Tag: homegrown

The Simple Things – Working with Nature

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Will and I (and the children, chickens and dog) are delighted to be featured in this months issue of The Simple Things magazine. We’ve written an article about the joys of allotmenteering, growing organic & biodynamic fruit and veg and the tasty pleasures of cooking up a feast with our own homegrown produce.

There’s a moon gardening & biodynamic factsheet on The Simple Things website for your perusal, or better still, get yourself a copy of the magazine, read the whole article and take a peek at some luscious pictures of our patch!

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The Green Goddess

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Leafy green veg like kale and chard are some of our favourite winter crops – incredibly easy to grow and brilliantly versatile in the kitchen. There’s a great thrill in gathering an armful of kale on a frosty morning  or heading down to the allotment with a torch to find some chard for dinner! Big armfuls of curly kale and black ‘nero di toscana’ are destined for a batch of kale crisps and a very tasty green juice, our so-called ‘Green Goddess’. Full of homegrown green goodness and a real kickstart to the day….

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‘G’ is for Garlic

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We love garlic and use it pretty much every day in the kitchen, so ‘G’ just had to be garlic in our ‘Allotment A-Z’. Last year we had great success with some very tasty garlic called Spanish Roja (an over-winter hardneck variety that packs a huge flavour punch), so we decided to grow it again this year!

We saved some bulbs and planted out the biggest cloves last autumn and now, here we are in spring, and the garlic is looking good. I’m loving the great circle of life…

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‘F’ is for French Bean

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Not only do they taste great, French Beans also make a brilliant fruit & veg ‘creature’ for the local village show! They were one of the first things we grew on our allotment and remain one of our superstar favourites – there really was no competition when it came to choosing ‘F’ for our ‘Allotment A-Z’. We love French Beans!

There are loads of fabulous ways to use these beans in your kitchen –  delicious raw in a salad or dipped in houmous, lightly steamed on the side, baked in a slow-cooked stew or juiced for breakfast, the versatile french bean is also a doddle to grow. We’ve grown green ones, yellow ones, mottled ones and a gorgeous purple one that looks amazing, tastes great and stores well. Can’t ask for more than that!

‘F’ is for the fantastically flavoursome French Bean…

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Runner Bean Chutney

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A homemade and healthier version of an old homegrown favourite! We’re just finishing off the runner bean chutney that we made last summer and are really going to miss it. Especially good with cheese or ham, our chutney is free of refined sugars, very tasty and a fantastic way to make the most of your bountiful runner bean harvests.

I love making chutney in a slow cooker, but this recipe also works brilliantly on the hob. You’ll be dreaming of summer whilst eating your runner bean chutney in the depths of winter. Yay!

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‘D’ is for Dill

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This was a tricky one! We don’t grow damsons, daikon or dragonfruit on our allotment. We grow lots of daisies, docks and dandelions and seriously considered ‘D for dandelion’ (so tasty in spring salads), but in the end it was the dainty and delicious dill that got the honour of being included in our A-Z of favourite allotment fruit and veg. Hooray!

We grow dill as a companion plant and edible herb – its fresh, zesty flavour and versatile seeds make it a brilliant addition to salads, soups and chutneys and an excellent defence against caterpillars! It’s well worth saving a space in your garden for a lovely little patch of dill…

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‘C’ is for Cabbage

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Such an underrated veg, the plain old cabbage is anything but plain, especially in colour! I love growing this ‘Red Drumhead’ variety because it looks fantastic and makes the prettiest coleslaw (as well as an awesome natural electric-blue dye!).

Easy to grow and simple to cook, cabbages come in loads of different shapes, sizes and colours and can be grown all year round, so you need never go without a tasty homegrown cabbage in your kitchen! Definitely worthy of their place in the ‘Allotment A-Z’.

‘C’ is for cabbage! Yay…

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Marinated Halloumi & Beetroot Salad

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This is one of our favourite meals for eating al fresco down at the allotment garden. We marinate our halloumi, get the little allotment stove going, pull up a couple of fresh beets and away we go. Really simple, really good for you and really tasty. Yay!

Fantastic served on the side or as a main, the herbs and spices bring out the amazing earthy flavours, the nuts and seeds add protein and extra crunch, whilst the cheeses are deliciously creamy… and it’s a spectacular colour too!

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‘B’ is for Beetroot

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Two down and twenty-four to go in the ‘A-Z’ of our favourite homegrown fruit and veg! This was a tricky one, because there are so many lovely fruit and veg starting with ‘B’. Broccoli, broad beans, blackberries, brussel sprouts and blueberries to name just a few, but when push came to shove it was beetroot that earned its place in the allotment garden ‘A-Z’. So many different varieties, so easy to grow, so many different ways of eating it, juicing it, grating it, baking it and masses of health benefits too…

‘B’ is for the beautiful, bountiful beetroot!

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Quinoa Kedgeree

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We were back late this evening after a hectic day and threw together this amazingly quick and delicious meal! Nipped down to the allotment to gather some fresh homegrown veg (peas, spinach and onions), collected the eggs and then felt inspired by the pretty jar of tri-coloured quinoa on the kitchen shelf! Quinoa is quicker to cook than brown basmati rice and a serious powerhouse in the protein department. Perfect….

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In Print – Small Beginnings

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My photo of our weird and wonderful ‘Addams Family’ carrots is in this months issue of Good Food Magazine. Woohoo! Hardly a 10-page spread, but we’ve all got to start somewhere…

I’ve got my fingers crossed for some bigger, straighter homegrown carrots this year, although wonky or straight, they’ll still taste amazing! We’ve sown 3 varieties, including some purple ones(!) and this time they’re in a deep, raised bed, so we shall see… These ones went straight into the juicer to make our awesome ‘allotment juice’. Very yum.

Carrot happiness!

Green Tomato Chutney

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I bet that someone, somewhere in the world is picking some homegrown green tomatoes right now! This is my recipe for an amazingly delicious and much healthier version of a traditional allotment chutney that contains no refined sugar.

It’s late-Spring here, we’ve just finished our last jar of chutney and the tomato seedlings are getting big. I can’t wait to make some more in a few months time…

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Asparagus and Fennel Soup

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I love using seasonal organically grown veg wherever possible, so it’s fantastic to be cooking with freshly picked asparagus and I absolutely love fennel, so that had to go in too! Asparagus and fennel are both great for your digestion, whilst the pumpkin seeds add some protein and essential fatty acids, plus a bit of crunch! Served with our homemade rye sourdough bread, this was a big winner at the table last night. Yay!

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Late-Spring Gardening

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Spring is in full swing on the allotment right now and it’s a massive understatement to say that we’re pretty busy – lots of sowing, weeding, sowing, thinning out, sowing, hardening off, sowing, planting out and sowing…..busy, but loving it!

The chickens are loving the new grass, the dog is loving watching the chickens(!), the children are loving getting their hands dirty and I’m loving the sun on my back and the prospect of some delicious homegrown fruit and veg!

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Nettle Fertiliser

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Despite their weedy, stingy reputation, nettles are actually a really useful addition to your garden. Yes, they can be a pain to get rid of (and certainly painful if you get stung!), but they’re also jam-packed with nutrients like iron, potassium, magnesium and calcium.

You can add nettles to your compost heap to boost vitality or make potent fertilisers that your plants will love. The minerals in the nettles will encourage super-strong, healthy growth, making plants less susceptible to disease and definitely less attractive to pests. Hooray!

Here’s how to do it…..

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Root Soup

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Our first ‘al fresco’ allotment meal of the year! Such a treat to be eating a big bowl of hot soup in the fresh air – I’m sure it tastes better! This colourful pot of deliciousness is packed full of root veg and decorated with freshly picked pea shoots.

We used some of our winter-stored homegrown veg, but I love the thought that someone, somewhere could cook this soup with freshly pulled and dug homegrown roots…the fresher the better! Beetroot is really good for high blood pressure and liver health, whilst fennel and leeks are great for digestive health, even the humble pea shoot has masses of Vitamin C! Really yum and really good for you…..

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Mid-Spring Gardening

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By mid-spring most of the seedlings have made the big trek down to our greenhouse, which is now absolutely rammed with fresh new growth. I usually feel like there’s not enough time and definitely not enough space at this time of year….

This is the second in a series of posts about the joys of springtime gardening on our organic allotment. Sowing new crops, hardening off, planting out and the first harvests. Life is good….

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Biodynamic gardening

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A little film about our organic allotment and some of the biodynamic gardening methods we use to enhance the health and vitality of our crops. Nettle tea for overall health, the ‘cow pat pit’ for incredibly potent, life-giving soil improvement, ‘mausdorf starter’ for maintaining the perfect compost heap……

There are loads of other amazingly effective organic and biodynamic methods that I’ll write about and film at a later date. In the meantime I hope you enjoy this little Autumnal video tour of our allotment garden.

Homegrown happiness!

Early-Spring Gardening

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I love every season, but I think Spring has to be my favourite. There’s just so much anticipation in the air, from the first bulbs of early-Spring to the luscious blossoms of mid-Spring and the definite ‘no-turning back’ growth of late-Spring. Everyone and everything has an extra spring in their step….

This is the first of three posts about the joys of springtime gardening on our allotment. It started out as one post, but was just getting crazily long, so I decided to split it – early, mid and late spring. Happy days and happy gardening everyone….

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