Ripe pumpkins

Taking shelter from a heavy storm on Saturday, I flicked through a pile of Farmer’s Guardians. I always like to have a quick read through before recycling – even though my pile can get quite big sometimes. I’m keeping myself up to date with news in the farming world mostly but in the 18 October 2013 edition a recipe for pumpkin, apple and cider soup took my eye. I have 2 huge pumpkins left over from last year – and the onions and cooking apples that were needed too.

A home grown pumpkin (Tom Fox) and apple (Bramley Seedling)

I’ve just made the soup for lunch. I started by softening a chopped onion in a knob of butter (the recipe said oil but I think butter always makes a tastier soup). Then a two inch cube of chopped ginger was added, together with half a teaspoon of allspice and a pinch of cayenne, stirring for a further minute or two. Next a peeled and chopped cooking apple and 800g cubed pumpkin flesh was added and softened for a while before adding 500 ml chicken stock and 200ml cider (I had to dink the remaining 368 ml in the bottle of course!). The soup was then simmered for 15 minutes, seasoned and blitzed.
It’s quite a sweet soup, with a ginger kick. It’s fairly nice but I think it needs a bit of something else. Perhaps I should roast the seeds in some spices to sprinkle on top? However, I will try to keep some of the seeds to plant this year too. It’s a Tom Fox variety from the Garden Organic catalogue. I know the seeds won’t come true as I had other varieties nearby but it’s worth a little experiment if I have space.
As I perused the cookery books in a charity shop last week, a Gordon Ramsay book (Kitchen Heaven) fell open at baked pumpkin so I felt obliged to part with 50p. The pumpkin looks great in the page size photo so I’ll have a go at that next. There is also a recipe for pumpkin and parmesan soup in the same book – together with his tips for choosing pumpkin – should be nice and ripe or the dish will be” tasteless and anaemic”. He recommends a dark brown, quite wrinkly skin and bright orange flesh that smells strongly of sweet pumpkin. I think mine fits that bill – hopefully the proof will be in the baking.
I mentioned Carole Deppe in my Potato notes 2013. She is the author of The Resilient Gardener which has a chapter on pumpkin and squash too – one of her staples. She has trialled lots of varieties and selected her favourites for storing, eating fresh and drying. The varieties may not be available in the UK but the chapter makes fascinating reading (as does the rest of the book).

Oxford Real Farming Conference – biodiversity first and foremost

There has been an annual farming conference in Oxford for 68 years. This “alternative” one I attended was in its 5th year. There were more speakers and more attendees at the alternative conference – but no Royalty, no Ministers and no mainstream press! In this and following blog posts I’m going to discuss the speakers I listened to. There were many others as you can see on the website.

Julian Hosking was first up for me. He talked about how the importance of biodiversity isn’t restricted to wild species – it needs to be built into farming species too. Of the hundreds of thousands of plant species on Earth, only a few thousand are cultivated for food and three crops – rice, wheat and maize – account for 60% of the calories and protein obtained by humans from plants. There is a great deal of single trait selection going on in these crops too, such as wheat varieties bred for higher gluten content.

Six huge corporations control 60% of agricultural seeds and 76% of the chemicals used to grow them (Monsanto, Syngenta, BASF, Bayer, Dow and DuPont). As an aside, I suspect that companies such as these are behind recent EU moves to make it illegal for small growers or gardeners to collect and swap their own seed. This is a really worrying situation and I would strongly urge anyone reading to support the heritage seed library run by gardenorganic.org.uk or look at the open-pollinated-seeds.org.uk. Saving seed is certainly something I need to do more of in the future.

Julian mentioned yield may not be maximised in a polycultural system but resilience would be. I think it depends how you define yield. I hope I can show that we can have biodiversity, yield and resilience.
Before I started on my Village Farm plot last spring I counted 9 main species (in order of dominance – couch grass, dandelions, ryegrass, white clover, creeping buttercup, nettles, docks, thistles and chickweed). As I reseed areas over the next few years I hope to include at least 40 species of traditional grasses, herbs and wild flowers.

In the new vegetable beds on the Village Farm plot last year I grew potatoes (3 varieties), amaranth (2), quinoa, strawberries (3), asparagus (3), peas (2), mange tout (3), climbing beans (2), broad beans (2), French beans (3), lettuce (5), leeks (2), onions (7), carrots (5), beetroot (4), cabbage (2), kale, kohlrabi (2), turnips, radish (3), calabrese, courgette (3), summer squash, pumpkin (2), sweet corn, rainbow chard, parsnip and mizuna. That’s at least 28 crop types in total. Year on year, the aim is to increase both the number of crops and the varieties of each.
At the end of each vegetable bed I planted a flower bed which included mainly borage, pot marigolds, alyssum, lupins and French marigolds. The borage was far too big for those beds so I need to move that elsewhere next time (the bees absolutely love it). Again – aim to increase flower species year on year.

Happy New Year

2014 resolution number 1 – start blogging – been meaning to for a few years now! Just get on with it woman!!

First one about growing potatoes – been drafting it (and the accompanying report) for weeks so might be too long winded. Resolution number 2 – try to be quick and brief 🙂

Growing potatoes Potato notes 2013

I grow early or “new” potatoes because they are very popular with my family. Nothing surpasses the taste of a freshly dug new potato. Also, from an organic growing point of view, you can get a decent crop of early potatoes before the arrival of blight.

Summer 2012 was very wet – perfect conditions for the spread of blight. I was able to save my crop by simply cutting off the tops of the potatoes at the first sign of blight. As the crop below ground was fairly well developed by then we could just dig them up as required and they were as fresh and tasty as usual. Commercial potato growers spray their crops many times through the growing season to keep blight infections at bay. As I refuse to use any chemical intervention, I could lose my entire crop if I were to grow main crop varieties in a blight year (although a lady staying in the straw bale holiday cabin told me how a man on her allotment could manage to grow a potatoes despite blight by covering them in some fine green mesh he recycled from a building sites – I’ve made a note to try this next year!).

Summer 2013 was sunny and dry and I grew good yields of new potatoes. The report above (click next to title) gives a lot more detail. Here is a summary

• New potatoes are easy to grow in the UK
• I can grow higher yields in my garden than is possible on a farm scale
• I can achieve those higher yields without machines. Fuel or chemicals
• Potatoes have a high yield of calories per m2- This was useful historically when calories were in short supply and may be useful if we have food security issues in the future – or for fattening livestock.
• Potatoes have a high GI but this can be moderated when eaten with fat and salad or vegetables.
• 2014 to do list – try more early varieties, save own seed, follow with another crop, try a blight resistant main crop.

My experiments in vegetable growing

I’ve been growing vegetables in raised beds on my front lawn at Barmby Grange (BG) for a couple of years. I never use chemicals or artificial fertilisers on my crops and I do all the work by hand or with small tools. In 2013 I acquired a new plot in addition – previously a grass field. During the winter months I devised planting plans for the new plot at Village Farm (VF) and a variety of experiments – most of which involved weighing the resultant produce.

Spring 2013 was very late coming. The land was so cold and wet. It soon became apparent that I had far too many ideas given the time now available for land preparation and planting!

Nevertheless, I did manage to grow some crops over the summer and I will share my harvest results in posts over the next few weeks.

A cold, wet spring 2013