Rabbit proofing and Parsnips

The rabbits are increasingly becoming a problem on the allotment; after munching their way through most of my winter veg they have seriously stunted the growth of the onions and the shallots. Since neither of my allotment neighbours seem to be putting in much work this year, both have far more weeds than veg and it turns out that rabbits like veg far more than weeds. So before the planting really kicked off I decided to invest in some chicken wire and build a protective fence around some of my allotment. Version 1 is now complete and features 40 meters of wire fencing with a slight ground cover to stop them digging under. Over the next few months I'll try to increase the supports and cut some gates into the sides but hopefully it'll be enough to protect the young plants that need to start moving outside.

The coldframe has become a logistical nightmare because although the days have been hot, the nights are still dropping down just low enough to make me nervous. Today I planted out the first of the cucumber plants, 2 more are spending the night outside in the garden and 1 gets to spend all day outside before returning to the coldframe overnight. Hopefully all 4 will survive the next few weeks but if not then at least 1 should pull through. Now I need to start moving the aubergines outside too.

A trip to London with friends as well as the fence building has put me behind with seed sowing. I have managed to get some beans into the ground as well as some more peas to fill the gaps on the row that germinated a few weeks ago. I sowed a tray of sweetcorn at the beginning of May and have followed it up with another tray today, hopefully this will extend the cropping season for me. The second sowing of brassicas unfortunately had to replace the first lot which cooked inside the propagator on a particularly hot day. I'm hoping this batch has a longer an happier life.

Finally the parsnips, 1 seed out of the 4 rows has germinated on the allotment, 1 more than last year anyway. Today I also planted out a full row of seedlings which were chitted seeds sown into compost filled rolls of newspaper. If they survive the next week they should have an excellent chance of turning into tasty parsnips. I think I'll chit some more just in case.

Slow but steady progress

Today I managed to earth up the potatoes, I only covered the leaves with a very thin covering of aoil after reading this on Pumpkin Soup's blog. This year I will be aiming for little and often and hoping for a bumper crop. Strangly the Rooster potatoes (a maincrop) are far more vigourous than the Charlotte (a salad crop). Go figure.

I also got around to sowing 8 more squash plants, the batch sowed 3 weeks ago came through ok but then I lost 3 so hopefully I will have a full set before the month is out. I have also sowed my courgettes inside, two plants this year and also a full list of couregette lovers from work, well you need to have somewhere to ofload the excess.

No sign of the carrots or chitted parsnips on the allotment, hopefully they are just biding their time. Managed to get the dward beans, pak choi and beetroot sowed but sadly no extra carrots because I left the seed at home, doh!

With 2 more days of the bank holiday stretching ahead I am hopefull that more sowing will happen, some weeding might not go a miss and if the weather stays like this there will certainly be more watering.

Home grown food for Christmas

Today we are heading off up north to spend Christmas with OH's family. Yesterday I made a quick visit to the allotment to dig up some more potatoes, there is now just 1 and a half rows left (probably about 100 spuds), and more importantly the first harvest of this year's parsnips.

The potatoes are doing really well, I reasoned that since the soil is peat I could effectively store them through winter by not digging them up, a few were slug damaged but I still have more than enough for Christmas dinner. Mind you, I think I'll do the digging up and storage thing properly next year because washing wet mud off potatoes in December is really no fun at all.

The parsnips have somehow morphed into monster veg, sadly the photo I took before eating the really big gnarly ones was rubbish so I'll spare you the pain. I expect that some of the ones still waiting to be dug will give a better photo so be patient. Last week I dug some parsnips from the beds in the garden and they were very small, about the size of a large carrot so I was unprepared for the allotment versions, planted at around the same time. One of them was more like a swede with a long root! Luckily a few look like real parsnips rather than the more common multi rooted thing so they have been selected, and washed, ready for the Christmas dinner. I'm not sure OH's family are keen on muddy veg, or small holes in their potatoes so there has been more washing and selecting than usual.

I love being able to share home grown veg with friends and family, this year as well as the potatoes and parsnips I'll be taking a few Crown Prince squash as gifts. I think I am more generous with the root veg too, maybe it is to do with the fact it grows underground so I don't impatiently watch it ripening whilst salivating. All requests for soft fruit are ignored.

Busy busy

I am going on holiday on Friday so this weekend was a last ditch attempt to get the plot into some sort of order before I go. Hopefully the weeds won't manage to recover too much whilst I am away. I managed to get all the weeds cut down to the ground with my new shears, it was quite amazing how much of a difference this made, you can actually see that some areas are planted!

After all the rain and the sun it is now perfect seed sowing conditions so I over-exerted myself to get the whole root bed dug over and sowed with 3 rows of carrots, 1 row of beetroot and 1 row of fennel. I also planted out the nasturtiums that OH's gran had kindly given me and the celeriac which was sowed way back at the beginning of March. Hopefully when I return all these seeds, and the parsnips which I sowed 2 weeks ago, should have germinated.

The first pumpkin plant and 2 of the squash plants were planted between the sweetcorn and finally I wanted to get the globe artichokes, which have been looking a little sad in their mini pots, planted out. I cleared an area by the sweetcorn to plant them in and hopefully they will create a barrier between the compost area and the plants to deter the slugs, I can't imagine they like prickly plants.

Parsnips!

All the recent sun has caused my remaining parsnips to start to re-sprout so I decided that today was the day to dig them all up and finally clear the carrot and parsnip bed ready for the year. Half an hour later and I had unearthed a wopping 26 parsnips!

I had no idea there were so many remaining, almost half of them were well over a foot long so I was suddenly in possession of a serious amount of parsnip. The variety that I grew was 'Gladiator' and considering that all I did was drop the seeds into the soil, thin after a few months and then wait it is quite brilliant to have such a good harvest, parsnips are certainly top of the growing list for this year.

40 minutes of washing and drying later and I was ready to start the cooking, 3 of the particularly large ones went into a fantastic spicy parsnip soup, 5 more are destined for roasting and all the others have been par-boiled, cooled and then frozen for later.

The soup was quite amazingly good, thick, creamy and just the right amount of spice, of course I couldn't say all this without sharing the recipe so here it is:

Spicy Parsnip soup

Serves 3-4

Ingredients:
50g unsalted butter
600g parsnips (or turnips, swede, potatoes, or a mixture of all), washed, peeled and cubed
1.5 litres of vegetable stock
1 large onion, peeled and sliced finely
3 tablespoons runny honey
2 teaspoons garam masala
Optional - 150 ml live bio-yoghurt

Melt the butter in a large saucepan over a low heat, then add the onion and heat gently for 5 minutes.

Add the vegetables and stir to coat with the butter, then remove from the heat and drizzle in the honey, stir well to coat evenly.

Pour in the stock and bring to the boil

Simmer until the vegetables are tender, should be about 20 minutes, then cool slightly before liquidizing in the food processor or blender.

Return to the heat and stir through the garam masala and the yoghurt, if using.