Growing food - small garden tips and tricks!
- Thread starter Paul_B
- Start date
Carrots may be cheap but realy don't have the flavour of home grown ones.
Rain bow chard is both decorative and tasty easy to grow.
Beetroot is also great as you can eat the leaves as a salad veg and the stalks of the leaves are also edible. I often use them in a stir fry too. Nothing wasted.
Fresh beans and peas in season are worth it. Runners will give you a years worth with very little effort if you freeze them.
Fruit is always great . Plant a few currant bushes but make sure you can net them as the birds will fight you for them... and win!
Courgettes are simple and prolific or maybe trybutternut squash peppers and aubergine.
Potatoes are easy to grow in a plastic sack or deep pot, I've grown them in those plastic tesco bags for life quite successfully and my butternut squash are presently residing in such a makeshift grow bag and doing well.
Rain bow chard is both decorative and tasty easy to grow.
Beetroot is also great as you can eat the leaves as a salad veg and the stalks of the leaves are also edible. I often use them in a stir fry too. Nothing wasted.
Fresh beans and peas in season are worth it. Runners will give you a years worth with very little effort if you freeze them.
Fruit is always great . Plant a few currant bushes but make sure you can net them as the birds will fight you for them... and win!
Courgettes are simple and prolific or maybe trybutternut squash peppers and aubergine.
Potatoes are easy to grow in a plastic sack or deep pot, I've grown them in those plastic tesco bags for life quite successfully and my butternut squash are presently residing in such a makeshift grow bag and doing well.
Interesting fact I heard about aubergine, a portion of it has the same amount of nicotine as a cigarette. Or a chemical like nicotine. I think that's from either a gardening or cooking programme. Must admit that I thought it would need more sun than North Lancashire can muster to fruit well.
My parents do well with courgettes. Or rather we normally do because they have a habit of going on holiday when it's cropping at it's best. We're left to look after the house while they're away and there's never any left for when they get back. Although we're sick of them by then too.
We need to learn the eastern European habit of pickling and putting fruit and veg into jars for when things are out of season. I know someone who lived in Bulgaria and there's a strong grow your own and preserving tradition there. People turn up at mountain huts with jars of fruit and veg in winter season for example.
My parents do well with courgettes. Or rather we normally do because they have a habit of going on holiday when it's cropping at it's best. We're left to look after the house while they're away and there's never any left for when they get back. Although we're sick of them by then too.
We need to learn the eastern European habit of pickling and putting fruit and veg into jars for when things are out of season. I know someone who lived in Bulgaria and there's a strong grow your own and preserving tradition there. People turn up at mountain huts with jars of fruit and veg in winter season for example.
I'm thinking courgettes interspersed with nasturtiums. They're nice looking, edible and nice in salads too.
Sorry. Autocorrupt did that. I meant bullasses (or maybe it’s spelled bullesses?) they’re really the same as scuppernongs only one of them is a white and the other a dark grape.
Between damson and sloe??? Ever tried sloes raw before you learnt to recognise them? Spitting feathers for an hour!!!! That was on a local walk where we encountered so many fruits growing in the hedgerows that we certainly got our 5 a day that walk. Everything from blackberry, sloe, damson, probably bullace, various types of plums and different types of apples. Even a few pear trees but I really do not like pears.
I've noticed my local Supermarket have planted a range of Fruit tree around the car park ( which then seem to go to waste ) and have even included Medlars.
I laughed about the sloes
but pears, ripe pears are delicious, and absolutely wonderful dried. They become almost like chewing a toffee
Today I've got some more beautiful blackberries and a few... very few elderberries to make syrup.
I'm seeing some lovely rosehip and will make some vitamin c rich syrup with those too. If I can get enough maybe rosehip jam. Delicious. .. but a lot of work getting all the seeds out. The bigger garden hips are best for jam. Wild hips are too fiddly for me so I use wild for syrup and Rosa rugosa hips for jam.
I'm seeing some lovely rosehip and will make some vitamin c rich syrup with those too. If I can get enough maybe rosehip jam. Delicious. .. but a lot of work getting all the seeds out. The bigger garden hips are best for jam. Wild hips are too fiddly for me so I use wild for syrup and Rosa rugosa hips for jam.
Me too. I think the best bit is that they're big enough, with thick enough flesh around the seeds, that you can just peel them and leave the seedy innards alone.
I bought me a new tattie peeler. It wasn't very expensive, but it's the best one I've ever had. It's made by the same folks that make Swiss Army knives It's excellent for the rosehips.
www.ajstuarts.com
That said, a wee sharp paring knife and it's easy enough.
M
Edit, just read the postage from those folks; wouldn't recommend it !
It was that version of the tattie peeler though.
I bought me a new tattie peeler. It wasn't very expensive, but it's the best one I've ever had. It's made by the same folks that make Swiss Army knives
It's excellent for the rosehips.Victorinox Potato Peeler | AJ Stuart
Making peeling quick and easy, the Victorinox Potato Peeler effortlessly glides through the skin of potatoes and other vegetables.
M
Edit, just read the postage from those folks; wouldn't recommend it !
It was that version of the tattie peeler though.
It's something about the texture of them I don't like. I actually gag on them when I try to eat them. I know I'm weird about food sometimes.I laughed about the sloes
Thanks, but no. Ours are a variety of grapes. They’re vines that are grown either on trellises are on a fence row. They also often grow wild with the vines climbing trees. We eat them raw, make jelly from them, and also wine.
Try a different varietal. There are nearly as many varietals of pears as there are of apples. And like apples, they range in texture from soft and mushy to firm. From a minimum juiceless to dripping down your shirt. From sweet to tart.
They can have a kind of gritty mouthfeel at times.....make pear leather with them or pear butter, instead. Just use the juice and not the flesh for them.
Basically cut up pears (remove the wee flower stamens bit, otherwise you'll be fishing black specks out of everything) add very little water, just enough to stop them sticking and burning while they cook down to mush. Mash them up with the tattie masher, and then hang the mush in a jelly bag or tied up cloth to drip through. You can do it in a sieve but you end up with some of the flesh through that way.
Just simmer down the juice to make the butter, or spread the thickened paste out on silicon sheets and put into the oven or dehydrator.
Absolutely briliant
Availability in the grocery store is pretty much a given here but regarding the selection we’re in the same boat: generally only two varietals available. Either the common Bartlet, or a large golden Asian Pear. That said, if the point is to decide whether or not you want to grow a pear tree in your garden you should probably be sampling those from local friends and nurseries with them. That way if you find one you do like you’ll know it’ll thrive there.
