Food planting for the lazy man

[oldtimer]

In my annual attempt to convince myself that spring is really on its way, I have turned my thoughts to what to plant for the coming year. However, I have my usual dilemma and seek advice.

My problem is this. I spend long periods away from home in the summer months and most years I come home in late September early October to excellent crops of dandelions and the like but what I have planted has either gone to seed or rotted and gone to waste. My perpetual spinach is great: it crowds out the weeds and flourishes ready to be picked as a salad or to be cooked and I had a courgette last year that turned into a marrow that made 3 kilos of chutney and a meal for four. The other successes were sweetcorn and beetroot.

I'm on the look out for plants that can virtually look after themselves and have a long harvesting period lasting into late autumn. My vegetables are grown in 6 plots each 2x3 metres in part shade the soil is fairly poor but improving each year with the addition of home made compost. I'm not sure whether it is acid or alkali but it has plenty of Oxforshire stone in it. I have a kind neighbour who sometimes puts water from the butt on the garden during periods of drought if he isn't too busy. I always tell the neighbours to help themselves to produce that is ready, but they all have better stuff than me and seldom bother.

Any suggestions or advice very welcome.

 

[bobnewboy]

If you like it, garlic and horseradish plants seem to go on almost without any effort on my part whatsoever. I love both, so i'm quite happy

 

[Toddy]

Try the Oca; it needs a really long growing season but it's fun to grow and it's good eating too

M

 

[Harvestman]

Rhubarb is pretty self sufficient, and blackcurrants will give you a crop if you just dips cuttings in a rooting powder and shove the ends into the ground.

 

[British Red]

Certainly agree with Oca and Rhubarb. Parsnips are good too. I can supply them all too!

 

[xylaria]

Jerusalem artichokes. And what everyone else has said

Dont scimp on soil nutrition, dig in a good bit of manure and some ash now it will feed your soil for the rest of year. Aldi have fruit trees in cheap st moment, buy in pairs as some arent self fertile. I have never found fruit trees much work, bit of pruning and a waysailing (ash and piddle) and they grow food most years.

 

[crosslandkelly]

Jerusalem artichokes, what lovely soup they make.



Total Time:
1 hr 35 min
Prep:
30 min
Cook:
1 hr 5 min

Yield:
6 to 8 servings

Level:
Easy

Next Recipe
Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds Jerusalem artichokes, scrubbed clean and dried
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 red onion, peeled and sliced
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed lightly with the side of a knife
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
Small bunch fresh thyme, tied with string
4 to 5 cups water (or vegetable stock, if desired)
1 cup heavy cream
Serving suggestion: Crusty sourdough bread or seeded bread

Directions

I brought a handful of Jerusalem Artichokes home from the market, washed and roasted them (skin and all) in the oven with a simple drizzle of olive oil, sea salt, and pepper. I cooked them all the way through as I would a baked potato. I tried roasting them a second time replacing the olive oil with hazelnut oil for even tastier results. Now, the vegetable risks to take over my produce life as I know it! I cut some into thin rounds, fried them and sprinkled them over an arugula salad. Delicious. I thought I had reached my peak with these preparations until I tasted this soup...The combination of roasting and stewing them yields a complex flavor.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

Place 1/2 the Jerusalem artichokes on a baking sheet. Drizzle them with 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place the tray in the center of the oven and cook until they are completely yielding when pierced with the tip of a knife, 30 to 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, slice the rest of the Jerusalem artichokes in 1/2-inch thick slices. Heat a medium pot and add the remaining 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil. Add the onion and garlic and season with salt and pepper. Cook for 5 minutes. Add the thyme and the Jerusalem artichokes slices and stir to blend the ingredients. Check the seasoning. Cook for 5 to 10 minutes and add 4 cups water.

Cook until the Jerusalem artichokes are completely tender, 25 to 30 minutes. If the liquid reduces too much during this cooking time, add the remaining 1 cup water. Remove the roasted ones from the oven, quarter them and add them directly to the soup mixture. Taste for seasoning.

Remove the thyme from the pot. Add the cream. Puree the soup in small batches in the blender (or a hand blender) until smooth. For a more "rustic" texture, puree only 1/2 and leaving the other 1/2 "chunky." Serve with crusty sourdough or a seeded bread to bring out the naturally nutty flavor of the soup.

 

[Nemesis]

Raspberry can survive my lackadaisical husbandry so should be ok.

 

[Quixoticgeek]

I'm not sure about Rhubarb being in season in the Autumn, but it certainly is in the Spring, the rhubarb in my garden I should start harvesting in the next couple of weeks. That's without forcing! The variety is Timperley Early. I get about 40lb a year from 4 plants. I usually get fed up with it by mid to late April.

Blackcurrants I got 15lb from my plants in 2013, I have 8 plants (now 9). They are ready here usually around the 25th of July. Mine are all the same variety, and I harvest them all at once.

Would a late season Apple tree be a good solution?

If you are ok harvesting them for dried beans, you could go for French beans. Different varieties have different colours, and you can get some really pretty harvests, look at some like Borlotti and Ying yang. I got 5lb of green beans, and a few hundred gram of dried beans off a 4' x 4' plot. If I left the green beans on the plant to harvest, I would expect to get a larger harvest of dried beans.

HTH

J

 

[nic a char]

Spuds in containers - mix soil & seaweed below, mulch well to rretain moisture & stop the new tubers getting green.
Jerusalem Artichokes - BRILLIANT! Pheasants love them too...

 

[nic a char]

O I forgot - Golden Wonders stay in the soil longest, and are DELICIOUS baked.

 

[Bowlander]

I love fartichokes! Pretty much maintenance free.

 

[Toddy]

Autumn fruiting raspberries. I was still picking fresh ones at Christmas

M

 

[British Red]

Cardoon. Beautiful and needs no tending.

 

[Harvestman]

This is not a criticism of the OP, but I suspect lazy gardeners are the reason greengrocers came into existance


My approach to gardening is that if it needs my help to survive then it shouldn't be growing there anyway. I'm off down the greengrocer's...

 

[Ogri the trog]

I took the title to be a bit more literal and thought the thread would be discussing the thing I had seen elsewhere recently.

Shot gun shell loaded with seeds - Boom, boom, boom and there it is, done!

ATB

Ogri the trog

 

[BlueTrain]

My father was an active gardener his whole life, once even planting a big field of strawberries. He was very dismissive of any idea that gardening was a lot of work. It isn't and it need not be done in any haste. However, I don't think there is such a thing as absentee gardening.

We had rhubarb growing in one corner of the garden but I never realized it was something you could eat. We also had a shrub of a tree that produced small apples that were a little larger than crabapples. They were as hard as soft pine. Not sure what they were called.

 

[mrcharly]

Jerusalem artichokes, what lovely soup they make.

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Remove the thyme from the pot. Add the cream. Puree the soup in small batches in the blender (or a hand blender) until smooth. For a more "rustic" texture, puree only 1/2 and leaving the other 1/2 "chunky." Serve with crusty sourdough or a seeded bread to bring out the naturally nutty flavor of the soup.

<completing recipe>
Enjoy warming soup. Wait several hours, go to bed.
In middle of night, wake up cold and realise farts have blown duvet off bed.
Shrug and bestow something of your bountiful harvest of artichokes on friends and neighbours.
Three days later, on reading local news reports of 'unexplained wind gusts' in the region, resolve to dig up Jerusalem artichokes.
Do so.
Next season, wonder what it is growing, since you haven't planted in that area yet. Investigate and discover . . . Jerusalem artichokes. Dig up and burn.
Next season, wonder what it is growing, since you haven't planted in that area yet. Investigate and discover . . . Jerusalem artichokes.
Have row with neighbour, because their flowerbeds are now sporting fine crop of . . . Jerusalem artichokes.
.
.
.
One year later, place house on market in winter, vowing to sell before artichokes come up again.

 

[oldtimer]

Brilliant. I knew I could rely on you lot. Just what I wanted. I will take the advice and will report back in the Autumn.I love gobe artichokes but hadn't thought of planting the Jerusalem kind. Since my family regard me as an old f**t anyway they can partake of the excellent recipe for artichoke soup or not as they choose.After SWMBO had recovered from the fit of hysterics brought on by Mc Charly's addendum to the recipe, she told me of the time she had artichoke soup for lunch at the Fitzwilliam Museum when she was teaching at Cambridge. The soup was apparently delicious but the after effect not conducive to a discussion of the finer points of Renaissance painting. Secretly, I suspect some of her comments may have been more apposite than those of colleagues who merely appeared to have been talking out of their ars*s!

 

[nic a char]