Last pickings and vege regenerations

WTA's first cucumber!

WTA's first cucumber (Marketmore) was picked amid much celebration yesterday. I hate to boast, but it was a taste sensation - crisp, succulent and cool! This gorgeous green gem will be used to make a Japanese-style cucumber salad.

Operation Red Hot Chili pepper continues to go well - The savaged Romenescu look like they might even recover yet, and look to be sprouting again. Caterpillar numbers have dwindled dramatically and now appear to be under control, with little further leaf damage.

This week Autumn's cool fingers felt like they were beginning to edge closer and gently wrap themselves around WTA of a morning. The weekend brought some hot weather that seemed set back the onset of chilly winds and turning leaves - it's strange to think I'll be planting my onion sets for next year's crop in the net few months.

I managed to harvest another lot of broad beans from a late crop of about a dozen plants that are still standing but looking a bit worse for wear due to chocolate spot infection. Foraging bits and pieces left over at the end of the crop can be really rewarding and provide some excellent and unexpected meals.

Part of the tail end of this year's broad beans

Saturday saw the last of the Parmex carrots and some of the first broad bean planting being pulled out and the ground they were in turned. Both have produced excellent crops and will be definite starters next year. The broad beans were a particular revelation, and I plant to try and double the amount of plants I had this year - broad bean bruschetta has me in its grip!

The carrots below were pulled yesterday and needing a quick salad for dinner, I came up with the following 'recipe'...

WTA's Carrot and sesame salad
3-4 large carrots

1.5 tblspns Sesame oil

2 tblspns black sesame seeds

Grate three to four largish carrots into a bowl. Add one and a half tablespoons of sesame oil and mix through the grated carrot. Sprinkle with two table spoons of black sesame seeds. Mix the black sesame seeds into the carrot and sesame seed oil.

Passers-by steam in for WTA's Carrot and sesame salad

Grow well!

Operation Red Hot Chili Pepper: organic pesticide fight back!

Operation Red Hot Chili Pepper is in full swing on WTA after waves of marauding caterpillars marched into town and began laying brassica crops, including my Romanescu broccoli (see above pic), to waste. These Romanescu were under horticultural fleece but I obviously hadn't sealed the cloche properly allowing some bloody devious cabbage white butterflies a way in. The rest, as the say, 'is history'. Artisan Tracie reckons some organic gardeners often need a 'sacrifice' crop - a crop you let pests eat so they (in theory) eat less of your other crops - so I suppose this is my yearly sacrifice. In the mean time, I wanted to save the rest of my calabrese, sprouting broccoli, sprout and kale crops from devastation so it was time to spray - organic and home made spray of course! I used the following general organic pesticide recipe adopted from an ABC TV, Gardening Australia formulation (see links) to strike back and strike back hard! I love the smell of chili, onion and garlic in the morning! It smells like...victory!

Organic Pesticide Recipe

4 Red hot chillies

2 Cloves of garlic

4 Onions (red or white)

2 tblspns of eco-friendly washing up liquid

Water.

Brewing Up!
Chop up chillies, garlic and onions and place in a medium sized mixing bowl...

Add two tablespoons of an eco/enviro-brand dish washing liquid.

Pour in water so it just covers the contents of the bowl and then stir.

Cover the bowl with clingfilm and then set aside for 24 hours.

The following day pour the contents of the bowl through a fine sieve and reserve the liquid.
Discard the onions, chillies and garlic.

Dilute the reserved liquid in 5 litres of water...

Organic, effective... red hot!

I've use an old, clean, hand pump sprayer to deliver the fiery liquid, which I've been doing most mornings and again in the evening. The results have been impressive... the caterpillars definitely don't like it up em! But I've needed to consistently apply the spray to keep on top of newly hatching 'pillars, whose eggs I haven't managed to squash in the mean time...

Without the good old 'Red Hot Chili Pepper' spray I'm fairly sure things like the brassicas pictured above would now be little more than skeletal stalks.

Missing..presumed having a good time

Johnny Bridgemeister's absence has been noted on WTA. He's yet to make one of his several annual pilgrimages to WTA this year to carry out his fierce attack on all manner of weeds and nettles. Perhaps his failure to show can be put down to him starting up his own blog: http://www.bizarrebridgeworld.blogspot.com/ where he and the crowd primordial archetypes he writes and runs with reflect on the more quirky side of the game of bridge. The Bridgmeister's site is already garnering some impressive reviews amongst the on-line bridge world and building a sizeable and dedicated following in the UK and abroad.

DIY queen and vege chef Sandy has also been fairly quiet lately. This vegetarian cordon blue has also been much missed on WTA and needs to get on that two wheeled stallion of hers and get up here quick!

In the meantime...protect your crops and grow well!

WTA's courgette and pecan bread success!

Got an early start this morning determined to fit in cooking some WTA produce into my MA thesis writing schedule. Inspired by fellow bloggers Allotment 2 Kitchen, A girl named Go and Rossdorf allotment , I thought I'd have a crack at making some Courgette and Pecan bread. The idea of using courgettes for making something other than savoury dishes and that could be eaten with cuppa or used as a dessert when still warm (this could be good with ice cream, yoghurt or sour cream) had me baking. The result was delicious!

Courgette and Pecan Bread

3 eggs

2 cups of caster sugar

3 teaspoons vanilla essence

1 cup of olive/canola oil

2 cups of grated courgette

3 cups of plain flour

1/4 of teaspoon of baking powder

1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda

3 teaspoons of ground cinnamon

1 cup of chopped pecan nuts

Method

Butter and flower two loaf tins or deep muffin tins.

Beat eggs until foaming, add sugar, vanilla and oil and beat until thick.

Stir in grated courgette.

Sift all dry ingredients and fold into courgette mixture with chopped pecans.

Pour into prepared tins and bake in a 180C oven for about 1 hour for the loaf tins or 25-30 minutes for deep muffin tins, or until a skewer inserted in the bread comes out clean.

Remove from oven; allow to sit in the tins for about ten minutes and then cool on a cake rack. Slice and butter or eat by itself when warm...

Growing Update...

Beans

The climbing French beans (Cobra) are really hitting their straps. About 2.3kg of their slender green pods have been harvested in the last week or so and eaten raw or blanched and frozen. Having climbing beans on an allotment makes good sense - they are great source of instant, super-healthy 'green snacks' while working away. I often find myself devouring a couple of beans straight off the vines when the hunger pangs hit mid-weeding or digging.

Cucumbers

WTA's cucumbers (Marketmore) are producing some handsome fruit. which should be able to be picked soon. You could have knocked me down with a feather a few years ago if you told me cucumbers could be grown outdoors in the UK - but here they are! Perhaps having some cucumber sandwiches and a glass of Pimms under the walnut tree next week might be a very English way to mark the summer success of WTA this year!

Eat and grow well!

Complete Gestalts and Strange Brews.

Fred the Chemist's gladioli

Veg aren't the only things growing onWTA. Earlier in the year about 2 dozen gladioli bulbs were planted, alongside edible crops, to provide the cottage with cut flowers. This week the gladi's began to bloom and the stems were cut (see pic above). WTA is proud of these beauties as they have a strong link to forebear and Anglo-Aussie - Fred The Chemist - who also grew and loved gladioli. The generational gestalt is complete!

Organic Pest Control

WTA's brassica's are under attack from caterpillars. Little do those caterpillars know WTA has the trump card to end their orgy of WTA eating. The ante dote is brewing away in the kitchen as I write. I've used one of the organic pesticide recipes on Gardening Australia's (The Aussie version of BBC's Garden's World) website and started producing an potent concoction of 4 onions, 2 garlic cloves, 4 chillies and eco-friendly dish washing liquid. The liquid produced from the mix pictured below is being applied tomorrow.

Organic pesticide in the making

This morning was spent lifting the last lot of potatoes, weeding the broccoli bed and physically squashing a variety of ravenous caterpillars swarming over some leaves.
There was also a chance to use some of the organic liquid fertiliser (pictured below) from the worm can on my leeks (another great product of worm can composting).

Worm casting liquid - black gold!

WTA mates... still helping out on the plot 10,000 miles away!

Many thanks to Jeremiah Bullfrog, proofreading savant, for his time earlier this week. The Bullfrog spotted and helped iron-out a variety of errors appearing in previous WTA postings - not bad from a vantage point on the other side of the world in Western Australia...

The Bullfrog: Language errors can run but they can't hide!

Grow well!

A quick Saturday pick.

Just a short post. Lots going on and lots of produce from WTA right now. I picked this lot this morning. The Adelaide carrots are really sweet, while I'll use the yellow courgette to make an amazing Nigella Lawson recipe I've found and linked for 'Happiness, soup. Grow well!

Let 'em roll!

Downing a well-earned 'coldie' after a big seed planting and lifting a 5kg+ haul of potatoes this afternoon. I hate to say the 'B' word when mentioning my spuds, but after reading a couple of other blogs , I think some of my potato crops might have blight! As a result I'm getting rid of all affected leaves/stems and in a couple of cases have lifted part of the crops in case I'm too late and left with nothing.

In the mean time, I've 'Kept Calm and Carried On' with the autumn seed planting regime. I've also decided to have a bit of a gamble by sowing some seeds that should have been planted in June and July. These seeds - including parsnips and carrots - are probably going to lose much of their viability by next year if I don't plant them now, so in they go!

The following have been sown:
Parsnip-Hollow Crown (Country Value)
Good quality seeds (I sowed Country Value, Sweet Corn-Incredible -F1 which are doing brilliantly) but I'm throwing these in, in case they become unviable next year.

Baby Chinese Cabbage - WA Wa Sai (Marshalls)

Fresh seeds - that arrived last week and will be planted at the prescribed time. I'm planting these in the hope of getting some great veg for SE Asian-style stir fries.

Carrot Ideal (Dobies of Devon)
Fresh seed to be planted at the prescribed time. I've have already sown three rows of these but still have some left after ordering two packets!

Chinese Broccoli - Kailaan (Marshalls).

I liked the look of these as an easy-grow, 'in between crop' of broccoli. They look suitable for some cool fusion and SE Asian cooking that goes on after getting off WTA

Parsnip Panache F1 Hybrid (Thompson and Morgan)

Great seeds! I've had some outstanding success with these - but like all parsnip seed have a fairly limited viability. I planted some this time last year and managed to lift some lovely parsnips for Christmas dinner. Here's hoping I can manage the same feat this year.

Bunching Onion - Shimonita (Marshalls)
Fresh and planted at the prescribed time. Going by the description these beauties - a sort of cross between a leek and a spring onion;they may be a good seasonal spring onion substitute.

Broccoli-Rudolph (Thompson and Morgan)
Once again, will be a 'triumph of hope over experience' if these grow in the way they were intended but I'd rather have a go than not put them in.

Borecole (Kale) F1 Reflex (Dobies of Devon)
Kale was a winter staple of WTA in the early days and helped keep a variety of people fed with greens in the dark winter of 2007.



Carrot - Resistatfly F1 Hybrid (Thompson and Morgan)
A bit late again I know but I found this packet of seeds from last year, after losing them and would rather give them a go than have them lose their viability and lie useless in my seed box.


Spinach - Toscane F1 Hybrid (Unwins)
Always fantastic for salads and a variety of hot dishes. Spinach is an 'essential' on WTA. It's a first run for this variety so it will be interesting to see the results.


Onion - Toga (Johnsons)
A bit late, I know, but just consider it my way of betting on an Indian summer this year!

Onions - Toughball (Marshalls)
I really liked the look and the name of these onions and they let me continue to indulge in my continued fascination with growing this edible variety of alium.

More WTA weeding is scheduled for today along with some cooking with three more cauliflowers harvested yesterday. Grow well!

Lazy Sunday Afternoon, got no mind to worry...

A 'Day of Rest' on WTA . A quick inspection of the plot this morning to pick some carrots, check on my previous day's weeding and take the shots on this post was about all that was done.

Took some time off to visit friend of WTA, Johnny Bridgemeister, and Wonder Pam. It was satisfying to be able to take some fresh lifted spuds, carrots and red onions from WTA to these two legendary mates.

A Shout Out to WTA Friends
Some good friends of WTA are a bit poorly right now or struggling with some big work loads. They are being held in mind as I work away on the plot.

Mart The Chief of Staff . Get that dicky chest cleared up Mart - there's some work to do in October buddy!

Dorset Dave...Instrumental in helping clear the leek bed of weeds last year. The second of Dorset Dave's creaking and cracking knees was ditched and replaced by some good old titanium this week. I for one won't miss the 'orrible bone-on-bone grating noises as he bends down to some weeding next time he's on the plot! Hope your back on your feet soon Dave!

Mariner Tim.. The turf excavator and onion planter extraordinaire has been working his bum off on the good Yacht 'Conspicuous Consumption' with some rather difficult clientele...hang in there mate, all this will pass...



The cleared bed above is all that remains of the up turned turf, cow manure and cardboard after planting and lifting good crop of potatoes within the space of a couple of months.



These leeks are looking good but will have to be soiled up to ensure they have good long, white shanks.




The Jerusalem artichokes are going great guns. They've provided an effective windbreak and visual screen to the entrance of the allotment and just keep getting taller and taller.
Grow well!