Home Grown Harvests - the rocket is taking over...

Aargh - we're being overtaken by rocket. As I mentioned in my last post, it's a straight-edged variety rather than jagged, but - and I'll be posting new pictures soon - the leaves are massive. Truly massive. A small handful easily does enough for two of us as a side salad to whatever we might be having. MCD is threatening to give bags away at the roadside. However it wilts down a treat - which saves on washing up, so we can fit it on the same plate as our main meal. It also doesn't have that sometimes antiseptic taste that supermarket rocket increasingly seems to have. It's not all a raving success though. One of the runner beans seems to have been invaded by black fly and treatment might have come a little too late. But the kale and cavolo nero are fighting back against the odds - the C.V. even looks a little like it should... god knows what we're to do with it all if it all grows well. This weekend we get our next batch of goodies - tomatoes, courgettes and perhaps melons. We're going to have a go at growing them against our sunny wall. I'm not hopeful but - hey - experimentation is all. Tonight's treat - Chicken caesar salad made with lettuce leaves and rocket from the garden - I can finally make a stand against supermarket lettuce!

Home Grown Harvests - it's still hard

Further to my rant - gosh a little carried away there - on the de-merits of seed packet labelling, we've now planted out our cavolo nero and kale. Well, people, at this early stage, it's hard to tell whether it's disaster or triumph (again). Some of the cavolo are looking a little - well - green around the leaves and have slumped to the soil, overcome at the challenge; some are sturdy upright and going great guns. Others have been decapitated as if by a tiny, discriminating beastie... The kale, widely spaced as we thought they grow so very wide, have taken to it a little better, but now, with all this weather - (eh - so much for May's blissful sunshine), will our little seedlings survive the weekend - gales, rain - it might be too much... On a brighter note, the lettuces are looking fulsome, the rocket is curiously smooth-edged rather than jagged, but tastes like it should and the broad beans are flowering. Should they be - does anyone know? And how do you know when onions are ready? Next time - pictures for the defence.

Home Grown Harvest - The Hard Way

The cavolo nero has been planted - and according to the packet, we should leave it in the seed tray till June. But given that in a week - in a week! - it's a couple of inches already, it'll be Day of the Brassica Triffids on the kitchen windowsill by the end of May. Any ideas on whether it can go out a bit sooner...? The spinach and rocket are - ahem - rocketing along - perfect for summer salads. Rocket is particularly good tossed through those Mediterranean bread salads like Panzanella or Fattoush. Don't spoil them by using tasteless tomatoes. Although the little sproutlings won't be ready by this weekend, we'll be having our first BBQ of the year with a similar accompaniment. I also plan to barbecue asparagus - now gloriously in season - until golden and wilted, then with a little lemon juice and shaved Parmesan. Or even some semi-melted potted shrimps for a delicate Spring lunch - why not?. Check out Focus On... Asparagus for details of asparagus events, menus and celebrations around the country. And if any of you have managed to get hold of some wild garlic, I've been snipping it over the first Jersey Royals, sometimes simply boiled or boiled and then lightly smashed with a rolling pin and roasted in hot oil until sticky. An amazing combination...

Home-Grown Harvests - the hard way

So we've finally got it. A veg plot - almost an allotment if you will - courtesy of my fabulous father who turned up unexpectedly and unannounced a couple of miserable rainy wednesdays ago to build my husband a surprise raised bed for his birthday. Well, i say it was meant to be a surprise - I was working from home and my husband (henceforth MCD) was made redundant not an hour later - so in the end we all built it together - well i supplied bacon and mushrooms sandwiches and coffee, and MCD was allowed towards the end to dig the compost in - but only after the tree trunks had been removed, the 3 feet deep concrete drilled through (that wasn't part of the plan) and 4 or 5 tonnes of soil worked in to our frankly nutritionless mud. All in the pouring rain. And with birthday banners to boot.

But still - it's done and is a thing of joy and beauty. We've got potatoes, broad beans, onions, rocket planted out in serried ranks - with cavolo nero, rocket, runner beans, sorrel and lettuces all straggling through on the kitchen windowsill till they're old enough to look after themselves.

I shall be posting on a regular (hopefully weekly!) basis on how we're doing. We're complete novices - it's my parents with the green up to their elbows (They're in the Yellow Book of Gardens for Goodness' sake - how can we compete?) but we are embracing the grow-your-own zeitgeist with open-armed and unalloyed naive enthusiasm. After all last year we had a stonking crop of tomatoes. But it's hard work - we don't know what we're doing AT ALL - and Alan Titchmarsh is a godsend, but MCD isn't one much for reading, so the theory comes via me - and i'm not the one at home doing it all (Gardening leave need not be a euphemism...).

Any hints, suggestions, even - god forbid - questions, i shall try to answer them or direct you to the lovely Alan at the allotment blog on the observer. He really does know it all. Hopefully in a year's time - so will we.