My Tiny Plot

I’m away from home at the moment and wondering what’s going on back home in my garden. Most people wish that they had a web cam to check if their pets are okay, I wish I had a web cam to check whether my Tomatoes are ripened yet. 

When I left home they looked like this. Very big and stubbornly green. They hadn’t seen any sunshine for hmm… let’s see, around two weeks. I’m hoping that the sun has been cracking the flagstones while I’ve been away and when I get back I will be harvesting plump, ripe, gorgeous, squishy, tomatoey Tomatoes.

I’m really hoping that I will be making Jamie’s Mothership Tomato Salad recipe – the one where he just chucks in handful of every Tomato variety he has to make a massive bowlful of yummy salad. But then again I could be coming home to a brown, mushy, blighted mess. I think I’ll cry if that happens.

I’m always intrigued to see what other people grow in their kitchen gardens. So, when we went to visit my sister-in-law, Kristin, I went straight out into her back garden to inspect her ‘square-foot gardening’. I was amazed (and I must admit slightly jealous) by what she was growing in such a small space. 

Practically, everything Kristin was growing was bigger than the plants I had in the UK. Her corn was nearly 7 or 8 foot high, and her Basil plant was huge and very healthy (we got a bucket-load of leaves from it to make fresh Pesto). She was also growing a ton of Jalapeno peppers that were already fruiting, a Watermelon and lots of Cherry Tomatoes.

I had assumed that since Colorado is so dry that it wouldn’t be the ideal place for growing vegetables. However, it is sunny; over 300 days of sunshine per year. And the bottom line is that you can provide water, but you can’t provide sunshine, especially in the UK where I live. 

For me it’s always touch and go with veg like Sweetcorn, Tomatoes, Melons, Basil and Chili Pepper – will they ripen in time, will they get enough sunshine? In Colorado they certainly don’t have to worry about that.

After my Tomatoes displayed evidence of the dreaded blight I was forced to sacrifice some of them before they were ripe. But what to do with them? Well, there’s only one thing you can do with them in my book – Green Tomato Chutney – here’s my recipe (adapted from my Pumpkin Chutney recipe).

Oh and if you’re wondering why I use dried Cranberries instead of Raisins it’s because a certain someone (who eats most of the chutney in our house) doesn’t like the taste of Raisins. And before you ask, yes, he doesn’t like Christmas pudding, mince pies, Christmas cake or anything else that is yummy.

Green Tomato Chutney

Ingredients:

200g (7oz) Green Tomatoes

2 Shallots

75g (2.5oz) Craisins (Dried Cranberries)

half teaspoon ground Ginger

half teaspoon Allspice

1 teaspoon Salt

1 grind of Pepper

quarter of a knuckle of fresh Ginger

2 small Garlic cloves

1 and a half cups of Sugar (300g)

1 cup Red Wine Vinegar (250ml)

Method:

Cut the tomatoes into cubes and chop the other ingredients. Throw them all in a pan and simmer on a low heat until thick and dark brown. Make sure to open the windows to let the stink out!

Boil the jars and bottle. Then process (boil the full jar) for 30 mins.

I’ve always struggled with growing Basil. I sow my seeds at the alloted time, nurture them through the damp, sometime sunless Spring and then plant them out in the garden. But usually some evil befalls them; being eaten by slugs, keeling over and dying through lack of light or damp, or just failing to thrive because the English summer just isn’t warm enough. This year (I’m guessing because our new garden is sheltered and a couple of degrees warmer than an exposed one) my Basil has done tolerably well – not enough of it to make Pesto, but tolerably well nevertheless. 

I love it when it gets to the just-about-to-flower stage and so I thought I would whip up a a nice summer lunchtime Tomato and Basil soup. Ideal for someone with a summer cold, like me :(

Sadly, none of my Tomatoes are ripe yet so I had to use store-bought for now. I chopped up two of my Shallots, crushed one of my garlic cloves. Chucked in a punnet full of tomatoes (I didn’t de-skin them, is that lazy?) and threw in two good handfuls of my Basil. I like to use the flowers too – just for the hell of it and because you don’t really find Basil that has flowers on it in the supermarket do you? 

One minute on blitz then simmer for 15 mins. Yum!

 

Your garden should be in full swing and pumping out produce for you to use on a daily basis. You’ll be waiting patiently for your Tomatoes to ripen, your Sweetcorn to sweeten and your Cucumbers to swell, all of which should be starting to happen by the end of the month. You should be seeing the first fruits appear on your Pumpkins and your Autumn Raspberries should be in flower!

1. Cut off all the leaves below the first truss of Tomatoes to let the light ripen the fruits, continue to feed them and water them little and often
2. Pinch out growing shoots on pumpkins once they have set 3 or 4 fruits
3. Shake your Sweetcorn plants to help them pollinate 
4. Fold over Onion tops if they haven’t done so by themselves. This is to let more light in to the Onion.
5. Plant out Radicchio and Endive seedlings
6. Keep cutting off runners and diseased leaves from Strawberry plants
7. Prune Blackcurrants by cutting down this year’s fruiting wood
8. Cut Summer Raspberry canes down after fruiting and tie in Autumn Raspberry canes as they grow
9. Water Runner Beans, Celery and Pumpkins if the weather is dry
10. Sow green manures in vacant ground – try Rape or Mustard but remember to dig them in before they start to flower.

If you have any more suggestions for August jobs, add them to the list.

Bad news and good news. The bad news is that I spotted the dreaded blight on my beloved Tomatoes. The good news is that I had to cut out three infected branches which had a bunch of green Tomatoes on them – a great excuse to make Green Tomato Chutney. I also have some Gherkins ready so tomorrow is pickling day!

Okay so this post isn’t strictly about ‘my tiny plot’ but I wanted to tell you about something we’ve been doing this week that I feel comes under the same umbrella as growing your own, leading a more simple life and generally looking after yourself and the environment at the same time.

We’ve been on holiday. But we stayed at home – at least we used our home as a basecamp from which to go on day trips here, walks there, or just stay in and have a movie day. I’m calling it ‘Holiday at Home’ after the campaign, during the war in the 1940s, for more people to ‘holiday at home’ in order to conserve money and curb unnecessary travel for the war effort.

Holiday at Home is designed to give us more time together (very little traveling), with all the comforts of home (ideal when you have a small child), and the opportunity to explore in and around our favourite city (Bath).

This has been our schedule:

Day One: Exploring Bath and Geocaching (waaay too complicated to explain here so it’s best if you follow the link)

Day Two: Day trip to Glastonbury (officially full of weird things)

Day Three: Movie Day at home (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone still rocks!)

Day Four: Pig Hunt in Bath (with a map and everything)

Day Five: Trip to Blenheim Palace (wow!)

Day Six: Boat trip from Bath to outlying villages (we saw three Herons and a Kingfisher)

Day Seven: Walking on the canal and swimming at the Bath Thermae Spa

Day Eight: BBQ in garden

I realise this is not for everyone (nor am I suggesting it should be). But it’s been great for us.

The Pros are many:

It’s cheap. You don’t have to pack. You don’t have to travel. You don’t have to get someone to feed your cat. You can plan your days far in advance. You can cook your favourite meals and put them in your freezer to eat while you’re on holiday.

The Cons are:

The weather may be sucky (be prepared). You may have the urge to do the washing (resist). It’s easy to be sucked into ‘house stuff’ because people don’t really believe that you’re on holiday (ignore the postman).

But in general it’s a great way to spend a holiday. It’s not really an attempt to reduce our carbon footprint. I have to admit, Holiday at Home is not our only holiday. No, Holiday at Home is more an attempt to see if we can have a holiday on a low budget and near our home and still have great family time. So far, so good!

This year I tried a new variety of Spring Onion – red ones. I’ve been harvesting them for a few weeks now. I find that Spring Onions are a great crop if you have patience. If you’re in a hurry to eat salad they’re a little frustrating. Why? They seem to germinate quite quickly and push up those promising, spindly, grass-like shoots but then they take an age to thicken up enough to be actually worth harvesting. And if you don’t sow enough of the then they’re picked and eaten before you can say Potato Salad.

I’m not complaining. After four years of growing veg I worked out that you really have to sow the whole packet over a period of weeks to get the volume of Spring Onion required in high summer. So roll on the Spring Onion. I’m ready and waiting for ya!

One of the things I’m really excited about is using my vegetables to feed Jackson. He’s too young to be eating solids full-time so I have been giving him little tastes of this and that until he’s old enough to eat. He loves Banana, and Apple too. But up to now everything I have given him has been store bought. Today, however, he had his first taste of home-grown produce; he tasted his first Carrot. I wanted to give him the whole experience so I popped him in his Baby Bjorn and we went out into the garden to pick his first Carrot.

We all know how amazing fresh Carrots smell when they come out of the ground but imagine if you had never smelled that? Imagine if you were smelling Carrot for the first time ever? Wow – I wish I could do that again. Jackson seemed to like the smell and so we carried our harvest indoors and started preparing.

We chose the biggest, juiciest Carrot, peeled it and chopped it. Then boiled it until it was nice and soft (a few minutes longer than you would cook a Carrot for yourself since it needs to be really soft). Then we popped it in our new Mouli (or mini-grinder) and mashed it up good. Then the tasting began.

At first Jackson wasn’t sure – mainly about what to do with this new orange stuff that clearly wasn’t milk. Should he drink it? no, that didn’t work. Should he push it out of his mouth with his tongue? yes, that worked but it didn’t help him eat it. Should I gum the Carrot a bit and then swallow it? Ah yes, much more satisfactory. Infact, that stuff is G-O-O-D mum, give me the whole bowl, now!

Once he got going it was clear that he ‘really’ loved Carrot. Ahh! That’s my boy. So I guess I’ll be sowing more Carrots next season?

Holy Heck! I found this guy hanging out in the Wisteria – quietly munching through some new shoots. He’s so amazing that I had to get my camera out and shoot him. Does anyone know what he will become? Something funky I bet.