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Garden planning for 2011

January 26th, 2011 by Penny Golightly

There isn’t much to do, garden-wise in January. Mostly you just wait for the season to change, and make plans for the year ahead.

I’ll be growing as many veggies and herbs as I can again this year. Flavour is the most important factor, but I’m also looking at getting as much value for money as possible and keeping the whole thing within budget.

This year’s food gardening budget is being set at a total of £40. That’s £10 for seeds, £20 for new compost and £10 for everything else. A budget’s definitely necessary as you can easily get carried away and spend a small fortune in garden centres or online shops, ask any gardener what happens when they start looking at those tempting catalogues filled with new-season packs of seeds…

The available growing space currently isn’t big enough to completely supply the household with veggies and salad all year round, so I’ve decided not to grow potatoes, maize and onions this year. They take up too much room (or compost) and they’re pretty cheap to buy, so the space is being given to other ingredients that give a higher yield and/or cost more in the shops.

I think I’ll get the best value this year from:

Herbs: parsley, coriander, mint, Italian and Thai basil, wild garlic, chives, chervil, lemongrass and a few others
Salad veg: lettuce, rocket, spring onions, radicchio, land cress, radishes, cucumbers, tomatoes etc
Greens: pak choi, mizuna, mini cabbages, kale, kohl rabi
Legumes: sugar snap peas, early/late peas, French beans, borlotto beans
Others: mini carrots and parsnips, Florence fennel, chillis, sweet peppers, green and yellow courgettes, winter squash

The seeds budget has pretty much been spent, but if I can get hold of some runner beans for free then I’ll grow them as well. Got me some tomato and sweetcorn seeds to swap, so let’s see.

Last year had a real element of trial and error, but the experience has helped me to learn more about the microclimate and other limitations of gardening in this spot. I’ll be taking action against some pests and diseases so that I can still grow most of my favourite things, but it’s also time to admit defeat against some problems. Garden pests and diseases are many and varied, so I’ll write about them another time.

For the moment, let’s just say that it’s not viable to grow the following on the tiny plot, for reasons of space, cost, or susceptibility to local pests/diseases:

Most root vegetables
Broad beans
Calabrese
Maincrop spinach and chard
Permanent plants (asparagus, rhubarb, globe artichokes)
Most slow growing plants (cauliflower, big brassicas)
Fruit trees and bushes

But that still leaves a lot of sowing and growing to be getting on with once the weather starts to warm up.

Are you growing your own this year? What are you planning to grow?

Tags: British garden kitchen, grow your own salad, grow your own veg, growing vegetables cheaply, growing your own gourmet foods, planning your garden for the year, small gardens, urban garden
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Seasonal foods in August

August 11th, 2010 by Penny Golightly

Here’s an updated list of August seasonal foods. It can vary slightly from year to year because of variations in the weather, but the idea remains the same. You can usually buy cheaper ingredients more cheaply, and if there are gluts then you can also treat yourself to a little luxury for less.

With the more expensive ingredients you can often buy smaller amounts of things too, especially if you’re buying at market stalls or at a cheese counter. There’s nothing quite so nice as a sliver of good cheese, or a few fancy mushrooms or prawns or whatever. The stronger the flavour, the less of an ingredient you need.

Fruit: apricots, bilberries, blackberries, blueberries, cherries, currants (black, red, white), early apples, early damsons, figs, greengages, gooseberries, loganberries, peaches, plums, raspberries, strawberries and wild strawberries. Imported melons and nectarines.

Vegetables: aubergines, basil, beetroot, last few broad beans, broccoli and calabrese, carrots, celery, chard, chillies, chives, courgettes, cucumbers, fennel, globe artichokes, green beans (runner, dwarf and French), horseradish, kohlrabi, lamb’s lettuce, lettuce, mushrooms (ceps, chanterelles, field, oyster, porcini, puffball, shaggy ink cap), new potatoes, onions, peas, peppers, radishes, rocket, samphire, shallots, sorrel, spinach, spring onions, summer squash, sweetcorn, tarragon, tomatoes, turnips, watercress.

Fish and shellfish: black bream, brown and rainbow trout, brown crab, crayfish, Dover sole, haddock, herring, john dory, lobster, pilchards, pollack, prawns, red and grey mullet, salmon, sea bass, squid.

Meat, poultry and game: grouse from the 12^th, hare at its best.

Cheeses: Farmhouse Cheddar, British goats’ cheese. Chaource, Charolles, Valencay.

I think I’m going to be making a vegetable chilli next week, with home grown cayenne chillies, tomatoes, courgettes and whatever else is knocking around in the bottom of the fridge, plus an econo can of kidney beans and some strong cheddar on the top. If it keeps on raining I might also be making a sort-of shepherd’s pie, with carrots, onions and mushrooms, with some mustard mash on the top and greens on the side.

What are you going to cook?

Tags: British seasonal food, foods in season in August, grow your own herbs, grow your own salad, growing vegetables on a budget
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Windowsill kitchen garden: Week 12 and 13

May 14th, 2010 by Penny Golightly

It’s all been a little hectic at Golightly Towers for the past couple of weeks, so here’s a quick windowsill catch-up for you. One lovely thing that’s happened is that the garden’s going to be featured in Time Out next week, so look out for it if you’re in London and happen to wander into a newsagent’s shop around that time.

Meanwhile, we’ve had quite a few plates of salad, loads of herbs on our pizza and pasta and some more beans, and there’s an outside windowbox of goodies now too.

The usual suspects:

The windowbox of salads:

Herbs going wild:

A cucumber plant that had to be repotted (with a few added peas, baby lettuce, pea shoots etc), which is already growing baby cucumbers:

Flowering tomato plants:

Chilis and sweet peppers making buds:

Indoor spinach, land cress and rocket ready to eat:

Beans, radishes and salad already eaten:

And say hello to my little friend – a fully loaded mini greenhouse….

…complete with monster courgette plant:

Are you growing any herbs or veggies at the moment? Any success stories or tips?

Tags: grow your own food indoors, grow your own salad, growing food indoors, growing herbs indoors, mini greenhouse, windowsill kitchen garden
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Windowsill kitchen garden: Week 6

March 18th, 2010 by Penny Golightly

Week six of trying to grow all kinds of tasty foods on an inside windowsill. Still trying to get as much deliciousness as possible for the least amount of outlay. What’s growing and what’s not?

The pea shoots have had their fish and chips. They’ve turned into mushy peas and aren’t going to give us a third crop. The first two rounds were great though, two gourmet bunches of pea shoots in one month from a tiny handful of peas and the smallest amount of soil-free compost. Will start another batch at the weekend and ditch the old ones:

The parsley is doing really well, so here’s the last pic of that:

Mint’s catching it up, finally, and the dill is putting out its first true leaves. Basil’s written off until April.

The spicy leaf mix is still fairly useless. Will probably sow another batch next month in a different container.

The iceberg lettuces got off to a good start but are a bit leggy now. Not sure if they need more sun or less. Any ideas?

The mustard greens seem really happy, and the salad bowl lettuces I sowed in the mini propagator four days ago are sprouting already.

So far so good with peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and the mini chili plant:

Finally, the radish tops were so delicious that I’m probably going to grow them all year round as microgreens. The variety I used was Cherry Belle, if you’d like to give it a go too. The flavour was sweet and mild, and you get fairly big fast-growing dark green leaves with red stems.

Have also sowed small pots of chervil and spring onions, but they are supposed to take a long time to germinate, so no pics of empty containers here. If there’s time at the weekend, will start off some land cress and baby leaf spinach too, to see how they get on.

So far the winners here are: pea shoots, common (curled) cress, mustard greens, parsley and radish tops. It might change as we go into Spring and Summer, who knows?

Are you growing any windowsill food? What are you having the most luck with so far?

Tags: grow your own food indoors, grow your own salad, growing food indoors, how to grow pea shoots, kitchen windowsill gardening, windowsill herbs, windowsill kitchen garden
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