Sunday 15 July 2012

Colour on the allotment













Yesterday I complained about the amount of rain and slugs torturing the allotment. It's been a grey summer, I moaned: Autumn Bliss raspberries are surrounded by a moat of brackish water; multicoloured tomatoes including Purple Calabash and Golden Sunshine look seasick in eau de nil. But there are spots of colour which I thought I'd present here as an antidote and also because I've revamped the look of this blog too. So, a hummus of broad beans (above left) is taken from a recipe by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall (with the addition of a handful of lonely peas - the entirety of this year's harvest) and served with slices of Bright Lights radishes (above left and below right). A salad of nasturtiums contained varieties including Empress of India and Gleaming Gold. I will definitely be growing more varieties of these next year, their names including Tip Top Gold, Apricot Trifle, Milkmaid and Ice Creamsicle are enough to raise a smile - my favourite is Jewel Cherry Rose (at the bottom of this blog in a fabulous Barbie pink).











And then there were the Allgold raspberries (above) and the tiniest amount of loganberries that promised much but mostly withered on the vine into tiny, dark droplets. But it's only looking at the photos of this miserable year so far, from lupins (below) to the nasturtiums, that I realise how much colour there has actually been. And there's still more to come from purple Vitellote and Pink Fir Apple potatoes to the dahlias given to me by a prize winning grower... for free! Incidentally the new colourful banner for this blog is a bunch of giant knitted veg - I didn't knit them myself but snapped them last year in Paris. But if the potatoes get blight and the slugs get the dahlias I will be getting my knitting needles out and giving it a go.


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