Topic: The Lush Gardener

[Kendra]

@Autumn *offers big hugs!!* I am so sorry, I only read the profile bits around your avatar this morning and saw Xandi! What a lovely discovery.
It is so good to see you and I am so glad you are enjoying this thread. I'm not a perfect gardener by any stretch of the imagination, I am very much learning all the time. This morning was a prime example, I went out to water the polytunnels and saw we had courgettes coming through but our slugs love the flowers unfortunately so I never get to use them in salads or anything but I would love to. So that is something I want to do this summer, is get to the gorgeous flowers before the slugs but also to read up more on eating the courgette flowers. And somewhere between here and last year, I have forgotten when it is best to harvest the courgettes. I definitely don't want them to get as big as a marrow, so I will need to keep an eye on them.

I got one fern late last year, well around Autumn time and planted it in. It really doesn't look as if it is doing good at all. I'll get a photo of it for you, but I'll keep an eye on it. The dogs tend to race through the flower gardens when they hear a car so break and damage a lot of baby, new stuff. And trust me, you got this. I started with a herb garden in pots on my window sill, and succulents because I genuinely seemed to have 'death' fingers instead of green fingers. So much so that I was only put in charge of sorting the weeds in the garden for the longest time. I think believing you can and are ready is part of the battle but also have fun with it.

*HUGS*

[Kendra]

CABBAGE!!

Every year whatever kale, cabbage or broccoli we have attempted to grow - it inevitably becomes invested with caterpillars. Two years a go we actually counted 30 caterpillars on the leave of one broccoli plant. It is soul destroying to put so much effort and time in, only for garden pests to have a field day with your produce. So I decided last year after the caterpillars decimated my first solo attempt at growing brassicas and failing miserably, that I would grow brassicas instead slightly out of season. In Autumn, late September I planted two cabbages - they survived the winter only for one to be gobbled up by a local rat. The other, I protected it like it was one of my children. Nothing was getting at it. To be honest if the rabbit of the past few weeks had gotten at it, I would probably have thrown in the towel and given the reigns of the polytunnels back to my mother-in-law but thankfully, that didn't happen. It really is amazing how much you invest of yourself into your plants - or I do at least. I decided last weekend that it was time to cut the head, I never realised that cabbage actually has its own scent. Once it was cut, the smell from it was really lovely. It had that fresh green vegetable smell, I just knew it was going to be delicious. The leaves it left behind were huge! And I had been cutting these off every so often from the bottom but as you can see from the photo it still managed to reach mammoth proportions. All of it got shredded and put on to our compost heap. What an absolute beauty. So then it was trying to figure out what to cook with the head of cabbage. I normally shred it and stir fry but it honestly smelled way too good and when I started peeling off the leaves - my family were lucky I didn't start eating it raw. It just looked incredible. So I went through a few of my cookery books and when I wasn't impressed by anything there, I remembered a Polish dish I had many moons ago and decided I would google and see if I could do that. The dish is Golabki and it is seriously yum. Mine turned out really good but my memory of the first one I ever had was way better - mainly as it was cooked by a Polish lady who obviously knew what she was doing. My cabbage head leaves were also long compared to the more rounded version that was originally used in this recipe. I had also peeled the leaves off in my exuberance to smell the freshness *facepalms* so had to boil the leaves slightly differently as well. All the recipes I looked at said to use pork but all we had that day was turkey mince so I just used that. I also didn't use the rice - I was being severely lazy that day but it still worked out really nice. At least the family came back for seconds. The sauce was interesting and became a swift firm favourite, so I will definitely be using that again. I think I will make Golabki again for sure but will follow the recipe and make sure I have all the right ingredients in the house first. But for a carb-less version it was really good. The tweaked recipe that I used is what I am giving you below, but I am also giving you the link to the original recipe, just in case.

GOLABKI

FOR STUFFED CABBAGE ROLLS: 1 head  cabbage 1.7 lb (800 g) turkey mince 2 medium onions yellow or white 2 tbsp neutral oil (the recipe says cranola, I used sunflower) 3 garlic cloves 1 tbsp dried oregano (actual recipe called for marjoram which I didn't have) 1 qt (1 litre) chicken stock Salt, to season Ground black pepper, to season Handful of chopped dill or parsley, to garnish (optional) FOR TOMATO SAUCE: (The actual recipe calls for butter but I omitted it) 1 tbsp all-purpose flour 1 cup (250 ml) stock - remaining from cooking Gołąbki / Gołąbki juices; or meat stock 2 cups (500 g) tomato passata / purée 1 tbsp tomato paste / concentrate A pinch of sugar Salt, to season Ground black pepper, to season Instructions FOR STUFFED CABBAGE ROLLS: Wash the cabbage under running water. Even though the inside is usually clean (the outer leaves protect the inside), you might want to clean it anyway. Remove the tough outer leaves and discard them. Separate the inner leaves and wash them under running water. Cut out the stalk from the head. Grab a large cooking pot. Pour water in and bring it to boil. Add a solid pinch of salt and sugar and stir. Blanch the cabbage head in the boiling water, core side down. About 3-4 minutes is fine. Remove cabbage to a baking tray, but keep the water in the pot. Set ten best leaves (largest, unbroken) aside. Using a paring knife, cut the main ‘vein’ out from each cabbage leaf and trim from the bottom with a knife. Peel an onion and dice it finely. Finely chop the garlic with a knife. Heat up a tablespoon or two of oil, add in chopped onion. When it turns golden, add chopped garlic and fry for another 1-2 minutes. Set aside to cool. In a large bowl, combine the ground meat, a tablespoon oregano, and cooled down onion/garlic. Season with salt and pepper, mix thoroughly. This is the stuffing. Lay the cabbage leaf flat. Place about ¼-⅓  cup of meat mixture in the centre of a cabbage leaf. Gather the edges of the cabbage inwards and roll it tightly. Continue until you have 10 decent-sized rolls. The actual recipe does the cooking differently to how I did it. I used a steamer. Boiled the water first, then placed a layer of the cabbage rolls into the steamer, placed the second steamer tray on and layered more cabbage rolls inside. I steamed them for about 30 minutes until the cabbage was tender. When the cabbage rolls are nearly done, let’s make the tomato sauce. FOR TOMATO SAUCE: Pour a cup of the stock that got made from cooking the cabbage rolls into a small pot and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat. Pour in 2 cups of tomato passata/purée and add a tablespoon of tomato paste. Bring to a boil yet again, then reduce the heat to a minimum. Season with salt and ground pepper. If the tomatoes are too acidic, add a pinch of sugar to balance the flavours. Add a teaspoon of cornflour to water and form a paste, mix this into your sauce to help thicken. Continue cooking until you reach a desired thickness. Serve: These are immensely filling on their own, just serve them with the sauce on top and sprinkle some parsley or chopped dill as a garnish. We got eating before I even thought of photos, luckily there were three left which I had saved for lunch the following day so I got a photo of those. I do need to practice my rolls, I had to use small wooden toothpicks to hold the wraps together. Enjoy <3

[Kendra]

Busy in the Garden

We do have a have a big garden, which we are trying to make more manageable by dividing it into different areas. The fruit cage will be one when it is finally ready - we have the fruit just not the cage as yet. The polytunnels another, and then we have various flower beds too. We did have a small outdoor vegetable area that I was quite happy to let go this year, to help the soil for when we plant more fruit trees but then part of me felt it was a wasted space, small as it was. So myself and the SO got to pulling up the Clary sage that had gone to seed and began laying down some of the compost from the hot compost box. The worms that came out of this was simply amazing! So many and the soil was gorgeous too. I couldn't help but dig my fingers in to it repeatedly. Of course we only have a small hot box, which is plenty to get the worms we need to help the soil but it means we have to use bagged mixed compost too. It's not a bad alternative to be honest, once it is mixed with your own stuff it is really great for growing. So while the SO went off to mow the lawn, I got stuck into raking in the soil and planting on what I had in the greenhouse. We still have plenty in there that require space to plant, just not sure where is the best fit at the moment. But on this particular day, onions went in, tomato plants, carrot strip seeds, lettuce and pepper plants. It was hard work but so damn enjoyable too. The sun was beating down the entire time and when at last I was done, I roped in the SO to help me set up a bird deterrent. Poles at either end with twine between them and lovely shiney old CD discs to twinkle in the light. It's been a few weeks since the vegetable bed has been set now and the bird deterrent is working great, we just have to get a caterpillar and slug deterrent in now. Last year the birds destroyed all my outdoor pumpkins, squashes and courgettes so I really was aiming at them this year. What I have also noticed is the amount of tiny plants that started poking up through the soil. They didn't look like weeds to me, they looked very familiar but until their true leaves came on, I genuinely couldn't figure them out. It was tomato plants. Obviously we had been throwing the left over tomato pulp including seeds into the hot box so naturally when the soil was raked, and watered regularly all those seeds - and there must have been at least a hundred had nothing better to do than grow. I used some of the soil in one of the polytunnels too and hey presto ... there among all my lovely cucumber and dill seeds sprouting, was a multitude of tomato plants. The only good thing about them is that the slugs are aiming for those instead of the plants I want to keep. We have plenty of tomato plants already on the go, so more is literally more we don't need.

[Kendra]

Early Harvest Crop

Growing broadbeans ready for picking

The last few weeks have been exceptionally busy in the polytunnels, I've been taking photo's but then I forget to load them up in order to do a blog post. So I have managed to do just that today. I already mentioned what kind of a screw up I made last year in relation to the broad beans, well this year I was determined not to do the same. And thankfully, they've been growing and blooming left, right and centre. I looked up every book I had to give me some indication as to what to look for when it came time for harvesting because I also didn't want to let them stay on the plant too long. Some beans and peas, even courgettes just go from sweet young things to hardened prunes over night if not picked at the right time - a bit like myself . I've included a few photos for you again. The stalks grow big and strong and will flower but don't panic when these flowers go black and pull up all your plants, like I did last year - this is a natural state and not a virus. The blackened pieces end up looking more like tiny stalks and from these grow the beans. When they are first growing they are pointed upwards, water them well as they will need it. And remember to pinch off the very top set of leaves or the stalk will continue to grow and not put any effort in to making beans. When the beans are growing, the bean pod itself will slowly start sagging with the weight of the enlarged bean. So that by the time they are ready to harvest, the bean pod should be pointing downwards or at the very least in a southerly direction. I use a snips or knife to cut them off just above the stem of the bean pod but not directly on the actual stalk. You don't want to damage the rest of the plant as more beans are trying to grow. Gather them all up and bring them to your kitchen. I just crack the top of the bean pod open and pull down the centre of the pod, but you can open the pod any way you want to. Remove all your beans! Depending on when you want to eat them, you can either refrigerate them in an airtight container straight away or prepare them for the deep freeze which is what I do. I par-boil for three minutes, strain them off and then dunk them into ice cold water to instantly stop the cooking process. I let them chill for a minute or so and then drain them off again before bagging them up, marking the bag and freezing them. I've now had two large crops of broad beans so far in the past few weeks and by the looks of the plants, I might get at least one more crop. I will be pulling up the broad beans once the next crop is done, so I can plant the next crop - possibly chard and beetroot as those seedlings are growing nicely now.

par-boiling and blanching

[Flower]

@Oniya - I love the 'Science bits'! Thank you.

@Flower - I did do an earlier post on pinching out if that helps any, but I will let a few more shoots grow and do a wee video to demonstrate it for you. I know I got it wrong at times too but at least with Tomato plants they are hardy and resilient, so will bounce back.

I'm super late but I finally got the courage to get out there and punch the tomatoes. 🤣 Hopefully, I didn't massacre them.

Also, huzzah for the harvest. I swear, everything you cook looks amazing.

[Kendra]

Huzzah for pinching out the tomatoes!!

I am sure they will be fine, they're hardier than we believe them to be.

And thank you, though I wish I had gotten an image of the actual wraps on the plate instead of in the container for afters.

Yesterday's dinner was glorious, again another I should really have taken a photo of but our phones are banned from the table, so I always forget. The only thing on our table yesterday that was shop bought was the pork fillet from the butcher. We had french beans, baby potatoes, carrots and parsnips that looked like they got caught in a spiraliser and a gorgeous tomato sauce that I had made last year and had been in the deep freeze. We also had a glass each of our elderflower fizz which was super delicious.
Everyone cleared their plates and no one could go back for seconds - as often happens - because they were simply too stuffed.
The taste was define though, I love the sweetness of the homegrown produce, major yummage.

[Kendra]

Herbs

Besides the usual harvesting of beans, and courgettes early this morning – the harvesting of some of my herbs had to be done as well. Not all of them thankfully went to seed over the latest crazy wave of humidity that we’ve had here. Chamomile, basil, sage, and mint were gathered up today. I’m often asked what I do with my herbs, often I just pick what I need to add to meals but there are also the times that I use my herbs for other things. I didn’t pick all our chamomile as the daisy like heads look gorgeous in the garden and anyone who knows me, know that daisies are my favourite flower. I did harvest some a week ago and had them shaken, and then drying out in the airing cupboard as I don’t have a dehydrator and drying out in the oven would have the oven on for a few hours. Seems just overkill for a tray of chamomile flowers. As it was though, those drying there still weren’t even close to what they should be, so as I decided that today’s batch and last weeks batch could do a stint in the oven for sure. Mainly as I had two trays of chamomile and two trays of sage to dry out today. The sage dries faster than the chamomile, so once those were done, I put the sage into my grinder, gave it a blast and hey presto … dried sage. I save a lot of the glass herb jars that I get from the store, so used a sterilised jar and filled it with my dried sage. The smell in the kitchen I can tell you was glorious. Add to that every time I opened the oven door to check on the chamomile, and it was heavenly. It only got better. When I harvested the mint and began picking it off the stalks that beautiful scent also added to the aroma that was now pervading my kitchen. I used a similar recipe to the one I use when making elderflower fizz but pared it back omitting the lemon and the white wine vinegar. My lot adore mint syrup to mix with their soda water or lemonade, so I made a few jars of mint syrup today as well. It doesn’t take long at all and besides the mint only needs water and sugar. While the chamomile continued to dry out, and the mint syrup was jarred, I began preparing the basil for making pesto. Another absolute favourite of my lot. Our chillies have started to come along very nicely, and one cayenne pepper was ready for picking. So, I did one batch of basil and pepper pesto and another of basil and coriander pesto. Unfortunately, the coriander was shop bought. I stopped attempting to grow it two years ago as it never amounted to anything. The pesto takes no time at all to put together. The only cooking at all is the toasting of the pine nuts, the rest is just measuring the ingredients, prepare them and blitz the lot together before jarring. By the time the pesto was finally in its jars, the chamomile was dried and ready as well. It was tipped into the grinder and ground down until I was happy with the result. They were then tipped into a sterilised jar, all labelled. It was definitely a busy day in the kitchen and tomorrow will be a busy one in the polytunnels as the humidity has caused my purple sprouting broccoli to seed, and the caterpillars have had a field day with my cabbages. I don’t want to pull them up however, because I’d rather the caterpillars stay where they are now instead of moving on to any of my other vegetables.

Mint Syrup: I had 5 cups of mint, so it’s just a case of keeping the same number for the water and sugar. A lot of sugar I know but it is simple syrup. 5 cups of mint. 5 cups of water. 5 cups of sugar – I used castor sugar. You can make a small jar with 1 cup of mint as well of course, just use 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar. Put everything into a pot and bring it to a boil – making sure to stir until the sugar dissolves. Let it simmer for 1 minute, then take it off the heat and let it cool for about an hour. You can always be sterilising your jars at this point. Drain the syrup and jar it up. Label with the name and date – it should last for up to a month. If you have a canner – then it will last a few months instead. Pesto: Chilli and Basil Pesto 1 green chilli 80g of basil – I include the stalks as well, full of flavour and they just add another level to the pesto. 50g of pine nuts 50g of parmesan cheese 150mls of olive oil 2 garlic cloves Heat a pan without oil and toast the pine nuts until they are golden. Then take them off the heat. Grate the parmesan. Peel the garlic. Put everything into a food processor and blitz to the consistency of your choice. Some people I know like it smooth, but we like ours with a few lumpy bits still. Spoon it carefully into sterilised jars. Label and date. Keep in the fridge for up to a week, and once opened do use within three days. The basil and coriander pesto is the quite the same but omit the chilli and use 70g of Basil and 50g coriander. Enjoy!

[Kendra]

Life

Life is all about us, and the polytunnels are ridiculous in how much they are thriving. I've been missing from E for almost  a month which is a lot to catch up on in blog life but over the next few weeks I will try. As my vision hasn't been great, I didn't get many photos myself but thankfully I did ask the SO to take some for me. This post won't have any unfortunately, but it does have a video. Sadly the end just gets cut but for very good reason, our dog Polly came into the polytunnel to tell tales on her brother who had trapped a fledgling pigeon. Of course I had to go and help it, but I hadn't paused the record at the time, I had just stopped it. We have been experiencing a very strange summer for Ireland, the humidity is stifling, the sun continues to play cat and mouse games with the rain and wind. It's about even as to who is winning this year, but it is the humidity that is really getting to people, plants and animals. We are leaving more water bowls out than usual for our dogs and watering every day, late in the evening so the ground maintains the moisture for longer - isn't helping either. The plants are sucking it up and growing far too fast. It's like someone put a spell on everything, compared to the outdoor plants! The unfortunate thing about this is, that some things have gone to seed. Some plants become heavy with vegetables and fruit - such as our tomato plants and the stalks that have not had time to grow strong, begin to bend under the weight. I've lost several plants already but did not let anything go to waste. I used the unripened green tomatoes for Green Tomato Chutney, and a few other green tomato recipes. I've also frozen a few which I hadn't realised I could do, so a new learning curve for me this year. I think the winter will be spent trying to figure out how to grow things in the event that our summers become as humid as this one. For now I will spend the next few weeks trying to catch up on blog posts for you all.

[catface]

totally stalking this thread !! <3 your posts look so lovely !!

[Kendra]

totally stalking this thread !! <3 your posts look so lovely !!

Thanks so much Catface - glad you're enjoying the blog

[Kendra]

Review of August

I know it's another cheat by doing a video but do forgive me.
I had photos taken throughout August but between one thing and another, life got in the way.
A video ended up being far easier.

The weekend this was taken, I ended up pretty rough with Covid - actually within hours of taking this and am only able
to post it up now.

[Envious]

I love following along with this. Gardening makes me happy!

My tomatoes didn't do anything productive this year. Peppers and strawberries went wild. Cucumbers are in heavy production mode right now. My berries decided to do another fruiting which is strange, but I'll take it. Not sure what they'll taste like. We've had some pretty unusual weather which has messed with the pumpkins.

[Kendra]

I love following along with this. Gardening makes me happy!

My tomatoes didn't do anything productive this year. Peppers and strawberries went wild. Cucumbers are in heavy production mode right now. My berries decided to do another fruiting which is strange, but I'll take it. Not sure what they'll taste like. We've had some pretty unusual weather which has messed with the pumpkins.

The same Envious, glad to have you here.

With the tomatoes we usually try anywhere between two or three different varieties. The outdoor and greenhouse batches didn't do so good, they got eaten alive or blighted. But the tomatoes in the polytunnels did much better. Except of course for coming on too soon and not having the stalk strength to bear the weight of their own fruit.

Our chillies did alright, but our single pepper plant grew a single rather stunted pepper, while our strawberry plants dried up (the greenhouse) or just went wild (outside the polytunnel) or seemed to be doing something just not growing any fruit (polytunnel). I unpotted the plants in the polytunnel and planted them in instead, so hopefully we'll have a late crop of them. The wild ones outside of the PT were fodder basically for the dogs and birds.

I only planted pickled cucumbers this year, so that I could do a lot of gherkin jars which I already have far too many of and still they are coming! The courgettes did ok but not the usual mass we are used to. I blame it all on the weather as well this year, it has been very strange. Far too hot for the south of Ireland. I planted out a few different winter squashes as well but so far only 1 has taken, the others are being very slow - these are all planted outside as well. Last year I thought we were in for a bumper crop but the pigeons demolished them, just as they did with the plums this year.

What do you do with your veggies? Do you freeze, can or just cook on the day?