Crouchended
Life in Crouch End, bikes, trying to be green and other randomnessArchive for Food
Asparagus, Broad beans and Garlic
Very little can be started off in the veggie plot at this time of year – but there are a few things that can get started, that like the cold and provide some winter joy. Asparagus isn’t one of them, but this is a good time of year to plant crowns of asparagus. These are young plants of one year, which can be transplanted live and replanted in another plot. This is very much a long term effort. Although some tasty stems will grow next year, they must be left to add strength to the plants, meaning that in 2009 we should have a good crop of purple asparagus. In the mean time it is important to feed the plants as much as possible. I dug in lots of manure beneath the crowns before planting them – which should nourish the young shoots. I’m then going to inter-plant some broad-beans in the bed. As these are legumes, when they have died back in may/june their roots will be full of nitrogen, as they decay below ground this Nitrogen is released by bacteria into the soil.
There are other crops that are still in the soil that are overwintering are parsnips, cabbages, kale and broccoli. With some luck some of my Swiss Chard will survive too. I’m trying to overwinter some chilli plants and aubergines in little pots.
The best thing I’ve discovered so far for winter is garlic – i ordered a mixed set of planting garlic from the Isle of Wight garlic farm – from which I’ve planted about 80 cloves, each of which should end up as 80 bulbs between May and August. There are seven different varieties – so they should be ready to lift at different times. In the mean time they push up green shoots , not unlike leeks (same family!) which give some green to the bleak winter garden.
Onion Selling Frenchman
On Friday at around 5pm there was a man stood by a bicycle in crouch end outside Woolworths, on the bike were bunches on onions and shallots. There was a small notice on the bike saying “stop me and buy one” so i did. The man had a ridiculously thick French accent, which led me to think he wasn’t actually French, but regardless he has plaited bunches of shallots and pink sweet onions for sale for £2. I bought some shallots, and very nice they are too (here they are hanging in my kitchen). No one else i know has seen him there before – did anyone else stop and buy onions? I should have taken his picture, but it was Friday night, I wanted to get home….but Paul kindly has taken a picture and put it on his site!.
Pumpkins
Kids have been wandering the streets in Halloween garb, there were fantastic fireworks at Alexandra Palace last night – this is the time of year when you get some amazing winter squash and pumpkins. There were some incredible huge examples at Borough Market on Saturday – some of these are the size of a small child!
Hummus is the cause of middle class angst
Areas of london are judged by their media consumption – a quick search on Upmystreet.com confirms that there are lots of people near me who read the Guardian. You could also argue that you can tell much from an area by the amount of space in the chiller cabinets of the local shops dedicated to Hummus. Or at least, that’s what I suddenly realised on the way home when i stopped in at Londis on Ferme Park Road. I was buying Milk – my eyes got drawn to a fridge with about 10 different varieties of Hummus, plus similar varieties sold by different brands. It has made me wonder – how bad is the hummus habit of the Crouch End middle class that it can support beetroot hummus? Ok so I made that one up – literally, I’m so far gone that my own habit means only homemade hummus can satisfy the cravings. Over the next few weeks I’m going to note how many different varieties there are on offer in different local outlets – prepare to be shocked!
Different Veg
These are white carrots, Kuttiger carrots, which I decided to try as an alternative to orange carrots. I’ve decided that this is going to be my approach with the majority of the stuff I try to grow, if you can buy it in Tescos I’m not interested – variety is the spice of life! These have a wonderful taste, a bit like a cross between a carrot and a parsnip. That might just be my mind telling me that because they look like parsnips.
Very Local Food
It doesn’t get much more local than this - Central Hornsey and District allotments and horticultural society are having a produce sale at their annual show at the Moravia Hall on Priory Road at 2pm on Saturday September 8th – I’m definitely going to take a look in!
CHADAHS Annual Show
The Annual Show for the Central Hornsey and District Allotments and Horticultural Society takes place on Saturday September 8th, at the Moravian Church Hall in Priory Road, N8, on the corner of Redston Road, close to the lower entrance to Alexandra Palace (buses 144, W3 and W7). See below for a form if you wish to enter one or more things you have grown or made.
The Show is one of the largest in London and is now in its 58th year and more popular than ever.
Along with exhibits of vegetables, fruit and flowers, arts and crafts and the children’s art competition, there will be plenty for visitors to enjoy all afternoon, from stalls selling plants, vegetables, flowers, honey, hand-made cards, to the exhibits of flowers, fruit and vegetables, plus artwork, and not forgetting the delicious teas with home-made cakes and the exciting End of Show Auction of produce of all sorts. All this plus a raffle, gardening quiz, tombola, caption competition and Guess the weight of the cake!
The Show starts at 2pm, prizes will be presented by the Mayor at 3.30pm, and ends with the Auction of cakes, fruit and flowers at 4.30pm. Entry is 30p.
Gormet Burger Kitchen/Wild Berry Cafe
June has been horrible, july not much better.
I noticed as i was walking down Topsfield Parade that the Wild Berry Cafe has closed, and in its place will be a branch of the Gormet Burger Kitchen.
I’m not convinced that Crouch End needs another chain restaurant, but then i never stepped foot in the Wild Berry Cafe either.
There seems to be some work happening at the Creamery (shut since I can remember) which would be interesting – as it seems a shame for such an ideal location to be left derelict.
May Harvest
It’s June, and all of a sudden the weather has gone from almost wintery, to distinctly summery. About time too. What’s more the increased day length and fall of solar radiation means that everything is suddenly growing at a rate of knots – keeping everything under control is a challenge.
Now that things are coming on apace i thought I’d summarize what I managed to harvest during May – not very much as most of the things I am growing either become fully mature in July/August, or I gave away the plants that had made the best progress as presents……
Still – we managed
20 radish (French breakfast)
4 rather mangy “January King” cabbages that didn’t really form heads.
2 bowls mixed salad leafs
3/4 swiss chard leaves
1 Artichoke Globe head
Container Vegetables
A challenge in a small urban space is to make the most of the area you have available for growing. This means growing things up walls, on widow sills, or improvising something else completely. Hanging baskets hang from the most suprising places, and they have the added advantage of not getting too cold – at my last flat we had no outside space, but there was a dead satellite dish that was adept at carrying 2 hanging baskets without breaking sweat.
Here’s some of the things i’ve been trying:
This is a basket with a big bush tomato (Smadar i think – although annoyingly Garden organic don’t list them at the moment so i can’t link), a Hungarian Hot Wax pepper, severely nibbled by a slug the somehow managed to get into the mini bottle clotch (there’s a little shoot or recovery but it is slow progress). There’s also a little Cinnamon Basil seedling, this should help add some flavour to the tomato, and the three plants together are complimentary.
This Butternut squash seedling in a patio pot is protected from snails with the copper tape around the base of the pot. The canes are for training the plant up. Amazingly butternut squashes are supposed to be good climbers, I only realised this last year when in a fit of boredom i had a look at the types of squash you can grow to eat…. last year the plants went in the soil, snaking between flower beds. The slugs and snails had a field day.
This is a window box of salad. Quite excited about this because last year just a tiny pot of cut and come again salads produced loads of leaves, and this year we have about 3 of these on the go – plus some odds and sods elsewhere. The leaves in this one are Rocket, Miznou, Corn Salad, and Giant Red Mustard. The thing that impressed me is how much more flavour the leaves have than shop or grocer bought.
Lastly the potatoes, they have come along somewht since the last picture – i’m now having to remove flower buds from the top of the ones in the black bucket, so that they work more on producing tubers than flowers… not long until the first new potatoes – <fingers crossed very tight> 
12 Things to do with the vegetable patch in May
The Guardian allotment blog has a new post suggesting a 12 Step Plan from Gardening Guru Caroline Foley for making the most out of May. To my joy we’ve already got some of these things underway – hurrah! Others will be a bit more tricky…..
Here’s what she she suggests and what we have done,
1. Prepare the ground by warming it for a couple of weeks with black plastic ready for sowing French and runner beans and the Cucurbits, or cucumber family. Marrows, courgettes, outdoor cucumbers and pumpkins can be sown in situ in May- or a little later depending on your precise location. Err on the cautious side as they won’t survive the smallest whiff of frost. If there is an unexpected chill, cover them with newspaper or fleece at night.
We have already got the baby courgette plants in the ground, they are ready to go into pots and under the Fig tree this weekend.
Constanza beans: photo Howard Sooley2. Check out interesting varieties. Try black or yellow French beans or the ‘Fire tongue’ bean -the classic speckled Italian bean for drying – ‘Barlotto Lingua di Fuoco nano’. For stockist. French beans do a triple act – they turn from green bean to haricot and have a final flourish as a flageolet bean.
Our climbing beans are Barlotto Lingua di Fuoco and Neckar Gold varieties – i’m quite exited about the possibility that they might cross and make something really weird. There are some dwarf yellow beans as well that should be good.
3. Try salsify – an intriguing vegetable. It tastes like oysters and is pretty enough for the flower border. To get straight roots, use a trick of the show bench and make funnel shaped holes with an iron bar. Fill with the sandy soil before sowing.
No salsify …..
4. Sow maincrop beetroot and leeks, winter cabbage, sprouting broccoli, kale, swedes and Swiss chard now for winter eating.
I’ve got calabrese, cabbages, and swiss chard ready to go into beds.
5. To beat the drought and to get enough water down to the roots economically, saw off the bottoms of plastic soft drinks bottles with a serrated knife (or get hold of short sections of plastic pipe) and sink them along the row so you can target the water accurately.
This is cunning, although i’m not entirely sure of what she means, I’m protecting the small seedlings with bottle cloches to fend off birds and slugs.
6. Get going on cut-and-come-again salads and stir-fry leaves. This can save you a fortune and is so easy to do. Look for many different mixes – Italian, French, oriental etc. etc. Sprinkle a few seeds every couple of weeks for non-stop production. For non-organic culinary herbal mixes i.e. ‘Nice ‘n’ Spicy’, ‘Meek ‘n’ Mild’and ‘Cut ‘n’ Cook’. Organic growers should check here.
I’ve got a whole load of seed from last year of salad greens i got from Woolworths, there’s a good mix of leaves, home grown Rocket seems to have twice the taste. It’s going into window boxes at the weekend – going to be a busy one….
7. Tuck straw (preferably barley straw) under strawberries and cut off all but a few of the runners so the plants can put their energy into the fruits.
We have 3 Strawberry plants in hanging baskets, they’ve not got any runners I can see yet but i’ll be sure to cut them off if i find them.
8. Nip off the tender top shoots of broad beans where the blackfly loves to assemble.
No broad beans this year, although they were really easy to grow last year.
9. Plant rosemary and thyme. They confuse pests that go by smell with their pungent volatile oils.
Missing both of these except for a woody rosemary bush in one corner.
10. Sow the seed of the old-fashioned cottage garden plants – love-in-a-mist, bee balm nasturtiums, marigolds, the poached egg plant and cornflowers. They will brighten up your plot, provide camouflage and draw in friendly predators.
We’re trying Marigolds, Nasturtiums… but we’d love to have ….
11. Make predators even more at home by providing insect hotels, bug boxes and habitat towers. Examples to copy or to buy can be seen on www.harrodhorticultural.com Click on ‘Caring for Nature’.
A bug box! I can never quite justify the expense.
12. Net all fruits unless you are happy to share them with the birds. Put up bird feeders instead.
The birds have our cats to fear more than i fear the birds nabbing our strawberries – they’ve not brought anything larger than a bee into the house yet, it can only be a matter of time.
