stuff

I am posting these mainly to remind myself how far we have come since May.

This is what was there when I arrived after the winter with a remit to do what I liked.  For those that do not know we had a baby in December and the months leading up to it saw no work on the allotment after not really doing enough during 2008.

Which turned into this after a month or so of graft.

And now I have beds like this.

Useful Link

The BBC has a decent gardening design sub-site, which I thought might be useful if you haven’t seen it.  I couldn’t get shockwave working on the designer software though.

Click here for it.

Progress Report – Winter Preparations

I’ve been quite busy doing some large and cumbersome tasks.  I’ve enlarged the beds and got next year’s rotation underway.

We now have two 22x8.5 foot beds, and two 20x

Technorati Tags: Winter,planting,digging

8.5 beds all dug and turned over.  Our onions are in, as are garlic, leeks and carrots.

I’ve got the new brassica bed dug and planted with cauliflower, curly cale and purple sprouting.  The leeks and beans that are still in there will be out soon, and that can be left to over winter and will plant some summer varieties in there once the frosts have done their job.

Next year’s legume bed is dug, it’s an odd shape because I’ve left the blackcurrant bushes in situ, but I’ve also planted in this year’s potato bed 3xgooseberry, redcurrant and blackcurrant giving us another 9 fruit bushes maybe in 2011.  Should be good.  Need to build a net for them at some point. 

Had a tidy up and a mow around, and things, apart from the nettles and tatty front fence are looking quite good.  As usual, a weeding and a trip to the dump are required but otherwise I’m quite optimistic about next year.

One downer, we’ve got leek moth caterpillars in our mature leeks.  We are eating them anyway :)  The creatures are about a centimetre long and pretty much featureless, and they don’t appear to affect the flavour.

Two for one recipe - Lowestoft Smoked Haddock and allotment vegetable soup and pie

Sorry for turning this into a cookery blog lately, but there's not a whole lot going on at the allotment as we are moving house. However, we continue eating at the normal rate and are still using our veggies. Here's our latest culinary invention*

The Soup

One needs:

• 1 Onion
• 1/2 a bulb of garlic
• 1 smoked haddock, purchased from a traditional smoker.
• 10 small potatoes
• 2 or 3 sticks of celery
• 3 or 4 leeks (use the whole edible bit of the leek)
• Marigold Stock (about 6 teaspoons)
• Creme Fraiche (half a small tub)

One does:

• Chop things up into about 1" slices (really no measuring required here, it's very rough indeed)

EXCEPT

• Finely chop the onion, garlic and celery

Boil up 1.25 litres of water, add everything except the creme fraiche
Gently Boil until the potatoes are done
Turn off the heat and using a hand-blender (or jug blender, or masher, or fork) blend up until you have a slightly lumpy soup.

Add the creme fresh, garnish if you wish. Stir. Serve. Do NOT add salt until it's at the table (if at all). The celery and smokey fish does all that. A little white pepper is good, but should be the eater's choice. A little sprinkle of chopped dill would be nice.

That's the soup


So now you are left with half a saucepan of soup. So ...

One will need:
Another Lowestoft Smoked Haddock
Frozen Peas
200g Cheese


Boil up a pound of spuds and mash them with butter and milk. Skin on is fine (and good for you!)
Meanwhile reheat the soup, quite high heat (220, gas 6) you want it to reduce a bit. Put the peas in it.
Chop up the smoked haddock and add to the soup. Make sure it's only gently bubbling as it needs to spread it's flavour this time, but not disintegrate. 
Grate 200g of cheese of your choice.
Mash the spuds when ready.

Now get a pyrex or suitable pie dish, put in the soup, cover with mashed potato, cover that with cheese.

If the soup is loose, use a slotted spoon to transfer it to the pie dish, and lose some liquor. We used the left over soup as a kind of gravy and it was absolutely lovely.

That's it.  Two dinners from one, no salt pepper gluten preservatives additives nuts dogs red meat or anything.  Just lovely stuff.

*I'm well aware that somewhere in geography and history, some other million people have invented this.

Wild Plum Jam Recipe

As you may remember I collected a couple of kilos of wild plums from our local park in September.  They were very ripe and we’ve been moving house, so I opted to freeze them and come back to them later.

Here’s the final recipe we settled on:

Ripe wild plum jam recipe:
Ingredients:
1kg/2lb of ripe wild plums
1kg/2lb of white jam sugar
½ pint/275ml of water
Method:

1. Wash (and discard any dodgy fruits) then simmer gently in a heavy bottomed or preserving pan.
2. Add the sugar and stir gently till dissolved. 
3. Constantly stir with a slotted spoon on a rolling boil for 10 minutes, and observe your kitchen becoming a sticky mess as you remove the stones as you go.
4. Test for a firm set
5. Continue to boil rapidly and test at five minute intervals.
6. Put into sterilised jars and follow the normal rules.