Just a quick blog while waiting for the television highlights of this evening's Carling Cup matches. I've managed not to blog on City so far, but I just can't hold it off any longer.
We had a great match this evening, after initially letting Scunthorpe equalise in the first half. Another four goals made up for the defensive error. It was especially pleasing to see Michael Johnson get a goal after a long, long time fighting injury. He has taken a lot of stick from some fans for being seen socialising while out injured. He is a lot heavier now than he was a couple of years ago, but he is older, has probably been on steroids and seems fit enough now. He certainly seems to have plenty of muscle if that 27-yard rocket is anything to go by.
Happy days...
Wednesday 28 October 2009
Monday 26 October 2009
Yummy Mash
The clocks have gone back, the slow cooker is out on the worktop more often, and the delights of mashed potatoes are calling... There’s nothing too unhealthy about mashed spuds but given how important a varied diet is, here’s a few tweaks and alternatives which you could incorporate into your meals this winter:
- Save the water you cooked them in, and then add it back in when you mash them. This means you need less butter and/or milk for a creamy taste.
Instead of butter, try adding extra virgin olive oil or avocado oil – they are both rich in monounsaturated fatty acids. - Given how full of antioxidants herbs and spices are, experiment with any flavours you fancy. Mustard is a well-known addition, but what about pesto, wasabi, chives, shredded basil or turmeric, to name a few?
- Add practically any other root vegetables as you boil the potatoes. Carrots, swedes, celeriac, parsnips and turnips are all good, but you can also add non-root vegetables like cauliflower for the last few minutes. You’ve increased your portions of vegetables at a stroke!
- Talking of adding vegetables, you could also add gently sauteed onions, leeks or spring onions after mashing for a version of colcannon, or lightly cooked shredded cabbage or kale to make bubble and squeak.
- Actually on Saturday night, my husband combined the two suggestions above. He boiled some peeled swedes in Marigold vegetable stock, mashed them and added sauteed leeks – delicious!
Add some cooked Puy lentils after making the mash (you can buy Puy lentils dried and cook them yourselves, saving the leftovers for mash the next night, or buy them cooked in cans or sachets) - Instead of ‘normal’ potatoes, have mashed sweet potatoes instead. My recommendation is not to boil your sweet potatoes as they can absorb a lot of water. Instead, bake them until they start browning after peeling and drizzling with olive oil. Then mash them with a little creme fraiche. Actually you could do this with butternut squash as well.
- I find the flavours of sweet potato and butternut squash go really well with tastes like ginger, cumin, basil and Thai curry paste, so there’s another load of mashes to try.
- As another alternative to mashed potatoes, try straining a can of beans (butter beans are my favourite in this recipe) and gently crushing them before heating in a pan with some olive oil and any fresh herbs you fancy.
- Talking of ‘gently crushing’, instead of peeling your potatoes and mashing them to a lovely smooth texture, you could try leaving their skins on. Then rather than mashing them, just crush them a little. It’s mash but not as we know it!
Finally, you could just cook a few less spuds, leaving more space on your plate for other vegetables. All these suggestions are adding variety to your diet, which means you are getting a greater variety of phytonutrients.
Monday 19 October 2009
Jerusalem Artichokes, by the bucketful
I couldn’t wait any longer – I had to dig up one of my Jerusalem artichokes last week to see how well they had grown. I was absolutely amazed at my harvest. From one tuber planted last spring, I dug up a whole bucket full of little knobbly vegetables, just begging to be turned into tasty soup, or mashed, roasted or sauted. Even after sharing my bounty with bemused neighbours, I still had plenty left to for experimentation. The only problem was the 27 hour power cut which followed, leaving me with lots of peeled and browning chunks of artichoke... (If you are going to peel your artichokes, pop them in some water with the juice of half a lemon to stop them browning too quickly)
Jerusalem artichokes are not related to globe artichokes, and don’t come from Jerusalem – they are in fact members of the sunflower family. It is thought that their name may come from the word, ‘girasole’ which is their name in Italian. They do have an interesting smoky, almost truffly taste, not unlike globe artichokes but as a tuber they are cooked completely differently. You can use them peeled or scrubbed in a variety of recipes where you might use other root vegetables including potatoes. I was attempting to roast them, sprinkled with olive oil, with beetroot when the power went off on Thursday. I did manage at the weekend to make a beautiful soup with leeks, garlic and chicken stock. I strained it through a sieve so it was velvety smooth and added just a dash of cream, so as to not overpower the taste of the artichokes. My guests appeared to like it, though at the time of writing I have not heard if they all survived the alleged downside of artichokes – a rumbly tummy!
The wind-producing powers of artichokes are actually due to their relatively high content of a very useful indigestible carbohydrate called inulin (not insulin). This natural substance preferentially feeds the good bacteria in our gut, meaning it is a ‘prebiotic’. Essentially if you eat more prebiotics than you have good bacteria to eat them, the prebiotics will start to ferment in your gut – hence the gas. The more prebiotics you eat, the more good bacteria your diet can support, so the more will grow – and your health will only benefit in the long term. Thus, adding foods rich in prebiotics to your diet is a great way of improving your gut environment, with positive effects on immune function, mineral absorption and even levels of cholesterol and insulin in the blood. In addition to Jerusalem artichokes, good levels of prebiotics can be found in chicory, garlic, leeks, legumes, asparagus, bananas and other fruit and vegetables.
In theory we can also improve our gut environment by adding probiotics or good bacteria directly to our diet. If you have taken a lot of antibiotics lately and really feel you need to supplement your good bacteria, you may want to go into a good quality healthfood store and ask for a supplement of probiotics, each dose of which contains billions of good bacteria with research to back up its claims – not all good bacteria are the same! Don’t forget - good bacteria are found in fermented foods such natural yoghurt and yoghurt products like kefir ( fermented milk originally from the Caucausus Mountain region) as well as sauerkraut, miso soup and many pickles. These natural unsweetened products are probably a better source of probiotics than the highly-sweetened drinks and yoghurts which are advertised so much lately, especially if you also eat plenty of the prebiotic-containing foods listed above.
Jerusalem artichokes are not related to globe artichokes, and don’t come from Jerusalem – they are in fact members of the sunflower family. It is thought that their name may come from the word, ‘girasole’ which is their name in Italian. They do have an interesting smoky, almost truffly taste, not unlike globe artichokes but as a tuber they are cooked completely differently. You can use them peeled or scrubbed in a variety of recipes where you might use other root vegetables including potatoes. I was attempting to roast them, sprinkled with olive oil, with beetroot when the power went off on Thursday. I did manage at the weekend to make a beautiful soup with leeks, garlic and chicken stock. I strained it through a sieve so it was velvety smooth and added just a dash of cream, so as to not overpower the taste of the artichokes. My guests appeared to like it, though at the time of writing I have not heard if they all survived the alleged downside of artichokes – a rumbly tummy!
The wind-producing powers of artichokes are actually due to their relatively high content of a very useful indigestible carbohydrate called inulin (not insulin). This natural substance preferentially feeds the good bacteria in our gut, meaning it is a ‘prebiotic’. Essentially if you eat more prebiotics than you have good bacteria to eat them, the prebiotics will start to ferment in your gut – hence the gas. The more prebiotics you eat, the more good bacteria your diet can support, so the more will grow – and your health will only benefit in the long term. Thus, adding foods rich in prebiotics to your diet is a great way of improving your gut environment, with positive effects on immune function, mineral absorption and even levels of cholesterol and insulin in the blood. In addition to Jerusalem artichokes, good levels of prebiotics can be found in chicory, garlic, leeks, legumes, asparagus, bananas and other fruit and vegetables.
In theory we can also improve our gut environment by adding probiotics or good bacteria directly to our diet. If you have taken a lot of antibiotics lately and really feel you need to supplement your good bacteria, you may want to go into a good quality healthfood store and ask for a supplement of probiotics, each dose of which contains billions of good bacteria with research to back up its claims – not all good bacteria are the same! Don’t forget - good bacteria are found in fermented foods such natural yoghurt and yoghurt products like kefir ( fermented milk originally from the Caucausus Mountain region) as well as sauerkraut, miso soup and many pickles. These natural unsweetened products are probably a better source of probiotics than the highly-sweetened drinks and yoghurts which are advertised so much lately, especially if you also eat plenty of the prebiotic-containing foods listed above.
Thursday 17 September 2009
Insomnia and Nutrition
If you suffer from insomnia, especially long-term insomnia, you will know that there are many contributory factors. Some are more obvious than others – a snoring bedfellow or wakeful child, anyone? Any form of stress is not normally associated with a good night’s sleep. The effects of being regularly awoken by babies or having your sleep patterns interrupted by shift work may still be obvious years later. Obviously it probably isn’t possible to change some of the factors affecting your sleep, but there may be other things you can do.
‘Sleep hygiene’ refers to all the behaviourial and environmental factors which precede sleep and so can interfere with it - in other words, your evening routine and bedroom set-up. It is generally recommended that people get up at the same time each day and go to bed when they are tired, while making sure that their bedroom is not too hot, cold, noisy or brightly lit. Most authorities on sleep advocate keeping the TV out of the bedroom, as you need to associate your bed with sleep not stimulation.
Coffee, alcohol and nicotine are other stimulants which can interfere with sleep, and as such it is worth avoiding them for several hours (at least) before bedtime. Caffeine for example, speeds up the action of the nervous system as well as other major body systems. Within fifteen minutes of a cup of coffee, the level of adrenaline in your blood rises, triggering an increase in heart rate, breathing rate, urinary output and production of stomach acids. In other words caffeine's effects are the reverse of what you want to happen as you go to sleep. Some people are more sensitive than others to the effects of caffeine and need to remember that it is found not only in coffee and tea, but also chocolate and cola drinks.
What can you eat and drink in the evening to help you sleep better? Tryptophan is an amino acid which is used by the body to make sleep-inducing subtances called serotonin and melatonin. So eating foods rich in tryptophan should help us sleep better, right? And it is an amino acid, so we should eat protein, right? Well, it’s not quite that simple…
Tryptophan is the least plentiful amino acid in a normal meat-eating or vegetarian diet. In order to be used to make serotonin it must first get into the brain, across the protective blood-brain barrier. This can be a problem as it wants to enter the brain using the same transporter molecules as several other, more plentiful amino acids. The best way to give tryptophan a helping hand into the brain is actually to eat a meal, snack or drink which is rich in carbohydrates, with just a little tryptophan-containing protein. Foods which are high in tryptophan include dairy, soy, eggs, meat and poultry, as well as whole grains, pulses, hazelnuts, peanuts, sesame and sunflower seeds. So yet again, traditional ideas are largely backed up by science - good bedtime snacks include a malted hot milk drink, wholegrain cereal and milk or a turkey sandwich. Foods containing calcium as well as tryptophan, such as milk or sesame seeds, are helpful as the calcium can also help convert the trypophan to melatonin. In addition, try to choose complex carbohydrates such as brown bread so that your blood sugar is less likely to drop during the night. Low blood sugar can induce a surge of adrenaline, which may wake you up with a start.
It is worth mentioning that tryptophan takes about an hour to reach the brain, so don’t have your snack or drink too close to bedtime. And eating a high fat snack may slow down your digestion, leaving you with a gurgling stomach at bedtime, so easy on the mayonnaise in your sandwich!
My parents always drank a milky coffee at about 10pm – a ritual which fills me with horror, as I personally struggle to sleep if I have had a sniff of a cup of tea after about lunchtime! This is a prime example of how different we all are, and why we need to experiment to figure out what works best for each of us as individuals.
‘Sleep hygiene’ refers to all the behaviourial and environmental factors which precede sleep and so can interfere with it - in other words, your evening routine and bedroom set-up. It is generally recommended that people get up at the same time each day and go to bed when they are tired, while making sure that their bedroom is not too hot, cold, noisy or brightly lit. Most authorities on sleep advocate keeping the TV out of the bedroom, as you need to associate your bed with sleep not stimulation.
Coffee, alcohol and nicotine are other stimulants which can interfere with sleep, and as such it is worth avoiding them for several hours (at least) before bedtime. Caffeine for example, speeds up the action of the nervous system as well as other major body systems. Within fifteen minutes of a cup of coffee, the level of adrenaline in your blood rises, triggering an increase in heart rate, breathing rate, urinary output and production of stomach acids. In other words caffeine's effects are the reverse of what you want to happen as you go to sleep. Some people are more sensitive than others to the effects of caffeine and need to remember that it is found not only in coffee and tea, but also chocolate and cola drinks.
What can you eat and drink in the evening to help you sleep better? Tryptophan is an amino acid which is used by the body to make sleep-inducing subtances called serotonin and melatonin. So eating foods rich in tryptophan should help us sleep better, right? And it is an amino acid, so we should eat protein, right? Well, it’s not quite that simple…
Tryptophan is the least plentiful amino acid in a normal meat-eating or vegetarian diet. In order to be used to make serotonin it must first get into the brain, across the protective blood-brain barrier. This can be a problem as it wants to enter the brain using the same transporter molecules as several other, more plentiful amino acids. The best way to give tryptophan a helping hand into the brain is actually to eat a meal, snack or drink which is rich in carbohydrates, with just a little tryptophan-containing protein. Foods which are high in tryptophan include dairy, soy, eggs, meat and poultry, as well as whole grains, pulses, hazelnuts, peanuts, sesame and sunflower seeds. So yet again, traditional ideas are largely backed up by science - good bedtime snacks include a malted hot milk drink, wholegrain cereal and milk or a turkey sandwich. Foods containing calcium as well as tryptophan, such as milk or sesame seeds, are helpful as the calcium can also help convert the trypophan to melatonin. In addition, try to choose complex carbohydrates such as brown bread so that your blood sugar is less likely to drop during the night. Low blood sugar can induce a surge of adrenaline, which may wake you up with a start.
It is worth mentioning that tryptophan takes about an hour to reach the brain, so don’t have your snack or drink too close to bedtime. And eating a high fat snack may slow down your digestion, leaving you with a gurgling stomach at bedtime, so easy on the mayonnaise in your sandwich!
My parents always drank a milky coffee at about 10pm – a ritual which fills me with horror, as I personally struggle to sleep if I have had a sniff of a cup of tea after about lunchtime! This is a prime example of how different we all are, and why we need to experiment to figure out what works best for each of us as individuals.
Monday 7 September 2009
Apples - A Humble 'Superfood'
We keep hearing about ‘superfoods’. The term seems to apply mainly to expensive foods, such as acai berries or pomegranates, which usually need transporting from distant lands. In fact, I can’t think of a single fruit or vegetable which couldn’t be classified as a ‘superfood’. And when you mix as many of them together as possible over the course of a week, you will be eating a super intake of a super variety of nutrients! Much better for you than eating a narrow range of a few superfoods.
Having said that, I suspect a lot of us will be eating a lot of apples in the near future - or at least freezing them or bottling them in jams and jellies. Apples are not as exotic as the glamorous ‘superfoods’, but certainly pack their punch in terms of nutrition. They contain both soluble and insoluble dietary fibre – both of which have their uses. They also contain lots of vitamin C (especially straight after picking from the tree), potassium and B vitamins.
It is the more obscure phytonutrients in apples which really help them up the league of superfoods. These phytonutrients include a wide range of antioxidants such as three different versions of quercetin, procyanidin, coumaric acid and catechin. The peel and the flesh of apples each contain different proportions of different nutrients, meaning we really should eat them both to get all the benefits
It is very hard in research to ‘prove’ that eating a particular food has a particular effect – the strongest conclusion which can usually be drawn is that there is an association between eating the food and the outcome being studied. For example, research links the eating of apples by both pregnant mothers and children with a decrease in asthma. This type of research is backed up by laboratory tests which suggest that apples also help with cardiovascular disease and cancer. But we all knew that, didn’t we? An apple a day…
I’m sure everyone has their favourite apple recipes at this time of year – here’s my Mum’s:
Dorset Apple Cake
Sift 225g of plain flour, 1½ teaspoons of baking powder and at least 1 teaspoon of cinnamon together into a large bowl. Add 115g of sugar.
Peel, core and chop 225g of cooking apples together with the juice of half a lemon – I whizz them briefly in the food processor as we like the apples in small pieces, but you may prefer big chunks.
Beat one egg and mix with 3 tablespoons of milk.
Now add the apples and egg mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well.
Put in an 8” baking tin and sprinkle with 50g of sugar and ½ teaspoon of cinnamon.
Bake at 180°C for about 40 minutes before leaving it to cool in the tin.
Having said that, I suspect a lot of us will be eating a lot of apples in the near future - or at least freezing them or bottling them in jams and jellies. Apples are not as exotic as the glamorous ‘superfoods’, but certainly pack their punch in terms of nutrition. They contain both soluble and insoluble dietary fibre – both of which have their uses. They also contain lots of vitamin C (especially straight after picking from the tree), potassium and B vitamins.
It is the more obscure phytonutrients in apples which really help them up the league of superfoods. These phytonutrients include a wide range of antioxidants such as three different versions of quercetin, procyanidin, coumaric acid and catechin. The peel and the flesh of apples each contain different proportions of different nutrients, meaning we really should eat them both to get all the benefits
It is very hard in research to ‘prove’ that eating a particular food has a particular effect – the strongest conclusion which can usually be drawn is that there is an association between eating the food and the outcome being studied. For example, research links the eating of apples by both pregnant mothers and children with a decrease in asthma. This type of research is backed up by laboratory tests which suggest that apples also help with cardiovascular disease and cancer. But we all knew that, didn’t we? An apple a day…
I’m sure everyone has their favourite apple recipes at this time of year – here’s my Mum’s:
Dorset Apple Cake
Sift 225g of plain flour, 1½ teaspoons of baking powder and at least 1 teaspoon of cinnamon together into a large bowl. Add 115g of sugar.
Peel, core and chop 225g of cooking apples together with the juice of half a lemon – I whizz them briefly in the food processor as we like the apples in small pieces, but you may prefer big chunks.
Beat one egg and mix with 3 tablespoons of milk.
Now add the apples and egg mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well.
Put in an 8” baking tin and sprinkle with 50g of sugar and ½ teaspoon of cinnamon.
Bake at 180°C for about 40 minutes before leaving it to cool in the tin.
Thursday 16 July 2009
Beautiful Beets
My only experience of beetroot as a child was pickled beetroot, with an overpowering taste of vinegar. Thanks to our local vegetable suppliers (Ken and Thelma), I have discovered the joys of young, tender beetroot which are a world away from the pickled beetroot of my childhood.
Beetroot contains lots of vitamin C, fibre, potassium, magnesium, manganese, and folic acid. As a root vegetable, they do contain a lot of natural sugars, which makes them suitable for the cake recipe below in the same way that carrots are used. Flavonoids give beetroot their beautiful purple colour (though golden beetroot are also available) and also their anti-inflammatory properties. The leafy tops are an excellent source of beta-carotene, iron and calcium, and when young and crisp can be eaten raw or cooked like spinach.
A small study last year indicated that the nitrate content of beetroots could help lower blood pressure, though the participants were drinking 500ml of beetroot juice, which is quite a lot as it can have a fairly strong taste. I sometimes suggest to clients that they juice beetroot with carrots, apples and/or oranges, though another idea is to juice just beetroot with a little root ginger, possibly topping it up with ginger ale to taste.
Thanks to a recent glut of beetroot, I have been trying to be creative with both sweet and savoury recipes. Beetroot and chocolate cake is usually pretty popular, and can be made with either wheat flour or gluten-free with equally good results:
· Whisk together three large eggs with 220g of sugar until light and fluffy
· Add 200ml of good quality vegetable oil (I use cold pressed rapeseed oil), 1 teaspoon of vanillla essence and 250g of beetroot which you have previously cooked and grated finely*
· Fold in 75g of cocoa powder, 180g of plain flour and 2 teaspoons of baking powder.
· I usually use this mix to make one small round cake and a batch of buns, so you need to adjust baking times according to the size of your cakes, but check with a skewer after anything between about 25 and 40 minutes at 180°C.
* You can either boil your beetroot or bake them in foil until tender. Just chop the tops off about an inch away from the root, scrub the root and cook. Then after they are cooked, top and tail the roots and rub the skin off.
I also used cooked beetroot to make a tasty dip recently. I whizzed a couple of small, cooked and peeled beetroot with about a third of a tin of rinsed chickpeas, about 50g of diced fetta cheese and a big glug of olive oil. Add a little extra water if it is too thick, and black pepper to taste. You shouldn’t need to add salt as the fetta is usually quite salty. I did make it again without the chickpeas, but I think they do improve both the taste and the texture. You can add the rest of the tin to a salad for protein. If you still have any beetroot puree left over, try adding it to risotto at the last minute for a glorious pink dinner!
Finally, if you do eat a lot of beetroot, you may notice that it can give an indication of your ‘bowel transit time’! Amusing as this is to the less mature among us, it can also be quite a useful as an indicator of your digestive system. Too slow a transit time (more than 24 hours) could indicate a sluggish digestion which gives your body time to absorb excessive toxins and may increase the risk of colon diseases. If it takes less than 12 hours for the beetroot colour to appear, food may be passing through your digestion so quickly that you don’t have time to absorb nutrients, perhaps due to an infection, food intolerance or stress.
Beetroot contains lots of vitamin C, fibre, potassium, magnesium, manganese, and folic acid. As a root vegetable, they do contain a lot of natural sugars, which makes them suitable for the cake recipe below in the same way that carrots are used. Flavonoids give beetroot their beautiful purple colour (though golden beetroot are also available) and also their anti-inflammatory properties. The leafy tops are an excellent source of beta-carotene, iron and calcium, and when young and crisp can be eaten raw or cooked like spinach.
A small study last year indicated that the nitrate content of beetroots could help lower blood pressure, though the participants were drinking 500ml of beetroot juice, which is quite a lot as it can have a fairly strong taste. I sometimes suggest to clients that they juice beetroot with carrots, apples and/or oranges, though another idea is to juice just beetroot with a little root ginger, possibly topping it up with ginger ale to taste.
Thanks to a recent glut of beetroot, I have been trying to be creative with both sweet and savoury recipes. Beetroot and chocolate cake is usually pretty popular, and can be made with either wheat flour or gluten-free with equally good results:
· Whisk together three large eggs with 220g of sugar until light and fluffy
· Add 200ml of good quality vegetable oil (I use cold pressed rapeseed oil), 1 teaspoon of vanillla essence and 250g of beetroot which you have previously cooked and grated finely*
· Fold in 75g of cocoa powder, 180g of plain flour and 2 teaspoons of baking powder.
· I usually use this mix to make one small round cake and a batch of buns, so you need to adjust baking times according to the size of your cakes, but check with a skewer after anything between about 25 and 40 minutes at 180°C.
* You can either boil your beetroot or bake them in foil until tender. Just chop the tops off about an inch away from the root, scrub the root and cook. Then after they are cooked, top and tail the roots and rub the skin off.
I also used cooked beetroot to make a tasty dip recently. I whizzed a couple of small, cooked and peeled beetroot with about a third of a tin of rinsed chickpeas, about 50g of diced fetta cheese and a big glug of olive oil. Add a little extra water if it is too thick, and black pepper to taste. You shouldn’t need to add salt as the fetta is usually quite salty. I did make it again without the chickpeas, but I think they do improve both the taste and the texture. You can add the rest of the tin to a salad for protein. If you still have any beetroot puree left over, try adding it to risotto at the last minute for a glorious pink dinner!
Finally, if you do eat a lot of beetroot, you may notice that it can give an indication of your ‘bowel transit time’! Amusing as this is to the less mature among us, it can also be quite a useful as an indicator of your digestive system. Too slow a transit time (more than 24 hours) could indicate a sluggish digestion which gives your body time to absorb excessive toxins and may increase the risk of colon diseases. If it takes less than 12 hours for the beetroot colour to appear, food may be passing through your digestion so quickly that you don’t have time to absorb nutrients, perhaps due to an infection, food intolerance or stress.
Wednesday 17 June 2009
Digging for Victory
About 15 years ago, our house was renovated and an extension which housed a butcher’s shop was removed from the front. This left us with a good-sized front garden, especially relative to our wee back garden – but not much skill or knowledge of gardening!
Even though our back garden is only small, it does benefit from having lovely brick walls and a sheltered aspect. So over the last few years we have enjoyed peaches, plums, redcurrents and rhubarb. We have a very vigorous Kiwi vine against the house, but unfortunately, the summer has never been long enough for the Kiwi crop to ripen properly. We also pop broad bean plants among the flowers, and last year grew peas in a tub. Mind you, not a single pea made it into the house – they were all eaten, pods and all, straight off the plant!
So when we had to do some remodelling work to the front garden last year, we decided to have a go at creating a vegetable garden. We dug the whole thing up so that the frost over winter could break up the soil. Then in the spring, Dave made up some wooden-edged raised beds. We wanted the beds to be narrow enough that we did not need to stand on the soil at all, with gravel paths which were just wide enough for access. We added lots of manure from the farm and some lovely river silt which was excess to requirements at a garden down the High Street. We have not grown any of our vegetables from seed this year – we don’t have enough space either in the house or garden for all the seed trays required. Instead we have bought seedlings where we can – the watercress farm, Cressman’s Corner or gifts from friends and relatives. We have lost very few seedlings once planted out, so I don’t think it has cost us much more than buying seeds.
We have been approximately following the principles of ‘square foot gardening’. You plant the vegetables very close together, but make sure you feed them well. So far all we have been doing is to add chicken poo pellets when we plant the seedlings, and that seems to be enough. Our biggest problem this year has been pigeons, pecking at our cabbage seedlings. Not too many slugs or snails have found us this year, perhaps because the garden was bare for the whole of last winter, leaving them with nowhere to hide. We are assuming they will find us sometime soon! Caterpillars have started to appear, but my rather blood-thirsty children seem happy to go caterpillar hunting most evenings. We like to throw pests like snails and caterpillars into the High Street for the passing cars to deal with – apologies to any cyclists passing at the time!
We have been pleasantly surprised by how little work the garden is, especially now that the vegetables have grown enough to suppress a lot of weeds. It’s literally a couple of minutes here and there, plus the joy of harvesting immediately before eating. So far we have enjoyed a variety of salad leaves, a couple of broad beans and peas, plus a lovely pointy cabbage – oh, and one lovely little round carrot, eaten while writing this article! I can’t wait for the Jerusalem artichokes, pink fir apple potatoes, sweetcorn and beetroot.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell anyone about how much more nutritious freshly picked produce is compared to stuff which has been stored for weeks – or how much more tasty it is!
Even though our back garden is only small, it does benefit from having lovely brick walls and a sheltered aspect. So over the last few years we have enjoyed peaches, plums, redcurrents and rhubarb. We have a very vigorous Kiwi vine against the house, but unfortunately, the summer has never been long enough for the Kiwi crop to ripen properly. We also pop broad bean plants among the flowers, and last year grew peas in a tub. Mind you, not a single pea made it into the house – they were all eaten, pods and all, straight off the plant!
So when we had to do some remodelling work to the front garden last year, we decided to have a go at creating a vegetable garden. We dug the whole thing up so that the frost over winter could break up the soil. Then in the spring, Dave made up some wooden-edged raised beds. We wanted the beds to be narrow enough that we did not need to stand on the soil at all, with gravel paths which were just wide enough for access. We added lots of manure from the farm and some lovely river silt which was excess to requirements at a garden down the High Street. We have not grown any of our vegetables from seed this year – we don’t have enough space either in the house or garden for all the seed trays required. Instead we have bought seedlings where we can – the watercress farm, Cressman’s Corner or gifts from friends and relatives. We have lost very few seedlings once planted out, so I don’t think it has cost us much more than buying seeds.
We have been approximately following the principles of ‘square foot gardening’. You plant the vegetables very close together, but make sure you feed them well. So far all we have been doing is to add chicken poo pellets when we plant the seedlings, and that seems to be enough. Our biggest problem this year has been pigeons, pecking at our cabbage seedlings. Not too many slugs or snails have found us this year, perhaps because the garden was bare for the whole of last winter, leaving them with nowhere to hide. We are assuming they will find us sometime soon! Caterpillars have started to appear, but my rather blood-thirsty children seem happy to go caterpillar hunting most evenings. We like to throw pests like snails and caterpillars into the High Street for the passing cars to deal with – apologies to any cyclists passing at the time!
We have been pleasantly surprised by how little work the garden is, especially now that the vegetables have grown enough to suppress a lot of weeds. It’s literally a couple of minutes here and there, plus the joy of harvesting immediately before eating. So far we have enjoyed a variety of salad leaves, a couple of broad beans and peas, plus a lovely pointy cabbage – oh, and one lovely little round carrot, eaten while writing this article! I can’t wait for the Jerusalem artichokes, pink fir apple potatoes, sweetcorn and beetroot.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell anyone about how much more nutritious freshly picked produce is compared to stuff which has been stored for weeks – or how much more tasty it is!
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