Growing

Late December Garden Update

Strawberries starting to fruit at the end of December

December this year has been very mild. Indeed, the Met Office are reporting that here in England it has been the warmest December since records began in 1910. We have certainly seen that here in our garden and elsewhere. With daytime temperatures between 10 and 14°C, many of our strawberry plants are convinced that it’s spring, as the photo above shows. With no threat of frosts we have left many of our beetroots to be harvested and we are still picking them fresh as and when we require them. Even our dwarf clementine tree still sits in the front garden…

The 2015 winter squash harvest - more variety than you'd find in your local supermarket!

With the squash growing season now well and truly over here in the East of England, we are delighted to be able to able to share some photos of our very successful 2015 squash harvest. As long time readers will know, we only moved into our house and had use of its garden from May this year. We got off to a bit of a slow start due to other demands such as unpacking, work and raising children. But once we got the time we really went for it in the garden. One of our biggest projects was removing the…

Roasted or baked - which is best?

We’ve had a great year for beetroot. We didn’t plant many seeds, but from the little space we dedicated to them we’ve had a decent crop. We’ve never actually grown beetroot before, so we haven’t had a lot of experience of cooking them in a way that makes the most of them. After our first harvest, we both fondly recalled an episode of the BBC’s Great British Food Revival, in which Antonio Carluccio simply baked a beetroot in a bucket outdoors and seemed to enjoy it immensely. We were eager to somehow replicate that experience, but with the days getting…

Our homegrown quince poached in syrup served with some clotted cream - yum!

Here at Slightly Self-Sufficient HQ, we love quinces. This fascination started about four years ago when we followed a Nigel Slater recipe for a Christmas pudding which called for a couple of quinces. Neither of us had ever used one before, and we found them astonishingly difficult to source. Then, in a remarkable act of serendipity, I started helping at a local community garden and found that there was a quince tree growing there. It had been a poor year for them, but I was told to help myself. So I took the two we needed for the recipe and…

The entirety of the second batch of chestnut mushrooms.

I thought it time I posted an update on our mushroom growing project. I posted back in July how we had harvested (and thoroughly enjoyed) our first batch of chestnut mushrooms, and that despite the warnings in the instructions that allowing them to grow too large would result in a smaller second crop, we let them grow too large. Well just a week after posting that, another decent sized mushroom grew and it looked as though a few more were on their way too. So we harvested the fully formed mushroom and waited eagerly for the rest to mature. But…

A 'Turk's Turban' Squash Growing in the Pumpkin Patch. There are a couple of smaller ones too.

Here at Slightly Self-Sufficient HQ we’ve been very excited about growing our own winter squashes. We’ve never had enough space to grow them before. We did try a dwarf ‘Butternut’ squash variety last year in a large pot, but it didn’t produce any fruit. So upon seeing the garden in our new house for the first time, Liz and I exclaimed in unison that we could finally grow squashes! Why have we been so excited to grow winter squashes? First and foremost, they make for excellent eating. They are a very versatile ingredient. They make fantastic soups and, unlike their…

All from the borders of the vegetable patch - great fun for adults and younger helpers alike!

I took a day’s holiday from work today as we had things to do in the morning. We had finished all of the important things we had to do by late morning, so we took the opportunity to get the kids out into the garden to harvest some soft fruits. We have several plum trees in and around our garden that are laden with ripe plums. In truth there are too many, they are mostly self-seeded and are too close together. Lately when I’ve been working in the garden they’ll be a small thudding sound every five minutes or so,…

The pumpkin patch is coming on leaps on bounds.

Just a quick update from the garden. It’s amazing how much it’s come on in the two months since we really set to work. Particularly the crops that we didn’t plant until we moved in, for example everything in the pumpkin patch (every single plant in the image above), the runner beans, potatoes, beetroot and parsnips, to name but a few. Much to the kids’ excitement we’ve recently started harvesting our blueberries (potted plants we brought with us). Our potatoes have started dying back too, so the kids can get their hands dirty harvesting them soon (probably their favourite garden…

Charred, soft, moist and slightly salted courgette slices.

Last weekend we harvested our first courgettes of the year, and we’ve been doing so regularly ever since. The week before had been a busy one for me, and I’d barely found time to get out into the garden. I’d seen that there were some courgettes just about ready, but I left them for the weekend. The weekend came and we were away visiting family all day Saturday, and it wasn’t until Sunday afternoon that I got out into the garden. There had been a lot of rain on Friday and Saturday (I’m sure I heard somewhere that we had…

Galina tomatoes (left), a Siberian large yellow cherry tomato with a long growing season.

I thought I’d take a little time to post about the variety of tomato that I have probably grown in more seasons than any other: the Galina tomato. This is a potato-leafed vine variety that produces high yields of large yellow cherry tomatoes. I have grown these every year since 2011 (making this the fifth successive year). When I first grew these I had never tried a yellow tomato before. That was part of the appeal – that year I also grew Black Cherry and Green Zebra tomatoes. Over the last couple of years I have noticed supermarkets starting to…

Slightly Self-Sufficient

Tasting The Good Life

Growing

Late December Garden Update

The 2015 Squash Harvest

Cooking Beetroot – Two Methods

Poached Quinces in Syrup

Last Batch of Mushrooms Harvested

Pumpkin Patch Update

A Fun Day Harvesting in the Garden

Early August Garden Update

Griddled Courgettes

Galina Tomatoes