I've really been enjoying making this series of gardening/food programmes. It's great to see how the whole garden is coming along over the months and we're trying so many new things this year that it's great to record our experiences and to share them with our audience. Of course the latest episode was a week late, but the weather at the end of March here was just awful, snow blizzards for days, something quite unusual for Northern Ireland! It didn't really damage the garden much, it just delayed everything. But growing and producing your food is like that, it's quite unpredictable, that's why it's always good to have a few options when growing your own.
This month's episode gives an update on our seedling situation. The seedlings from January were quite slow and they didn't germinate that well, however we did manage to get around 60 pea plants, a lot of spring onions, spinach, lettuce and lamb's lettuce from that sowing. The indoor february sowing was more succesful, we got another load of healthy peas, which we put into the polytunnel at the community garden. Then there's more spinach, more lettuce, spring onions, turnips, broccoli raab and kailaan that has been planted, and beetroot, celery, cauliflower and calabrese broccoli still have to go into the ground. So all in all not too bad!
Then we also looked at Asparagus. I really love fresh asparagus, and the fresh stuff is so different to most asparagus you can buy. It's incredibly sweet and you can easily eat it raw, whereas the shop-bought stuff is nice, but it mostly only has that strong asparagus flavour. However, it will take two more years for us until we can eat our planted asparagus! That might seem like a long wait and a waste of a good raised bed, but we're also growing other crops alongside our asparagus, such as lettuce, peas, spring onions, bush beans, anything shallow rooting basically that won't disturb the root system of the asparagus. Now asparagus can be quite a tricky crop to get right, and we've tried to produce the perfect conditions as described in the video. Also, asparagus really doesn't like weeds, that's why weed-free raised beds are particularly suited to this crop. And during high summer it's alsways good to put a layer of grass cuttings or straw over the asparagus so that it keeps dry, later in the year you can then mulch with compost or manure to provide your plants with additional nutrients.
At this time of the year it's quite good to look at compost and mulching. Compost is an invaluable resource to the gardener, it does so much for the soil and your plants and you can make it for free! Compost is very easy to make and as long as you use raw biodegradable material such as fruit and veg peelings, paper, grass cuttings etc you will create compost. But a lot of people have a compost bin without actually having in mind to create compost! It's just another bin to them! However, getting it right makes all the difference with compost, it will be less stinky, sticky and wet. I try to put in half and half of 'greens' and 'browns', greens meaning veg peelings, kitchen and gardening waste, and browns meaning carbon materials such as cardboard, paper, tree leaves, wood shavings, ash etc. Most people make the mistake of only using 'greens', which makes compost very wet and stinky and attracts loads of flies! If you use half and half of greens and browns and mix these from time to time you will get a perfect mixture, moist and crumbly compost. It's almost like cooking! I tend to leave my compost for six months after I've finished feeding it, which generally makes very good mulching compost. I mostly use my homemade compost for mulching, but if you would like yours to be finer either sieve it or leave it to ferment longer.
I tend to have compost ready twice a year when I need it for mulching, in early spring and autumn. Mulching is very important for fruit bushes and trees, it will really make a difference in your crop production. It suppresses weeds, it improves the soil by adding organic matter and nutrients and it keeps your soil most. So many things can be used for mulching, compost, manure, sea weed, grass cuttings, ash, wood shavings, or a mixture of all these. I tend to use whatever I've got lying around! And of course whatever each plant species prefers. So do give mulching a try, it's really very straightforward and inexpensive but it makes such a difference.
Finally our epsiode looks at a field to fork recipe, by using our fresh lamb's lettuce, also known as corn salad, to make a scrumptious salad bar recipe. We love salads with lots of different ingredients, they're not at all like the boring stuff you get in most restaurants. Salads can have real character by chosing some fantastic ingredients. We like a mixture of grains like couscous, lentils, quinoa or pearl barley to give body and provide that delicious carb-comfort; we then like to add some toasted nuts or seeds, which add great texture and bold flavours. Then we really like adding different type of veg, sometimes roasted, sometimes raw, depending on what's seasonal. And finally we like adding something creamy and salty, maybe a bit of goat's cheese or sheep's cheese, or a nice creamy dressing. We like a nice mayo dressing, which basically consists of homemade mayo with the zest and juice of half a lemon, half a clove of crushed garlic and some fresh herbs (we used ground rosemary). Absoluetly delicious! When you try this salad you'll soon forget the boring iceberg alternative!
As always, thanks for watching and we hope our advice is helpful :)
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