Hey Pesto!

I grow one basil plant under each tomato in the polytunnel. They make good companions for both growing and eating together.

This year's basil plants have reached about a foot tall and it was time to chop off the tops to encourage them to bush out. They will keep growing until late in the year when they eventually die off so we will have a plentiful supply. I don't bother to bring them into the house for winter, preferring to sow new seed each year. Basil is easy to grow.

A basketful of basil tops

I didn't want to waste the cuttings so decided to turn this first basil harvest of the year into pesto for freezing and using later. I prefer my pesto with walnuts rather than pine nuts - I have them in stock for starters.
There were many recipes on the interweb, all with slight variations. In the end I went for one which included lemon juice to add a little zing. It is just a question of whizzing everything together.
As it was to be frozen, I left out the Parmesan cheese, which can be added later if desired.

So I just blitzed everything up then spooned it into silicone muffin cases.
Here's the final result.
I made 8 times the original recipe and there were still basil leaves left over for the chickens.

Herby Crackers

Fresh turnips and beetroot from the polytunnel
and a selection of herbs plucked from the herb patch

Sunday was Veg Group day.
On the menu was a propagation masterclass by Steve, including the dark art of grafting, as well as a barbecue lunch. Top of the crops this month was strawberries. The sun hadn't shone enough yet on my own strawberry patch to rustle up something strawberryish to take along, so instead I concentrated on the discussion topic for the gathering which was herbs.
I started the veg group at the same time as the blokes baking group, under the general umbrella of the Fenland Smallholders Club. Over a year later and both groups are still going strong, which pleases me. The idea of the veg group is that we gather once a month at someone's place and discuss growing. We usually end up going off topic and discussing all sorts of other things, but one aspect which I am keen we hold on to is how we use our food once we've grown it. We all bring something along for the table and I encourage people to incorporate the Top of the Crops.
But with no strawberries, I was damned if I was going to go out and buy some, especially knowing that within a couple of weeks we will be facing a glut of the things. Not that I didn't thoroughly enjoy the pavlova which somebody brought along.
But I opted to go down the herb route. I knew that somebody would bring along a herb bread. The cheesy herby scones that I made for the last blokes baking would work, but for some reason I got into my head the idea of making herb biscuits, each with a different sort of herb to try.
I eventually settled on a recipe for herb crackers, which I started making at 8.30pm on Saturday evening. If they didn't turn out well, I would be up late thinking of something else to make!

I adapted the recipe I found quite a lot, so here's what I came up with.

To make 1 small ball of dough, enough for about 20 small crackers:

75g flour
1/4 tsp salt
about 3 teaspoons of your chosen fresh herb, finely chopped

Mix the above ingredients together in a bowl.

Add 1 tbsp. oil and 35 - 40 ml water.
Quickly mix up with a wooden spoon until it forms a ball of dough. Knead very briefly to bring it into a ball, adding more flour or water as necessary to make it the right consistency for rolling.

4 different versions ready to be rolled and cooked

Roll the dough as thinly as you can on a sheet of silicone or parchment. Dip a knife into flour and score the dough to make individual crackers. You can go right through to the silicone.
Finally prick each cracker several times with a fork to stop them puffing up. Sprinkle with coarse salt if you wish. This gives the crackers a pretzelly taste, but the salt does mask the herby taste a little.


Rolled and scored, ready for the oven.

Place the silicone / parchment onto a baking try and bake at 180C (fan oven) or 200C (non fan) for about 15 minutes, until lightly browned.

Et voila!
The end result was so tasty that, by the time it occurred to me to take a photo, there was just this one cracker left!

My favourites were the rosemary crackers, but the others were popular too. This time I made mint, sage, lemon balm, sweet yarrow (English Mace) and oregano.
How much herb you add to your recipe is completely up to you. It's a ridiculously cheap, easy and quick recipe, so feel free to experiment.

Herb breads and a doughnut experiment.

Rosemary Herb Bread

As you'll probably already know, I belong to an excellent little group known as The Fenland Smallholders Club.
As part of this, I run a couple of offshoots, one being the Blokes Baking Group, who normally get together once a month. Inspired by this, I've now started baking every Friday evening and I must say I've been enjoying it. However, for the first time in my life I have now gone 1lb officially OVERWEIGHT for my height (though it may just be that I need to recheck how tall I am). So if I am going to enjoy the products of all my baking, I'm going to have to work even harder in the garden to burn it all off.

Anyway, yesterday evening, over a few bottles of real ale, Blokes Baking Group tackled herb breads. I'd planned to use rosemary and sage, as these are about the only two herbs which have not completely died back at this time of year. The rosemary bread was a double rise, which takes about 4 hours from start to finish. Fortunately Sue had the fire on in the living room, which was duly designated as our proving room.

So we mixed and we kneaded and we set the dough aside for its first rise, leaving time to start our great doughnut experiment! This was a project which got missed out previously, but I was keen to have a go. The doughnut dough was soft and gloopy, somewhere between a pancake batter and a pastry mix, so I really wasn't sure if we had it right. It contained yeast, so needed to be set to one side to prove. The book said 20 minutes.

Onto project number three then - sage soda bread.
A soda bread does not contain yeast so is much quicker to make. Traditionally it is made with buttermilk and we usually make one when Sue makes butter. But on this occasion there was no buttermilk in the house so I had to buy some. A hint here - look in the Polish section of the supermarket. You are looking for maslanka. It's £1 for a litre, which works out much cheaper than the other alternative.
The soda bread simply involves mixing all the ingredients into a dough, shaping into a ball, slashing the top and baking. So into the oven it went and we returned to those rising doughballs. To be honest, they didn't seem to have changed much, but we tried one in the fryer. It sank to the bottom, the outside fried nicely and the inside was still mushy! It did, however, taste something like a doughnut should. I reckoned that the dough needed longer to rise, but we also weren't sure about the oil temperature. The book simple said 'very hot'.

We consulted the oracle (www) to be hit with all sorts of contradictory advice. For the proving, we read to prove at 90 - 100F - much warmer than you would for bread. This might explain why the doughnuts didn't seem to have risen. We moved the trays closer to the fire. As for the oil, most people said 190C, but one said 160C. The dough hadn't floated to the surface, indicating the oil was not hot enough. But it had cooked too quickly on the outside, indicating the oil was too hot.
My hunch was to lower the oil temperature and leave the doughnuts to rise properly to make them, well, less dense.
Impatience got the better of us and we tried another batch in the fryer. The result was better, but still not quite there. Jam in the middle might hide some of the problem, but this had seemed a step too far when I was at the planning process.

It was now time for the sage soda bread to come out of the oven. It looked amazing.
The rosemary bread still needed a wee while to rise further and the decision was made to leave the doughnuts to develop too, so we took a while to concentrate on the ales! A new member of the Old Hen family, Old Hoppy Hen, was the subject of much approval.

Some time later and it was time to knock back the rosemary bread dough and shape it ready for its second rise in the loaf tin. While the tins went back into the proving room, we revisited the doughnuts, frying them one batch at a time. Fortunately I'd decided not to triple the mix quantities, for we ended up with 31 mini doughnuts anyway! The more we cooked the better they got. We finally got close to the real thing with the last batch, which floated high in the oil and expanded almost to a state of fluffiness!

I reckon that one more go at these and we'll be ready to unveil to the public.

Our schedule now took us back to the Rosemary Bread. As usual, Phil's had risen the most. I swear he carries a magic powder around with him which he secretly sprinkles into his mix. Into the oven they went and all we had to do now was to wait... and eat doughnuts... and drink beer.

Finally the breads were ready. I was somewhat smug as mine had overtaken Phil's in the oven. Clearly the product of a skilled kneader!!

So here's the final results. Another triumphant evening for Blokes Baking Group.

I don't know what happened to the rest of the doughnuts, but this photo might explain it.

Up with the larks, down with the slugs.

Saturday 23rd June 2012
A lark soars into the air as the sun rises.

As the sun breaks the horizon, so up rise the skylarks. They sing unseen on the ground but as the sun pokes its head into the Eastern sky a magical moment occurs as, within a minute, five or six larks soar up belting out their song. They are nesting in the meadow at the moment. Don was lucky enough to find a nest on his side of the fence this week.

After a wet night, not such a magical sight met my eyes as I passed the potato patch. I just couldn't ignore it, so I spent the next two hours exterminating the munching little slimeballs. The weeds have run amock too, giving them a perfect little jungle in which they can hide during the day, emerging at night to do their damage. So another hour was spent pulling up sowthistles and fat hen. At least they come up easily from the wet soil. The pigs and chickens appreciated it. 

It looks as if the dwarf beans and beetroots we sowed in the lanes between the potatoes face being eaten as soon as they push their first leaves into the air. So I have now sown spares of all my beans into paper pots. It's worth a try and will give the plants a start. Who knows, by the time they are ready to be transplanted into the soil it may just be a bit drier and my slug hunts may be taking their toll.

I am now even considering ducks as an anti-slug measure too. Cayugas look good.
http://slatehousefarm.co.uk/Cay.html

By late morning I had achieved a great deal, but it felt like the one step forward that goes with the two steps back.

So I decided to spend the afternoon and evening doing something new. The herb bed has been a triumph this year, and I have filled any gaps with pot marigolds, lobelias, alyssums and tagetes, as well as transplanting in a drift of pot marjoram and a seedtray of anise hyssop.

The herb bed has been a triumph this year

I have been growing trays of annual flowers in the greenhouse and nursery area, but without having anywhere to put them! The plan was for lots to go into the veg patch, but for the moment I'm just trying to make the best of a bad thing there. At least I'm not the only one experiencing considerable difficulties growing veg this year.

So, instead, I decided to finish digging out a flower border in the lawn. Next year it can accommodate some of the cottage garden perennials I have been growing - delphiniums, hollyhocks, lupins and the like. But for this year it can house the annuals. At the end of the year I will be able to take a monster harvest of seed for next years extravaganza! 

Seedtrays are good, but dry out all too easily or, at the moment, become easily waterlogged. Hopefully the plants will survive and flourish in the open  ground.

A dozen or so barrowloads of turves later and I had myself a border. Several hundred seedlings transplanted and I had this... 

It's a first expedition into the world of raising annual flowers and I'm hoping this bed can come close to matching the herb bed for colour and beauty.

All we need now is for the sun to come out!

Three Sisters

Monday 28th May 2012
A misty start to the day

 

A long, hot day today. So I pottered, taking the chance to do a little weeding here and there and peruse the garden. When we moved in we inherited a strawberry patch, which pretty much gets on with things by itself. Plenty of flowers this year, so I'm looking forward to a bumper crop of strawberries.

Cuckoo, CuckooA cuckoo hung around the farm all day, affording excellent views, first singing from one of the old ash trees, then perching on a fencepost alongside the orchard.I don't know whether it's the same cuckoo that visits every year. I heard the other day that the five satellite-tagged birds which survived the winter in Africa have not fared so well on their return journey, with three perishing before they could get back here to breed. Anyway, back to 'our' cuckoo. I wonder which species it parasitises. Every morning I am serenaded by a reed warbler by the pig pen and a sedge warbler in a bush across Don's field. I think they compete with each other for the title of most persistent songster. Of the two, I prefer the reed warbler's song. Not so scratchy. As for the cuckoo, apparently they're evolved to choose one particular species.

Thriving herbs

The herb garden is really thriving too. Plants I've struggled with in the past have developed into healthy, strong specimens. The patch next to the stables is very stony, the remnants of old buildings I think, and the herbs absolutely love the poor soil and good drainage. 

Thyme, Oregano, Mace, Angelica,
Mace, Rosemary, Sage and Mint.

A splash of chive flowers. I am growing more of these from seed to spread around the potager.

A towering angelica plant.
A biennial which self-seeds easily.

Destructive chickens

Meanwhile, the chickens have been busy demolishing the mulch of grass cuttings that I had so carefully placed around the young willow cuttings and the edible hedgerow. I think they can stay confined to their luxurious pen for a while now. Besides, they need to keep the grass down in there.

The Globe Artichoke bed.

The globe artichoke bed should be a lot more impressive in a month or so.

As the air cooled in the evening, I set myself to planting out the six globe artichoke seedlings which I have so lovingly raised in the greenhouse. They have been in the coldframe for a couple of weeks waiting for warm soil and gentle weather.

I've already planted a mixture of allium bulbs around the bed, and I will add chives when the seedlings come on. In the main part of the bed, as an understorey, I've sown Nigella (Love-In-A-Mist) Moody Blues, as well as four carefully placed giant sunflowers, a variety which towers and produces multiple blooms over a long period. The globe artichokes are protected in their milk carton greenhouses, but they'll need to be kept well watered, especially in this period of fierce sunshine.  

Three Sisters

The young sweetcorn plants had a brilliant germination rate this year and are now outgrowing their paper pots and modules. Sweetcorn is usually planted in blocks, as it is wind pollinated, usually 15 to 18 inches apart.

But this year I'm trying a different system, Three Sisters, which I've alluded to previously. It is certainly gardening chic, but has received mixed reviews. The central principle is one of three vegetables (corn, beans and squashes) sharing space and benefiting each other. But get it wrong and one gets outcompeted or the whole thing becomes a mess. So I searched widely on the internet and decided to follow this system...

http://www.reneesgarden.com/articles/3sisters.html

My sweetcorn is a supersweet variety, Sweetcorn Lark, from vegetableseeds.net. Four plants in a tight square, with climbing Pea Bean (for dried beans) sown alongside. I collected seeds of this bean last year, so I've sown generously as germination was patchy last year. I can always thin out if I achieve surprising success.

In between these groups of plants, I've transplanted seedlings of a variety of squashes and courgettes, protected with SlugKill (clay granules, no nasty poisons) and milk carton cloches.

Potentially a very exciting bed, I'll let you know how things go.