Bounty

First Pickings

♥ Carrot thinnings and the first of the broad beans for dinner tonight. ♥

Spinach Soup

The trellis is installed, the compost bin rebuilt and relocated, the buried paving uncovered and lifted, the soil levelled, the pond dug and the excess soil distributed so FINALLY, the spuds have been planted.

Geum 'Mrs J. Bradshaw' is out in her glory, she's a beauty - thank you J :)

Trials and tribulations: we've three broad bean plants out of the usual six showing promise, the other three have been replanted several times, having fallen to some furry, feathered or frosty jeopardy or other.

We celebrated the first of our spinach by making a favourite: Marcella Hazan's ♥ spinach and rice soup ♥ from her 'Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking' recipe book. We like to poach an egg per serving in the broth.

Dirty Work

It was a good day to get my hands dirty, and about time too. I pulled the last of the carrots and prepped a section of this year's root bed for next year's legumes, and a handful of garlic.

Each clove is planted with just its papery wisp peeking out of the soil, and so begins the absurd routine of replanting the cloves every other couple of days as they are tirelessly plucked out by the same 4 pigeons, 3 squirrels and 2 foxes that frequent the garden. 2015 WILL be the year of allium SATIVUM.

♥ Roots for roasting. ♥ Reward reaped!

Has Beens

We harvested and ate all our own broad beans when they were young, but we're lucky to have a friend who is still picking the last of his crop now, which we swap for our courgettes. The beans are large but are still delicious if popped out of their tough skins after being steam cooked.

Inspired by the Broad Bean and Feta Ravioli blog by Charlotte's Garden we made a roughly chopped ol' broad bean, fresh pea and feta pesto, seasoned with lemon juice and pepper which we packed into tiny ravioli parcels. We drizzled the cooked ravioli with a mint, fennel, lemon juice, olive oil dressing.

The Last of the BroadBeans

Radishes and Dwarf Green Beans

The 'Bob and Mary' dwarf green beans have started producing pods before 'Magpie' despite being sown 5 weeks later.

The Milan Purple Tops are redolent of the illustrated plates of roots and tubers in the 'Album Vilmorin. Les Plantes potagères (1850–1895)'. This book, reprinted by Taschen, ISBN 978-3-8365-3599-1,is another favourite of ours that is pulled out and perused to while away winter.

The First of the Broad Beans

Our Sussex trug was made by the folks at The Truggery.

Signs of Life

The six Somerset Broad Beans from the Heritage Seed Library sown on 20/2/14 have all come up. Yay!

Blossoms

The sight of the Columbine (Aqualegia vulgaris) more than made up for the fact that the day down the allotment was spent weeding and cutting grass.

We use shears, rather than a strimmer, to clip the grass to give the critters a chance to move out of harms way.

The promise of plenty! We can't wait.