Since moving from our smallholding I've been growing a lot less food for myself, but nevertheless I have still been growing something. I think it's in my blood now and probably always will be, because homegrown, tasty and completely organic food just can't be beat in terms of health benefits and cost. And of course I get some fresh air while I am doing the minimal work this little garden takes.
As you can see in this first photo of the long raised bed it is full, and had protection to keep the birds from pulling the onions and garlic shoots out when they first appeared. Now that the crops are big enough and while the sun was shining yesterday I took off all the trellis' and the wire shelves that I had used to foil the birds that we entice to the garden each Winter with our bird table. They were weighed down with blocks leftover from when we built the beds, and while that worked really well it did look a tad messy in the sunshine and was starting to annoy me. I am leaving the straw in place for now to protect the onions and garlic from any late frosts. But even with just the top coverings taken off the garden looks so much neater. (See the last photo of this post.)
I decided whilst I was out to hose down the paths a bit and then pull up the last of the carrots. These have done us proud over the Winter, with Alan picking the odd carrot or two whenever he was short of veggies and me doing the same but less regularly.
Now that the carrots were gone I pulled out the few weeds that were in that half of the bed, then lightly loosened and smoothed over the soil. I am sort of using the no-dig method of gardening so I try not to disturb the soil too much. I then used the wire shelves that I had just taken off the other beds to protect this bare soil from local cats.
The other half of this bed has over-Wintering onions, and this photo shows them with their trellis covering taken off.
Half an hour later and the carrots were scrubbed and ready for use. We used all the largest ones for tea last night and simply roasted them in the oven with cumin and olive oil, as Alan was cooking a nut roast in there so it made sense to do the veggies there too. They were delicious. The rest are destined to become a carrot and coriander soup for this weeks lunches.
The garden on a slightly sunny February day.
Now I am planning what will be the first things to go in the half empty smaller raised bed. I'm thinking I have to get some Spinach in as soon as possible and perhaps some early Radish, they always grow so much tastier in the cooler weather of Spring.
Sue xx
Too wet to do anything here and too early for starting stuff in the greenhouse too - I shall have to be patient
ReplyDeleteWe had a dry sunny Sunday after a very wet Saturday so I decided to get outside for a while. I'm itching to get started with seeds but it's definitely too early this far north. ☹️
DeleteOverwintered carrots, how lovely. I'm a fair weather gardener but usually have a few leeks to pull over the winter but sadly not this year! And although they are available at the supermarkets they don't have the strong fresh taste of homegrown.
ReplyDeleteAlison in Wales x
They did surprisingly well, but they are in a very sheltered position so that would have helped.
DeleteLovely looking carrots! Shop bought ones just don't taste the same. I have to cover everything in the garden and on the plot as there's always some hungry critter nibbling on my crops!! I don't mind sharing a bit but it sometimes looks like a swarm of locusts has passed over! :-) xxx
ReplyDeleteWe had one or two nibbled at, we think by a mouse, but Micky obviously wasn't keen on carrots. 🥕🥕
DeleteI'm a kind of jealous now. My veggie plot is covered with snow, about half a meter now. And someone ate all my carrots last summer, grrrrr... But that someone was really really hungry? O well, my witer vacation still continues, I should sow some chili soon (can't sow anything too early, there's not enough light even with plant lights)
ReplyDeleteUlvmor (from Scandinavia)
Oh I know that feeling so well. Some of the bloggers I follow 'down under' show their delicious warm weather pickings when we are in the shortest, darkest days of Winter here. It's enough to make me drool. 😄
DeleteThat's exactly how I look at it. Although it's frustrating when little creatures 'steal' your growing food, the knowledge that they need it perhaps even more than we do makes me calm down ... after the initial **** stream of naughty words and stamping of feet that is. 🐭🐁
Love the photo of your "home grown carrots"♥ Arrived back in Oz on Saturday so I have some catching up to do:)
ReplyDeleteJust picked, freshly scrubbed carrots are very photogenic aren't they. 😄🥕🥕
DeleteSome tasty looking carrots! I tried growing carrots, last year, but didn't have much success.
ReplyDeleteIt's worth persevering, they can be awkward to grow. Well I know it took me a few years until I got carrots that looked like 'proper' carrots. 😄
DeleteWell done on the carrots - and no carrot fly! My perpetual spinach and rainbow chard have overwintered well this year - relishing the rain and mild temperatures no doubt - and are sending up fresh new leaves which I am picking daily. They look attractive and colourful in the winter veg plot, don’t flop and are not eaten by pigeons (who tore their way into the fruit cage and devoured to stumps my purple sprouting broccoli and kale). I know what you mean about the feel good effect of eating fresh organic homegrown veg from the garden - it is a tonic, especially this time of year. I was late sowing leeks last year (July I think) and dibbed them out end of September when I had space after clearing the squash. They sat for months barely moving but now the strongest ones are just about big enough to harvest so I picked only one yesterday (I have 43 to go - of course I count my leeks!) and chopped and softened it in butter and we ate it alongside a plate of chard and my borlotti beans. I sautéed a clove of homegrown garlic and finely chopped chard stalks in rapeseed oil, added previously cooked and frozen borlotti beans and a splash of water and cooked for five minutes while I tore up the chard leaves, I added these to the pan with the zest of a half a lemon and a sprinkle of sea salt and wilted them down and before serving I spritzed over the juice of half a lemon. And it’s February and we’re eating from the garden! I made chocolate mousse for pud. I haven’t sown any seeds yet and doubt I will until mid-March as I reckon it will take until then for even my sandy well-drained soil to produce a tilth. I sow as much as I can direct because it saves time and effort and as I use homemade compost for everything my seeds do better in the ground. The only seeds I start in pots are chillies and tomatoes in March and it will be May before I start squash, courgette and borlotti beans in pots. For all these I will use very finely seived homemade compost and I will sterilise it in the oven at 100 degrees for 20 mins. Sorry to ramble on Sue. I wish everyone had the chance to grow veg because the benefits to our health and mental well-being are incalculable and it is always a challenge because of the weather and mice and rabbits and pheasants and pigeons and goodness knows what else but accepting and moving on from defeat is important too. Sarah in Sussex - but my Lancastrian roots run deep.
ReplyDeleteI have never been bothered by carrot fly, by growing them either in raised beds as here, or with the companion planting of onions on our farms and smallholdings the pesky fly just does not stand a chance. They don't fly over 18" and the smell of onions confuses them.
DeleteI plan to try again to keep some perpetual spinach alive over Winter, it didn't grow for me very well here last year ... it was not living up to it's name at all ... absolutely nothing perpetual about it!! But I think perhaps I'm still adapting to growing everything outdoors, spinach and chard always used to be a polytunnel crop for me.
All your growing and cooking sounds like music to my ears. Yep, I'm Lancastrian through and through, I'm originally from Manchester and got back here via North Wales, Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Cumbria. I'll set down my own roots one day. :-)