Veg Plotting

Garden visits have been thin on the ground this year, so it was wonderful to have the opportunity this week to catch up with Charles Dowding at his (relatively) new property in Somerset and chat to him about his latest book. Rest assured that Covid guidance was adhered to and I found myself in a select group of bloggers, podcasters and garden writers for my visit, and not the 900-odd visitors who crowd into Homeacres for one of Charles's open days in normal years! Regular readers may remember I visited Charles at his previous property - Lower Farm - in 2012 for my VPs VIPs  interview and 52 Week Salad Challenge strands. Then it was February and the start of the sowing season; what a difference a September visit makes with Charles's abundant produce and flowers positively glowing with good health everywhere. I needed no second invitation to munch on the tomatoes in the polytunnel; they were delicious. Homeacres is a smaller property of around a quarter of an acre. Here the in...

This must be the gardening equivalent of receiving a box of chocolates; an exciting tasting box of tomatoes courtesy of Burpee Europe , who've given me a sneak peek of their latest varieties, two of which have blight resistance in their breeding. All varieties are F1, which means fresh seed will be required each season. From left to right we have: 'Nagina', a blight resistant medium plum tomato 'Honeycomb', an orange cherry tomato bred in Yorkshire 'Cocktail Crush', a blight resistant medium salad tomato 'Veranda Red', a dwarf tomato suitable for growing in small containers or hanging baskets All varieties are suitable for growing outdoors here in the south-west, though northern based gardeners may fare better if they're grown in a greenhouse. I'm delighted to have the possibility of more blight resistant, outdoor varieties to try as I only have a sunny patio on which to grow my tomato fix - and we eat a lot of them! Our abs...

I'm a little late with my #NationalGardeningWeek post this year because my head's been full of making it happen for other people. We've put together cards and some small gifts for all our WI members this week and I suggested we give everyone some seeds to grow, so our gift keeps on giving. Now I'd like to say the timing was all planned, but actually serendipity played a huge part 😉 Luckily my stash had enough 'Russian Giant' seeds for us to have a tallest sunflower competition, and just one packet of lettuce 'Merveille des Quatre Saisons' yielded around 1500 seeds (the packet said  approx 900 ) to divvy up. Everything was duly delivered yesterday in the sunshine and the response from everyone is full of smiles. Many sowed their seeds yesterday, so I'm playing catch up already. My friend Judy from Botanical Interests * often says 'It all starts with a seed'. In these strange lockdown times, I'm happy to add they also help to sus...

I've been pondering the peas on my windowsill - I'm sure those furthest away from the window germinate more quickly than those closest. Furthermore I'm sure the tray closer to the window that can be opened gets going more slowly than its companion. It's only an anecdotal observation so far, but one that's worth looking into sometime. As you can see the peas closest to the camera are a little taller on the whole than those closest to the window. Will this difference remain until I harvest the shoots for my salad? What you can't see is there's a small radiator on the wall below. Is it that making the difference? Or possibly there's a small draught at the window which affects germination and growth despite the double glazing? Or both? It's fascinating - to me at least - to think there could be small microclimate differences at work over just a few inches. Enough pondering for now. I'm looking forward to these shoots gracing my salad in the ...

I've stuck with Friday's windowsill theme for today's post, but moved upstairs this time. I've just rescued my tomatoes from the patio as I spotted the first signs of blight yesterday. Like most resistant tomatoes, my trial 'Mountain Magic' does eventually succumb to the dreaded disease, though at a much slower pace. It means I've had enough time to harvest the remaining fruit. I picked 6 large punnets: 2 each of 'ready to eat now' and 'needs a little more ripening', plus 1 each of  'needs a lot more ripening' and 'not sure if they have blight'. I've found tomatoes tend to develop a warning translucence before blight reveals itself. You can see some potential candidates I'm keeping an eye on in the above photo. At this point, most people would share their favourite recipe for green tomato chutney, but we're not great eaters of it here at VP Gardens . Instead, I spread out my tomatoes on windowsills on the s...

It's a while since I've blogged about salad, so I've jotted down a quick post about some of our favourite discoveries this year for future reference. The book It's a treat when I go to London to eat at Leon as their salads and wraps are fantastic. It's been great to bring their salad ideas closer to home via their latest book . I'm particularly pleased to see their superfood salad featured as it's one of my regular choices. There are five chapters which feature classic recipes, fast, lunchbox (recipes for 1), friends, and family; plus sections for adding crunch to your salad, and ideas for dressings. Most of the ingredients are readily available, but be prepared to improvise if some of the more unusual ingredients - I'm looking at you sumac and pomegranate molasses - aren't for you. Our regular favourite this summer is Chicken Caesar Salad (without the anchovies or bacon) from the classic recipes chapter, which brings me on to... Ma...

Trying to outwit the spammers led to some amusing happenings in the past, but I didn't expect it to involve salad. After puzzling over word verification, sums over at Karen 's, proving I'm not a robot etc etc., the latest innovation I found over at Happy Mouffetard 's was possibly the trickiest yet. How many images with salad do you see in the picture above? I labelled this image 'Good Grief Google' at the time. Since then, I've seen its presence isn't confined to Google, but seems to be the latest CAPTCHA development on offer to anyone needing a spam prevention or similar service. My inner imp still giggles at the notion this might be a development in context-driven provision. For example, craft blogs could get pictures of knitting to sort out from other fabrics. Update 18/11/2015: I've since found out this CAPTCHA is a compulsory step for preventing spammers if you're allowing Anonymous comments. Note that mobile users are having ...

Garlic mustard (centre and right), showing leaves, flowers and seed pods I went to a fascinating talk on foraging with Liz Knight  at Malvern last month. Most of it was about the possibilities using cultivated plants*, with a brief nod towards edible weeds like hairy bittercress ** which also calls many a garden home. One of the featured weeds was garlic mustard , which I've since found has taken up residence in a couple of shady spots in our front side garden. Its flowers show it's one of the brassica family and its leaves are a simpler form of the oriental mustards I grow for salad. This is usually more of a plant to feature for May's Blooms Day , but our cooler weather this year means it's hung on into June. First taste is of garlic and then the mustard kicks in. If you use it in salads, pick absolutely fresh as it wilts very quickly. It's a good candidate for my Universal Pesto recipe. Those seed pods pack quite a fiery punch and deserve to be made in...

Steaming away on the stove - a cauldron of bubbling hot salad *.  "...but it's too cold for salad!" is a regular teatime cry lately at VP Gardens . We eat salad year-round here because it suits our constitution, but when NAH's days involve hat, gloves, thermals and a 28-ton girlfriend , the hours of cold seeping into his bones defeats that intention. I plan our meals and shopping with salads in mind, but I regularly have to improvise with store cupboard ingredients when the weather demands something piping hot at this time of the year. I then have a problem with what to do with my home-grown and any shop-bought salad ingredients** lurking in the fridge. As you can see my usual solution is to make soup as this features regularly on our lunch menu. I chanced on The Guardian's " 13 recipe ideas for leftover salad " recently which has some different ideas. I must admit I giggled at first as we rarely have any leftover food, but of course in this ins...

This year I'm trying an experiment with my late sown lettuces. I usually grow them in pots and some old sinks in my cold frames. Everything is fine initially, but the height of the front of frame is too low for the pots placed there and things get a little mushy. This year I'm trying seed trays instead. These will give the leaves more headroom, but I'm not sure there's sufficient growing media to sustain them for the whole of the winter. However, that can be remedied easily if my fears prove well founded. I made a relatively late sowing in early September of 2 rows of lettuce seed per tray - 'Merveille des Quatre Saisons', 'Lollo Rossa', 'Little Gem' and 'Salad Bowl', made easy with the use of seed tapes. That's why my rows are so even. I've kept the trays on the sunniest part of the patio to maximise the light and warmth the trays receive, but as you can see I'm unlikely to be cropping much from them until early spri...

In the early days of The 52 Week Salad Challenge , I asked the question What is a salad ? I didn't have the definitive answer back then and I've since realised there isn't really one. The key question to ponder is What makes a great salad for me? One of the reasons I started the Challenge 3 years ago was to prove to NAH salads needn't be boring and I believe I've done that many times over. I've found it takes just four simple steps to ensure we have a great tasting salad every time. All ingredients are raw, unless stated otherwise. Step 1 - Make a large base layer of seasonal greens Choose from: Lettuce Rocket, especially wild Watercress Land cress (aka American cress) Nasturtium leaves Foraged greens e.g. hairy bittercress, fat hen, young dandelions Winter purslane Lamb's lettuce Kale Pea shoots Oriental leaves e.g mustards, pak choi Endive or chicory Sorrel - small amounts give a deliciously lemony kick to a salad (thanks Janet...

It's a couple of months since I introduced you to the black tomato I'm trialling this year , so I've put aside my salad leaves this month to bring you a full report on how they're doing. 'Indigo Rose' hails from Oregon State University in the USA and has been available there for a couple of years. We had a spontaneous exchange of experiences on the coach on the last day of the Portland Fling , so I'm not alone in the observations I'm about to tell you about. This tomato was bred as a healthier option by crossing cultivated tomatoes with wild species from Chile and the Galapagos Islands. It's higher in anthocyanin (hence the purple/black colour), which are naturally occurring antioxidants in plants which may help to protect our nervous system, plus they may have have anti-cancer, antidepressant and pain killing properties. Anthocyanins aren't confined to the fruit, they're in the leaves and stems too. This picture also shows th...

Screen grab taken from the Food Programme page on the BBC website Whilst I was away, Radio 4's Food Programme broadcast a very interesting programme on Salad Leaves. The appropriately named Dan Saladino revealed that: The UK's demand for salad leaves is worth £600 million annually and demand is rising steadily for leaf production throughout the year Many of the salad leaves we buy are imported from Spain, particularly during the winter months Chlorine is still used extensively by some firms as part of the bagged salad process as spring water supplies aren't sufficient for what's needed A new indoor growing facility in Essex is the size of 10 football pitches. This is set to grow to 20 football pitches to meet increasing UK demand and to compete against imported leaves Soil cleansing is practised at the Essex facility to reduce pests and diseases (but also eliminates the beneficials) and fertilisers are added to the soil before each crop cycle Rose bay willo...

My Nepalese allotment neighbour's putting me to shame. Not only is she growing a huge amount of blemish free lettuce, she is cleverly intercropping her onions amongst them. I wonder if the smell of the onions is helping to keep the slugs and snails at bay? Much food for thought here going forward... We also swapped stories of what we use lettuce for in addition to salad. She uses it as a stir fried vegetable, just for a few seconds so the leaves are wilted a bit like we do with spinach sometimes. I countered with using it for soup, especially with older leaves or at the end of summer . I've been cropping my lettuce leaves grown outside my back door since we came home and made a great discovery after some hasty harvesting earlier in the week. I put my leaves straight into a bag then popped them in the salad crisper in the fridge, only to find some rather limp and forlorn looking lettuce the next day. The leaves needed a wash if I was to use them, so I decided to give th...

Today's Salad Days is a little different. Have a look at the top middle of the book cover on the right, can you see why that might be? (click to enlarge if needed) Yes, The 52 Week Salad Challenge has made it into print! It's one of 73 contributions to Niki Jabbour's latest book, Groundbreaking Food Gardens , which is going down a storm. 2 years ago, Niki and I got chatting on Twitter after I mentioned her last book as part of the Challenge. It resulted in her asking if I'd like to contribute a 'plan' to her next book, based on the 52 Week Salad Challenge . I said yes, but secretly I felt rather daunted. To me, 'plan' meant 'design' and I was only a couple of months into the Challenge at the time. Niki was very persistent though and assured me only a rough drawing would be needed and the book's artist would do the rest. Still I procrastinated, but by September 2012 I finally felt able to put something together. However, Niki needed...

This is my 'holding area' in the side garden of plants awaiting the right space up at the plot New perennials This year, I've decided to have more perennial salads in the garden/allotment. This is partly inspired by Martin Crawford's book which I reviewed last year and partly though donations I've had from Naomi. I went to stay with her in early February and she kindly let me loose in her polytunnel to come away with some welsh onions (left), mitsuba aka Japanese parsley (the reddish leaves at the top) and Cardamine raphanifolia (the cressy looking plant on the right, which Naomi describes as 'totally bombproof'). She tells me the latter two came from Edulis if you're interested. I see they both like moist, shady areas, so I'll be locating them next to my wasabi * up at the allotment. These were plonked in the pictured 'holding bed' at the side of our house awaiting space in one of the raised beds up at the allotment. Their tran...

Welcome everyone! I'm delighted to be the latest stop on Emma Cooper's tour for her new book, Jade Pearls and Alien Eyeballs . Lots of authors have book tours, so why not Emma? I'm glad she's not allowed the publication of an ebook to get in the way of having a party :) Jade Pearls and Alien Eyeballs is a guide to the world of unusual edible plants. Depending on your experiences some may already be familiar to you like oca or achocha, others will be completely new. If you've read Mark Diacono's A Taste of the Unexpected  or James Wong's Homegrown Revolution , Emma's book makes a superb companion to these volumes. It also stands in its own right as she delves deeper into the history of unusual edibles, the plant hunters who moved them around the world, and today's enthusiasts who are ensuring these crops aren't forgotten. Pray silence for the author reading *tinks spoon against glass* It's traditional at these things for the aut...

Picture courtesy & copyright of Art Fund. Food styling by Kim Morphew, prop styling by Lydia Brun, photography by Maja Smend There's often a heated debate about whether gardens are art, so today I'm pleased to present a new twist on this theme via Art Fund's Edible Masterpieces initiative. I was particularly taken by their version of Van Gogh's self-portrait, especially as the  ploughman's design recipe calls for some salad leaves. I feel I need to issue a further challenge for the 52 Week Salad Challenge - let's create some art with all those leaves! My Tiny Plot has a head start on us already as she's designed a new sunburst layout for her salad garden this year. Edible Masterpieces is a new fund raising initiative from the Art Fund to encourage art lovers to create edible masterpieces inspired by art. All funds raised go towards helping UK museums and galleries. Much of our arts heritage has taken a battering in the various rounds of f...