Shoots and leaves...
The whims and woes, highs and lows, of trying to grow fruit and veg in Nordic latitudes.
I picked TWELVE cucumbers this afternoon. Not too sure what I will do with them... Soup, tabbouleh salad, tzatziki, sandwiches... they won't get thrown away! I must admit I prefer the variety we grew last year as they were longer, more slender and didn't have so many pips inside. Also pulled more carrots, more beetroot, picked lots of french beans, a few runner beans, some aubergines, tomatoes and rucola/rocket. I finally got around to earthing up the jerusalem artichokes. I think we will leave them in the ground until it starts snowing - with experience, there is little point in digging them up and storing them. Maybe we will get some flowers on them this year - they look like sunflowers when they bloom. I'm taking all the red onions back to Espoo, it is easier to store them there, where we need them. They have dried out nicely this year, so hopefully they will keep longer. We have two different cultivars of french bean and I prefer "Tendersweet" which are a slightly darker green, straighter and are more like the "très fins" haricots that you get in France. The other variety (can't remember the name) very quickly plump up and you need to pick them twice a day to get the slender ones.
We also planted two cultivars of carrot. These are the early nantaise and I pull them up when they are still quite small and slender. They are nice and sweet and they freeze well (I blanch them whole), though I try to eat them fresh rather than freeze them. We have a later variety which is not ready yet. I will let those fatten up before I pull them. last year we froze some and clamped the rest in the root cellar when we ran out of freezer space. When we cleared out the root cellar before putting the honey primers up there, we found a box of carrots almost one year old, and still OK to eat (we gave them to the sheep). I wish I had grown more kohl rabi. We started eating kohl rabi in Hungary (2000-1): I bought some from the market and then asked Kati (a Hungarian lady who actually spoke English) what to do with them. So she showed me how to make soup. You can also eat them raw in salads, best picked when still quite small. They look like sputniks... or tennis balls that have sprouted. And you can stick them in stews. Easy to grow and not as susceptible to cabbage fly as the other brassicas.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
July 2020
|