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Brandywine Tomato Salad – It’s too easy to be so delicious!
This tomato salad is so simple, that it’s hard to believe quite how delicious it is. The reason for this is the ingredients! I came across this tomato variety years ago when I read James Wong’s book ‘Grow for flavour’. As the title suggests, it’s all about growing food for flavour above anything else. I’d always liked the idea of a large beefsteak tomato, but they always let me down on the flavour front. Brandywine on the other-hand are absolutely delicious, packed with flavour and very few seeds, making them less wet. They are not always the most attractive looking tomato, and they can grow to quite enormous sizes. The…
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Mid-summer – Full Borders and lots to Harvest
One of the things I love about mid-summer are the flower borders full to bursting! They’re simply packed out and filled with colour. But even more importantly, it’s the most productive time in the kitchen garden. The food side of the garden is by far the most time consuming, it doesn’t stop with just growing your own food. At this time of year it’s a constant job picking the fruit and veg, then more importantly preserving the excesses that you can’t eat straight away. The Greenhouse In the greenhouse the gherkins have been going mad for a few weeks now. The best way to preserve these is to pickle them.…
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How to Pickle Gherkins – The quick & easy way
You won’t believe how good these are! This is only my second year growing gherkins, but now having discovered how gorgeous homegrown pickled gherkins are, whilst I’m lucky enough to have a garden, I’ll be growing them! I’ve always enjoyed bought pickled gherkins on a burger and I also use them to make tartar sauce, but these homegrown ones are in a different league of scrumptiousness! It helps that they are so easy to grow. The seeds are large, making them easy to handle. They germinate quickly and once they start growing, you’d better make sure you’ve got something for them to grow up, as they romp away. Little yellow…
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Our Cherry Tree – It’s the cherry on the cake!
It was the garden apprentice that chose this cherry tree. It must be around ten years ago now, and it spent the first few years of its life in a pot. It was one of those spontaneous buys at the garden centre. It was April and as a result it was covered in blossom, making it look magnificent and irresistible! It’s full name is Prunus avium ‘Stella’ and it is a sweet desert cherry. Dark red fruits that can be eaten straight from the tree. Unlike the sour cherry trees which are more commonly grown for their ornamental qualities. I’d always thought that I didn’t like cherries, but it turns…
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Cherry and Courgette Cake
As the cherries on our cherry tree tend to ripen within a short space of time, we bake with them. Turning them into the best Cherry Bakewell you’ve ever tasted, or today a Cherry and Courgette cake. If you grow your own courgettes, you will know that once the plant starts producing fruits, you can hardly keep up! Over the years we’ve come up with no end of uses for them, both raw and cooked. In recent years we have been making cakes with them, as they coincide with our soft fruit harvests. They add bulk, fibre and extra vitamins to our cakes. Rather than eating these delicious confectionaries the…
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Longest Day, Midsummer’s Day & Summer Solstice
As we left all of the Summer Solstice celebrations behind last week, we appear to have left the mini heatwave behind too. It has been lovely having some proper summer weather, allowing us to get outside more. As usual it broke before the weekend which is a shame for all the workers. Although as a gardener I’ve almost been doing a rain-dance, as the garden’s got drier and drier! It’s been crying out for a drink and watering had become a daily job. Even plants in the border were wilting and in need of an occasional soaking. The pond was also getting really low and as I’d put two new…
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Now for something completely different – The Purple Potato Project
My first early purple potatoes are ready! I wasn’t going to grow potatoes this year, as we really don’t eat very many, but when I saw the Purple Potato Project, I couldn’t resist! As I’ve said before, I am drawn to something a bit different, and I already grow so many other purple veg. They don’t actually taste any different, but they are better for you, with antioxidants in. The particular antioxidant they have is anthocyanin – known for its positive health benefits. It is purported to reduce inflammation and protect you from conditions like cancer, heart disease, type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer’s. Anthocyanin is also found in red cabbage…
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The Madness of May!
May is the month when the garden seems to explode. Not only do new flowers appear everyday, but more appear during the day! When I go and open the greenhouse every morning, I have a mooch around. By the time I’m out there at lunchtime, more flowers have opened. The growing rate at this time of year is incredible! I keep toying with putting a time-lapse camera on the tomato plants. They seem to grow from hour to hour! The Edible Garden Crops we are already eating Breakfast has been zinged up now with the start of the rhubarb harvest. We simply stew it in it’s own juices, then eat…
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What’s growing in the kitchen garden
Time to catch up with the kitchen garden and what’s growing in the raised beds. Firstly the four that are rotated each year. The Roots Bed Back in the autumn I planted up half of the root bed with onion sets. I’m growing red onions for the first time this year. I do love them roasted. The other half of the bed has now been sown with the three varieties of beetroot we grow every year. Red Ace, Golden Globe and Choiggia. The Brassica Bed Two small Italian kale plants, sown last year and overwintered in the greenhouse have now gone in. With this warm weather they’ll soon be growing…
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Happy Birthday Walnut Kitchen Garden
This week, marks twelve months since I started this garden blog. Is it me or is time going faster! It’s gone by so quickly. I’ve had such an enjoyable time, writing about the garden each week. And as I have done research for a number of the topics, I’ve leaned a great deal too. To celebrate our first anniversary. I’m going to take you back through the original garden transformation series. And show you where we’re up to today. If you’d like to read any of them again, just press on the titles. Part 1 – Let’s get stuck into the garden makeover! In part one, we did nothing but strip…
