Container grown potatoes
Brussel ‘pesto’
A healthier version of ‘pesto’. Yes, not a true pesto in any sense, but is the mixture of greens, cheese and nuts that is the golden combination without addition of lots of extra oil.
Brussels, peanuts, cheese, onion and and mushrooms blitzed in a processor- saute in a pan for a couple of minutes then stir through pasta.
The mushrooms are a good filler- for 4 portions I only used 75g cheddar and 50g peanuts.
I added some ham to this and used 75g spaghetti per portion so a decent bowl full for 448 calories.
The History of Allotments
Kapuska – braised cabbage – with beef
Kapuska is a Turkish dish that is braised cabbage, usually with tomatoes, roasted peppers, garlic and onions. I make many different versions of this dish depending on what I have at the time. You don’t need to include meat. Sometimes I just leave the meat out completely or add beans/chickpeas. Kapuska is great served with rice, potatoes, pickles, salad, cous cous or with bread – all probably not that traditional, but tasty!
Sowing Chilli Seeds
Chillies like a long growing season. They are the first plants that I start and just about the only seeds I sow before mid-end of Feb. I always plan to sow my chillies between Boxing Day and New Year – it can give you a break from the festivities and is a great way to grab an hours peace and get the new growing season started! This year it didn’t happen, but I thought I better get my act together and get the chillies going.
Here I discuss how we start our chilli seeds and the varieties we will be growing this year.
My favourite ‘Grow Your Own’ Bloggers
At the end of last year, we were lucky to be awarded a prize as Kitchen Garden’s best blog/website for 2019. I was very humbled and surprised with this especially since there are so many other great bloggers out there. In this post I would like to share some great ‘Grow your Own’ blogs that I enjoy following. Take a look!
When to start sowing?
Photo by Akil Mazumder At this time of year there is always lots of talk on social media about ‘when to start sowing”. If this is your first year growing veg it can be VERY confusing. There is guidance on the back of seed packets, but even this can be a very wide range of times! Kitchen gardeners are a very passionate bunch and we just want to get going. However starting very early usually isn’t the best approach!
Here I discuss our planning schedule for the year to give you an example of a working plan to manage a vegetable garden.Making liquid plant feed from weeds
I have been contemplating making a system for producing liquid plant feed from comfrey for quite some time (well instructing Ant to do so). As part of our generous prize for winning the Kitchen Garden Blog/Website of the Year 2019 competition we have been lucky enough to have recieved some goodies in the post. One of these items was a Hozelock Pure BioMix bucket. Whoop!
Today we decided to get it out of the box and give this a try
Clementine & Ginger Jam. Water-bath processing preserves
How do I waterbath process preserves? Here I discuss how I used leftover Christmas clementines to make a tasty jam and processed the jars for storage.
Plastic and Kitchen Gardening
The Plastic Problem
Although the first plastic was produced in 1907 it wasn’t until the 1950’s that plastic production became industrialised. In 2015 it was estimated that it was estimated there were 381 million tonnes of plastic produced globally. In 2018, plastic pollution became a hot topic – the so called ‘David Attenborough effect’
How does plastic pollution fit with the ethos of Kitchen Gardening? What is the impact of plastic in the garden? Are there alternatives? As kitchen gardener’s what can we do to help?