...
A Youtuber I know uses synthetic shammy for his "microgreens" .

For "heat", I don't mind a few radish sprouts mixed in with my alfalfa.

I eat mung bean sprouts every day at the moment - a whole jarfull added to a chopped-up lettuce and served up with balsamic dressing - all you need is pickle jars and voile ...
I can't keep up with the growth-rate.
 
contadino said:
Does anyone here grow cress? If so, how?

IIRC at school we just put seeds on wet kitchen towel and bingo. Is that the best way?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

I grow mustard and cress and alfalfa and red clover sprouts. I used to do it on kitchen towel but it seemed so wasteful to throw out the rootlets, which are are also good to eat. The rootless get tangled into the kitchen towel so you have to snip off the sprouts and toss the wet paper and roots. So now I grow them on ordinary paper, which needs to be checked for dampness more often but it means the rootlets don’t grow into the weave.
 
What could I have ready to plant after courgettes and squash ?

I have some free gift leek seeds which I will slot in after potatoes perhaps ...
I suppose I should try to get in some brad beans but I don't know where.
I won't be rotating the garden for next year.. so stuff has to be finished and out ready for the same summer crops ..

Darn I just remembered I need to sow purple sprouting broccoli but I don't know where to plant that ...
 
contadino said:
Onions shallots and garlic go in end of September and are done by early June.
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Darn.
I love shallots but the finicky preparation drives me nuts - perhaps some giant garlic ?
I use one red onion a day most of the year - not that I'm actually trying to feed myself from this garden ...

Spanish onions ?
 
Well I learned something this week.
Squash pollen will pollinate courgettes - it had me going for a bit :)

So planting four kinds was a good idea - along with my tagetes hedge and nasturtiums for the pollinators (though I planted them cos they're pretty :D )
 
gentlegreen said:
Darn.
I love shallots but the finicky preparation drives me nuts - perhaps some giant garlic ?
I use one red onion a day most of the year - not that I'm actually trying to feed myself from this garden ...

Spanish onions ?
Click to expand...
I've been growing shallots for the last few years because the wife made amazing pickled onions with them. This year I'm going to switch to growing silverskin onions for pickling because they grow easier from seed - shallot sets are a bit pricey. Silverskins also have a advantage that you can use them as spring onions.

I don't really understand the thinking behind elephant garlic, but if you like cooking with it then end of September is the time to put it in.
 
Carrots - I'm just grown a token row each of Nantes and Amsterdam - and the thinning has been driving me nuts - I will definitely be applying skullduggery when I do it properly -(as well as making a quadricycle contraption to ride on ).... for each painful decision I thought of the one teeny carrot I may harvest if the carrot fly don't notice ...

I have bloody DATURA fly this year :p

I'm about to put in a couple of rows of beetroot - and the red chard is now going along in front of the tomatoes cos they're pretty.
The one time I grew (rainbow) chard I was hit by a spectacular infestation of disgusting fat leaf-chewing maggots...

The chard that survived the ridiculously high PH in the NFT are so far unscathed - but perhaps their scrawny nature due to almost zero phosphorus made them unappealing - I will compare notes with the ones in the park community garden ...
 
contadino said:
I don't really understand the thinking behind elephant garlic, but if you like cooking with it then end of September is the time to put it in.
Click to expand...
I wish I could re-experience my first taste of garlic in France in the mid-70s ... perhaps I will appreciate it again in context with serious tomatoes from the garden ..
And when I first went vegan in '81 I was a garlic monster - I used to chuck it in right at the end of my stir-frys and then go to college !
 
I love broad beans but the amount of beans you actually get compared to the volume when they're picked in their pods is infuriating :mad: Going to sow four times as many this autumn.
 
iona said:
I love broad beans but the amount of beans you actually get compared to the volume when they're picked in their pods is infuriating :mad: Going to sow four times as many this autumn.
Click to expand...
I love broad beans too, and I don't mind that too much, but this year the ratio of bean to pod was even lower than usual because the beans didn't form properly, with only one or two in many/most pods.

I'm wondering what's caused it, whether it might be the seed (I had to buy from a different supplier this year, because the usual supplier was sold out) or something happening during the growing process.

Anyone any ideas?
 
gentlegreen said:
Well I learned something this week.
Squash pollen will pollinate courgettes - it had me going for a bit :)

So planting four kinds was a good idea - along with my tagetes hedge and nasturtiums for the pollinators (though I planted them cos they're pretty :D )
Click to expand...


Yeah cucubits cross pollinate like crazy, if you want to be sure you save the right seeds for next year your supposed to bag up a flower or two and pollinate manually otherwise you might get an unholy Cucumber-Squash
 
Artaxerxes said:
Yeah cucubits cross pollinate like crazy, if you want to be sure you save the right seeds for next year your supposed to bag up a flower or two and pollinate manually otherwise you might get an unholy Cucumber-Squash
Click to expand...
Maybe in a future garden I will be into seed-saving - especially if locals insist on giving me heirloom seeds, but I will already quite likely have to give seeds away when I move to France...
 
andysays said:
I love broad beans too, and I don't mind that too much, but this year the ratio of bean to pod was even lower than usual because the beans didn't form properly, with only one or two in many/most pods.

I'm wondering what's caused it, whether it might be the seed (I had to buy from a different supplier this year, because the usual supplier was sold out) or something happening during the growing process.

Anyone any ideas?
Click to expand...
Just guessing, might be the hot weather / not enough water / soil nutrients (too much nitrogen?) / dodgy seed

I was just googling and couldn't find any definite answers but did find someone claiming that cutting plants back around now can give a second autumn crop :hmm:
 
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