It’s been a long wait, but after two years we have finally tasted our first asparagus. As you might guess, they really are delicious. There’s nothing quite like freshly grown veg that’s on your plate just 10 minutes after picking. We’ve been steaming ours for about 7 minutes, coating them in butter, and then just eating them off one large plate. Everyone likes them, which is great news as we planted 40 crowns, but at the moment means you get only 3 spears per sitting! We have found that the lower portion of the spear is very woody, and are wondering whether this might be due to lack of water when they were growing. There’s certainly no lack of water now, but initially we’d had dry weather for weeks. The best way of getting just the tender part of the spear is to bend it until it snaps. The spear will break where it becomes woody. As this was our first experience of home-grown asparagus, we wanted to be absolutely sure we weren’t wasting any of it and so cooked both parts of the spear. Sure enough, they had snapped in the correct place. The lower sections really were tough.
First Asparagus
Comfrey Explosion
Our comfrey has exploded into life this year. Comfrey is a perennial plant and so grows back every year, getting stronger and larger each year. It pretty much dies back to nothing so you need to remember where you have planted it. Once the leaves are a little bigger we shall make some more comfrey tea, a very good natural fertiliser. It’s very easy to make, you just put a sack full of comfrey leaves in a water butt and leave for a few weeks. We’ve still got a waterbutt full from the end of last year but this will quickly disappear once we start watering the greenhouse veg. You can also use the leaves as a mulch around your plants (we put some in the bottom of our strawberry containers). Not only is comfrey a very good fertliser, but it will grow almost anywhere, attracts insects and adds lovely colour to your garden. The photo above shows you just how pretty the flowers are. I don’t think it is that easy to get rid of (I found that out after I had planted it in the veg patch) so you might want to choose your spot carefully!
Wild Garlic Soup
After making 9 batches of Wild Garlic Pesto, we still had a whole bag of wild garlic leaves in the fridge. Today I used half of those in a double batch of wild garlic soup. This recipe comes from Riverford and is very simple to make. You do need a blender though. If you’ve only got a stick blender then it would be a good idea to chop your wild garlic first.
Ingredients:
- large knob of butter
- 1 onion or 2 leeks, chopped
- 1 large potato, cubed
- 750ml chicken or vegetable stock
- 3-4 handfuls of wild garlic leaves
- 100ml double cream
- a few gratings of nutmeg
- salt and pepper
Melt the butter and gently fry the onion or leek until soft. Add the potato and cook for a minute or two. Add the stock and cook until the potatoes are soft (10-15 mins). Then add the garlic leaves and cook for another couple of minutes. Blend until smooth, then add the cream, nutmeg and salt and pepper to taste.
This soup is a beautiful light green with dark flecks and tastes fresh and garlicky. It makes a great lunch full of the flavours of spring.
Wild Garlic Pesto
Last weekend we went wild garlic picking in our favourite woodland. This is something we do every year and has become one of those lovely family traditions. The wild garlic is perfect for picking at the moment. The leaves are still fresh and tender and the flowers are only just beginning to appear. The leaves were looking so good that we picked a LOT this year, 3 carrier bags full. We spent the afternoon washing the leaves (they looked pretty clean but we washed them anyway) and making pesto. We put 8 bags of pesto in the freezer and had wild garlic pesto for tea. We fried some bacon until it was really crispy and sprinkled that on top with a little extra parmesan – delicious. We probably added a little too much pesto to the pasta, as the garlic certainly had a bit of heat to it, and was a little too strong for some of the kids this time!
Here’s the basic recipe that we used:
- about 100g wild garlic, chopped
- 50g pine nuts (you can use walnuts too)
- 50g parmesan
- 50ml olive oil
- salt and pepper
To make, just blend all the ingredients together. We didn’t use all the olive oil it says here, just enough to be able to blend it.
If you haven’t picked wild garlic before, get your foragers hat on and give it a go. Wild garlic tends to grow in or near woodland close to water. Our patch is right next to the river on the edge of the woodland. Wild garlic can be used in lots of ways: soups, pestos, garlic butter, layered in dauphinois potato, added to frittatas. And it’s free. What can be better than that?
Kingston Lacy
We spent part of the Easter holidays down in Dorset staying with grandparents. Whilst there we visited Kingston Lacy, the nearest National Trust property. The gardens were beautiful and there was so much to explore.
We found a hidden garden . . .
. . . an enormous bulb bed filled with over 12,000 bulbs . . .
. . . tree stumps to run along . . .
. . . woodlands to wander through, a Japanese garden, and a playground for the kids.
And, much to our delight, a kitchen garden . . .
. . . their rhubarb forcing pots were working wonders as they had plenty of tender pink rhubarb stems for sale . . .
. . . the Roly Pig was a great way to get the kids thinking about composting . . .
. . . and the picnic tables each had a Roly Piglet for the kids to put their waste in . . .
Maybe I should dress our compost bin up a bit. I’m having to retrieve too many apple cores from the waste bin at the moment. Or maybe I just need to put it where the kids can reach it!
New Perch for the Ladies
We made a new addition to Le Grand Hotel Poulet over the weekend. We replaced the small ground level perch with a lovely tree trunk that we retrieved from our woodpile in the garden. It’s much higher (about 2 foot from the ground) and has a nice little ramp for them to walk up. And by getting them to roost there we are concentrating their mess in one area to make cleaning them out that much easier, especially as we now have trays underneath. So what did they think? We introduced them to the roosting perch during the day, and they all had a go on it. At bedtime, we peered in and they were all roosting on the floor! A bit of chicken training required here. So we put them all on the perch and they seemed to stay there. The next night, one chose to roost there, and the night after that two of them. Each night we have continued with the training and put them all up there. Hopefully they will get the idea. Hens in the wild roost up in the trees and so it should be innate to go up at night. But for the first 16 weeks of their lives they are reared in big sheds where I’m guessing they have only the floor to sleep on. The question is: are our hens bright enough to learn something new?
My Kind of Digging
Finally, we’ve had some rain. Not only are the plants happy, but I’m happy too because the ground is now soft enough to dig. I tried digging the patch over a couple of weeks ago but after just 5 minutes of battling against the rock hard ground, I put my fork down and pottered around the garden instead. I knew we would eventually get some rain and at last we did. I got my fork out again and this time the ground was just right for digging. About a third of the plot is now dug. There are still some weedy patches to tackle (I managed to keep those out of the photo) but I feel we’re well on our way. And just in time too. We find the end of April and early May are busy planting times. Don’t make digging your plot any tougher than it has to be. If the ground is too hard, just wait for rain. It’s sure to come sooner or later.
The fresh green growth you can see in the background are the raspberry canes. We must have about 10 times as many canes as we did last year, and they are sprouting up everywhere.
The Right Kind of Digging?
Kids just love digging, but is it the right kind of digging? A couple of days ago, our two youngest (8 and 6yrs) said they would like to do some digging and where could they dig. They thought the lawn was a good place to start, but we’ve had enough of our hens digging that up, so I suggested the vegetable patch. I naively hoped that they might dig just a little bit of the plot over for me. But that was not the type of digging they had in mind. Oh no, they had much grander plans! What we have ended up with is …
… the start of a tunnel through which they intend to crawl …
… and a den …
What it looks like to me is a jolly big hole and a bunch of paving slabs on the veg patch! They did have the most wonderful time creating them both though, and I am actually pretty impressed with their endeavours, all the more so because they put all their tools away at the end of each digging session. I’m just glad that I hadn’t actually got round to digging the patch over to a fine tilth.
What Plant is This?
It’s very exciting when you sow a seed for a plant you’ve never grown before, even more so when you’ve never even seen what the plant looks like. The plant to the left is one such plant. Had I not planted it, I would have no idea that this is a melon plant. Our melons are all growing very well on a light windowsill. The recent sunny weather has helped them to grow a little too quickly. Sooner or later they are going to have to go into the greenhouse, only I was hoping it was going to be “later” rather than “sooner”. The unseasonally warm weather can so easily lull one into thinking it’s time to plant out. But, just the other morning we had a heavy frost as a reminder of what early spring weather can throw at you. Our little Ogen melons don’t like the cold at all, and so they are just going to have to stay on the windowsill a little longer.
Happy Healthy Hot Cross Loaf
This fruit loaf is a delicious alternative to Hot Cross Buns, and much easier to make, especially if you have a bread machine. Hot Cross Buns can often be rather sweet and sometimes a little too dense and doughy. The dried fruit in the loaf adds plenty of sweetness and the dough is lighter. It is absolutely wonderful toasted and buttered.
Ingredients:
- 1 teaspoon yeast
- 500g strong white flour
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 25g butter
- 1½ teaspoon salt
- 350ml water
- 2½ teaspoons cinnamon
- 120g mixed dried fruit
If you’ve got a bread machine, put all the ingredients except the cinnamon and dried fruit, into the pan. Select either the Raisin Beep Bake option or the Raisin Beep Dough option. The machine will beep 50 minutes or so into the cycle to remind you to add the dried fruit and cinnamon. I always use the dough option when I make our loaves as I think it bakes better in the oven and you don’t end up with a hole in the bottom of the loaf. If you want to do the same, then shape the dough once it has finished it’s cycle and put it into a bread tin. Leave it on the side for an hour and then bake for 25 mins at 220°C or 200°C fan oven (or as hot as your oven will go – the hotter the better). The dough can easily be shaped into buns if you want to keep it traditional. We like it as a loaf as we eat it mostly for breakfast.
If you don’t have a bread machine then just mix all the ingredients together to create a dough. Knead for about 15 minutes until it becomes smooth and elastic. Cover with clingfilm and leave to rise for an hour until doubled in size. Knock back and either shape into a loaf or into buns. Leave to rise for 30-60 minutes, then bake in the oven.
I use a Panasonic Bread Machine, which I can thoroughly recommend. Bread machines do vary in their water to flour ratio so you might want to check this.
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