Tuesday 30 August 2011

Pumpkin picked

The after work gardener, Tuesday 30 August

It's picked!  I couldn't wait any longer, and I'm not actually sure it's ripe.  However, all will be revealed when I begin tonight's cooking spree of pumpkin soup and roast pumpkin risotto.  Comparing the size of me, and the size of it I'm reckoning on a week's worth of food which will make a welcome change from the endless, now slightly leggy, runner beans.  Although if it is rotten inside, then bean risotto it is - again!

The reason for this early harvest happened yesterday when I came back from 3 days away and saw that the entire skin of the pumpkin (as you can kind of see in the photo) had gone all scabby and scaly.  I've had a quick look on the internet and it looks like Oedema which is a disorder that causes the skin of pumpkins to get cracked and scaly due to excess moisture stress.  It's definitely been changeable weather in London recently from cold and rainy to warm and sunny, so I'm guessing it's similar to when I get cracked hands from gardening in the cold and wet.  However, I'm clearly no botanist, so if anyone is able to let me know anything different, I'd be very grateful. 

Hopefully under its not-so-ripe, scabby outer shell, there is a rich orange tasty flesh, ripe and ready for cooking.


Tuesday 16 August 2011

Pumpkin perfect

The after work gardener, Tuesday 16 August

It's truly massive, and as such, my pumpkin is now quite a feature in my small garden. 

6 days since my last post and it's now surpassed the size of my head and feels like it might weigh rather a lot more.  I have tried gently lifting it off the branch on which it is precariously balanced to test its size, but realised very quickly that to do such a thing would result in immediate harvesting. 

Now, don't get me wrong, this is no 300lb beauty of the like Toby Buckland has been writing about in his piece on the BBC Gardening Blog nor is it the size of beanbag, but I think it might make a risotto, a batch of soup, and maybe even a pie.

My current worry is when to harvest? From reading around it says between 12-16 weeks after sowing - but in my north facing garden, things can take a lot longer to reach fruition due to the severe lack of sun. Other articles say to harvest before the first frost - which I'm hoping can't be for at least another month, but most sources reckon to wait until the skin is a deep colour, the rind is hard and the stem begins to dry and shrivel. 

Now, my pumpkin is slightly unusual in that it is ranging over the barren apple tree rather than being supported on the ground, and indeed Toby Buckland suggested engineering a make-shift hammock to prevent the fruit from falling off.  However, I've chosen to let nature take its cause (as I can't see where to sling a hammock) and have decided that it might be best to harvest just before the supporting apple tree branch snaps - I'm guessing if it drops of its own accord then I'm too late.

I've also read about the whole 'curing' thing, where you leave the pumpkin in the sun for the skin to harden enabling you to then store it for up to 6 months, but with the aforementioned lack of sun, currently only one fruit to speak of, and a distinct need to vary my diet from the glut of runner beans and cut 'n' cum lettuce  I've been eating each day, I'm sure I'll be cooking this beauty pretty much on the day of its picking. 

Any pie, soup or risotto recipes greatly received.

Wednesday 10 August 2011

Barely broccoli and rampaging tomatoes

The after work gardener, Wednesday 10 August

It's been a great couple of weeks for cucumbers.  The two I've eaten thus far, have been so realistic that I could have passed them off as the expensive ones from the local organic shop.  They were that delicious, in fact, that it was a shame to dip them in houmous. However, I did learn that if you leave cucumbers ripening too long, the seeds inside start to grown quite large and inedible (perhaps I should have kept some of these for next year's planting).

Following on from the cucumber success, one brilliant thing that I've learnt from my ever handy Royal Horticultural Society Gardening Encyclopedia has quite magically stopped my broccoli plants looking like leggy cabbages and has helped them produce some  much needed green florets (here is a link, but I've actually got a treasured second hand copy of the mammoth book on my coffee table) .  On the production of pretty yellow flowers, I thought the plants had gone to seed, but the encyclopedia told me otherwise.  Cut the flowers off and the plant is then encouraged to produce lots of green floret side shoots - I'm now rejuvinated in my broccoli expectations, and am hoping that I'll have enough to mix with my (sometime) stringy runner beans and French beans for a medley of green veg when my parents come to visit at the weekend.

Then there are the rampaging tomatoes.  Two things that I wish I'd taken heed of, not only from the encyclopedia, but from the many blog articles that I have been reading, is to make sure that the plants are supported and that all side shoots are snipped out.  Yesterday, during the strong winds that were eddying in my garden, it was only from the good fortune of the mange tout having died down, that I had any canes spare to support my wind blown forest of tomatoes.  Then, whilst tying these up, I noticed the disproportionate amount of thick green leafy growth compared to flowers and fruit.  The plants have quite clearly been expending all their energy on growing rather than fruiting.  However, following a quick belated cull of side shoots I'm still hopeful for some cherry sized tomatoes that might ripen in time to mix with the now bolting cut 'n' cum lettuce and the nearly ready third cucumber.

Finally - I just have to mention the pumpkin which is the size of my head (the photo doesn't do it justice) and is currently growing up my non-fruiting apple tree, mocking its fruitlessness. Never having grown pumpkins before, I'm not sure if this upward growth is normal or if they usually grow along the ground, but with the lack of light in my north facing garden, I am used to everything growing lanky and leggy.  My only worry with this gravity defying plant, is that even though the much maligned tree is supporting this head sized fruit,  will I one day come home to see a snapped branch and an orange mess on the floor?   I just hope that next door's cat, which now sleeps in the shade of my veggie patch, keeps a lazy eye open for this potential danger.