allotment86

[allotment86]

Complementry flavours:

Root Vegertables

source

[allotment86]

Kokedama .... how to

[allotment86]

[allotment86]

Plant hardy orchids for dazzling summer blooms

The right orchids work as well in temperate British gardens as in subtropical forests, so plant bulbs now and enjoy flowers for years to come

It’s finally March and we’ve already had the first signs of spring. If the arrival of blackbird song and daffodils are wonderful enough on their own, they are also the gardener’s cue to plant summer bulbs for a season of colour ahead. However, beyond the garden-centre mainstays of giant hybrid dahlias and petal-packed begonias, there are amazing finds for adventurous growers, including my ultimate summer bulbs, hardy orchids.

Full disclosure: I love hardy orchids because I am unashamedly obsessed with exotic-style gardening. But unlike many other exotic-looking plants, hardy orchids look as at home in rustic cottage-style gardens and temperate woodland glades as they do planted under a subtropical canopy of exotic ferns. Given their striking beauty, amazing garden versatility and ease of culture, it’s a shame they are still so underused. This is my attempt to change that, starting with three of my favourites.

First up, the egret orchid of Japan, Habenaria radiata, whose stunning, white, frilly-edged petals resemble a bird in flight. If you give them dappled sunlight, with plenty of rich organic matter to mimic their damp woodland home, peanut-sized tubers planted now could give you blooms for years to come. I have planted mine in a large, shallow earthenware dish which can be placed on a patio table, so these intricate flowers on 30cm spikes can be appreciated up close. Despite their far-flung origin and unusual appearance, the plants are pretty hardy, down to about -5C. This means they should be fine in the ground throughout sheltered spots in southern Britain, and given a good thick layer of mulch in winter, which will double up in breaking down to enrich the soil. However, growing them in pots, like I do, means they can be transferred to a dark, cool, frost-free place once dormant in winter, should tumbling temperatures strike.

If you are looking for blizzard-proof hardiness, slipper orchids (cypripediums) are where it’s at. Cypripedium ‘Emil’, a cross between American and European species, has excellent hybrid vigour. Plants are hardy down to at least -20C and are probably the strongest-growing of all members of the genus, with delicately scented, dazzling blooms of curly, rusty red petals and a swollen “slipper” in bright sulphur yellow.

Being descended from two woodland species, these plants enjoy moist but not waterlogged conditions, in light shade. Much like egret orchids, these 30cm-high blooms will look great in pots raised up to eye level. Always pick glazed (not porous) containers with adequate drainage holes, so as not to run the risk of them drying out quickly in summer or filling with water in winter, giving plants even moisture conditions.

Finally, Calanthe ‘Takane’ is another cross between wild species, which has produced a super-charged offspring. It’s taller than the other orchids here, with flower spikes of around 50cm high. ‘Takane’ combines soft orangey reds with lime green and pale yellow in the same flower, with generous sprays on leafless plants, followed by lush, corrugated leaves like a Chinese fan.

And as well as all of these, there are plenty of other amazing hardy orchids, from Bletilla to Pleione, to discover.

source

[allotment86]

[allotment86]

Len & Alex Deighton’s Spanish Cookstrips:

Fabada asturiana

Len: A bean dish with meat garnish, not the other way around. Use great beans. Alex: The flavours should be distinct, each mouthful a little different.

source

[allotment86]

Tulips, Fly, Kidney Bean, and Bean

Joris Hoefnagel, illuminator and Georg Bocskay, scribe.

Manuscript: Watercolors, gold and silver paint, and ink on parchment

1561 - 1562; illumination added 1591 - 1596

Source: J. Paul Getty Museum

[allotment86]

Felicity Cloake’s recipe for toad in the hole

Sausages in batter with onion gravy: the definitive take on a homely classic

Toad in the hole is a dish that tastes as homely and savoury now as it did when Mrs Beeton gave her recipe for it over 150 years ago. Though it’s rarely made with leftover meat these days, it’s still a relatively thrifty pleasure, and one that’s easily made veggie-friendly with vegetable oil, meat-free sausages and vegetable stock. Buttered peas, however, are non-negotiable.

Prep 20-30 min Cook 35 min Serves 2–4, based on greed

3 tbsp beef dripping or good lard 6 sausages 2 eggs 100g plain flour, sifted, plus 1 tbsp extra for the gravy 85ml whole milk 285ml ale 2 tbsp wholegrain mustard 1 tbsp neutral oil 2 onions Salt 1 tbsp brown sugar 1 dash balsamic vinegar (optional) 500ml chicken stock

1 Brown the sausages

Heat the oven to 220C (200C fan)/425F/gas 7. Melt half the dripping in a frying pan over a medium heat, then brown the sausages on all sides: this might seem a faff, but, trust me, it’s worth it to avoid flabby, pink bangers. You can use a vegetable oil, if you prefer, but dripping will give the batter a better flavour.

2 Start the batter

Meanwhile, crack the eggs into a large bowl and beat vigorously with a whisk or electric beater, until thick and voluminous. Beat in a little of the flour and milk alternately, until you have a smooth batter, taking care not to over-mix it once the flour is in there, otherwise it will develop the gluten and make the toad tough.

3 Flavour the batter

Measure out 85ml ale. Stir a little of this into a tablespoon of mustard until thoroughly mixed, then stir the mustard mix and the rest of the 85ml portion of ale into the flour and eggs. Leave to sit for at least 15 minutes; if you like, you can make the batter in advance – it will be fine in the fridge for a few

4 Heat the tin and start on the gravy

Spoon the remaining fat into a roasting tin (mine’s about 26cm x 21cm) and put it in the oven to heat up – a hot tin makes for a more impressive rise and a crisper finish. In the meantime, start the gravy by thinly slicing the onions. Once the sausages are browned, scoop them out of the pan and set aside, tipping any fat from the pan into the roasting tin.

5 Brown the onions

Put the frying pan back on a medium-low heat – there’s no need to wash it, because any sausagey residue will just add to the gravy’s flavour – and add the oil. Stir in the onions and a pinch of salt, and leave to cook gently while you assemble the toad, stirring occasionally to ensure the onions cook evenly and don’t burn.

6 Add the batter to the hot tin

Take the hot roasting tin out of the oven and put it on a medium hob, if possible (it’s no disaster if an induction hob makes this a problem, but, again, the hotter the tin, the better the results). Pour in the batter, which should sizzle satisfyingly as it hits the tin.

7 Assemble the dish, and bake

Arrange the sausages in the batter, and return the tin to the oven. Bake for about 35 minutes, or until the batter is risen and deep golden brown around the edges. Meanwhile, once the onions are soft and well caramelised, add the sugar and vinegar to the pan and cook, stirring, until thick and sticky. Stir in the flour, and cook for a couple more minutes, stirring so it doesn’t catch

8 Flavour the gravy

Gradually mix the remaining 200ml ale into the onion pan, stirring to dissolve the flour in the liquid, then bring to a brisk simmer. Leave it to bubble away for about five minutes, then stir in the remaining tablespoon of mustard and the stock, and bring back to a boil.

9 Finishing touches

Turn down the heat and simmer the gravy for about 10 minutes, until reduced and thickened to your liking. Season to taste, stirring in more mustard if you think it needs it, then serve alongside the toad in the hole with a big bowl of buttered peas.

source

[allotment86]

Len & Alex Deighton’s Spanish Cookstrips:

Croquetas de jamón

Alex: The flavouring must be finely chopped otherwise the croquetas will be hard to form.

Len: Don’t worry. A lumpy croqueta is still pretty good.

Len Deighton is the author of the Action Cookbook and French Cooking for Men (HarperCollins)

source

[allotment86]

How to boil an egg by Simon Hopkinson

As a six-year-old I recall being fascinated while watching my paternal grandfather prepare his boiled egg. He would gently, repeatedly, tap his egg with the back of a teaspoon and the shell would star into such minuscule fragments that he was able to remove the fragile bald pate in just the one go. This then neatly revealed the smoothest white dome – the fat end – ready for the spoon to spoil.

It always oozed and wobbled, perfectly, the inside of that egg. In fact, the golden yolk would, occasionally, overflow the crest of the broken shell, all sticky down the blue-striped egg cup as it dribbled.

His final task was to carefully mix together salt and white pepper, ready ground, naturally, in a weeny heap on the side of his plate, so to perfectly season each mouthful.

For those who have always considered me to be something of a pedant, now you know where it may have started. To be frank, spending a small part of one’s life perfecting the cooking and eating of a morning egg is, for me, high on the list of good things to do. Far more important than sex. And texting.

There are, for me, three ways to eat a boiled egg: a runny-yolked one for breakfast; a not-quite-so-runny-yolked one but with a firmly set white; and a boiled egg for slicing, or to be chopped and added to mayonnaise as a sandwich filling – particularly good when seasoned with anchovy. And that’s it. But to achieve perfection, the following cooking methods should be strictly adhered to.

When buying eggs I ruthlessly rummage to the very back of the supermarket display to find the latest date possible. It is also well worth saying here, that the best and freshest store-bought eggs I have found are those from Clarence Court.

The perfect eggs

I firmly believe that to bring an egg up to an obvious simmer, not a full boil, from cold water produces the finest texture of both yolk and white. The pan used should have a thin base if cooking on a gas flame, or if on a flat, electric heat, the pan must have a perfect contact with the source, for the faster the water heats up, the more efficient the timing.

To aid speed, the pan should be covered, and I have always favoured a rather cheap one with a glass lid, enabling a beady eye on optimum simmer. The eggs used here are medium-sized, 60-65g, and always at room temperature.

For a morning egg with a just-set white and runny yolk throughout, once the water is simmering, switch off the heat, leave the lid intact and leave in the water for 1 minute. Lift out with a spoon and put in an egg cup. Eat at once, with soldiers.

For an egg with a firmer white and semi-runny yolk, leave for 2 minutes. For an egg with firm white and slightly firmer yolk – yet still soft-textured – 3 minutes. Four minutes is a perfect egg to be quartered, or sliced, in a Sunday evening lettuce salad, say, or as an egg mayonnaise. And 5 minutes, for me, is as long as I need a hard-boiled egg to be cooked: the yolk is just firm and, once cold, will easily peel at a picnic.

The ideal soldiers

A word regarding soldiers. When a perfect soldier is dunked into the running yolk of a perfectly boiled egg, it needs to be ramrod straight. To achieve this, it is important to employ the correct bread

pain de mie

I always use the French pain de mie. This has a soft crumb, almost en route to brioche, but less rich. It crisps beautifully, but particularly so when enriched with a little butter before toasting; and by that, I mean almost fried. To achieve this, very lightly brush a thick slice of pain de mie with finest, unsalted, melted butter. Now, moderately heat a solid, non-stick frying pan, place the bread in the pan, butter-side down, and turn the heat down even lower.

While the bread is colouring underneath, carefully brush the top side with more butter. When golden beneath, flip the slice over and repeat the process. Once both sides are equally gilded and super-crisp, slice into 1.5cm fingers.

source

[allotment86]

Vegan Gardening

How veganism is changing gardening

Giving up animal products this year? If so, you might want to rethink how you garden

There are not many big ideas that come along in gardening. After all, horticulture has been much the same since for ever: sow seeds, add manure, water and feed, and kill pests. But now, something revolutionary could transform the staid old world of grow-your-own: vegan gardening.

Unless you’ve been living on Mars, you will be aware that veganism is on the rise: one in eight Britons now identify as vegan or vegetarian; record numbers have gone meat-free this month; and supermarkets and high streets – hello, Greggs – are helping to turn it mainstream. But did you know that gardening can be vegan, too?

Vegan gardening is essentially a super-organic method that avoids any animal input – from manure to fertiliser. It is an important part of the vegan movement; it means you’re doing your bit for the environment and producing clean, ethically produced crops that are safe to eat, while sticking two fingers up to animal farming. Once ultra niche, it is starting to enter the mainstream: the first vegan garden festival was held last September in Hampshire, hosted by Chelsea winner Cleve West, while Joseph Gibson’s Conscious Consumerism garden at Hampton Court flower show last July graphically illustrated the ruinous effects of animal agriculture.

In vegan gardening, you have to be mindful of what you put on your crops. Animal manures used to help plants grow can be contaminated with infectious diseases such as E coli and listeria, as well as persistent herbicides. While manure-borne salmonella or campylobacter could make you ill, persistent herbicides could kill your crops, which rather defeats the point of adding manure. Instead, make your own compost from layers of nitrogen-rich green material (grass cuttings, peelings, leafy prunings) and carbon-rich brown material (dry leaves, straw, card, shredded woody prunings), sourced from kitchen, household and garden waste. The pile needs to be moist and warm to decompose through microbial action. Turn with a garden fork every month or two, and in six months you should have enough black, crumbly compost to grow your plants in. (Using peat is vegan, but is generally believed to be environmentally unsustainable: peat bogs are carbon sinks and, once mined, take up to 100 years to regenerate.)

It’s not just animal manure that should be avoided: many commercial composts and fertilisers contain animal products such as blood, fish and bone – byproducts taken from the slaughterhouse floor. To help sustain your plants, make comfrey-based liquid fertiliser: put chopped comfrey (or nettles, borage, seaweed or other nutrient-rich plants) in a bucket of water and leave it for a few weeks until it starts to stink. Dilute and decant over crops to add nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, as well as vitamin B12. These are the three primary ingredients required for healthy plant growth – comfrey’s high potassium levels particularly aid fruit production.

It’s true that vegan gardening is harder work then conventional gardening, because it is unethical to nuke “pests” and diseases. But with an ecosystem of weed banks, cover crops and the consequent beneficial insects in place, you shouldn’t have to.

To make your soil as nutrient-rich as possible, sow green manure cover crops such as clover, mustard, phacelia and buckwheat. Ideally, your soil should always be covered (especially in winter) to stop erosion, and to harvest nitrogen from the air; rake back the green manure into the soil (the worms will drag the nutrients underground, while the cover crop roots will help break up the earth).

Crop rotation in a vegetable patch will help maintain soil health, avoid nutrient deficiency and stop pest and disease buildup: plant a green manure, then alternate annual crops of potatoes, legumes, brassicas and root veg followed by squash and sweet corn, on a four- to seven-year cycle. Chances are, if you’re tempted by vegan gardening, you’re a vegan yourself, so grow what might be useful additions to your diet: vegetables such as spinach or jerusalem artichokes are high in iron; broad beans provide protein and fibre.

There is one aspect of vegan gardening that is easier than conventional gardening: you don’t need to dig. Digging over wrecks the soil and its fauna, creating compaction and erosion. Hoe off weeds instead; you should get fewer weeds anyway, because digging creates a hotbed for weed seeds. But don’t take the “no-dig” rule too far: someone once asked me if it was OK to dig up your potatoes!

The really positive part of vegan gardening is the benefits for animals and insects; the aim is not to kill anything, and as far as possible leave garden wildlife alone. Insects and invertebrates (particularly worms) are essential parts of a garden’s ecosystem, whether they are maintaining soil structure or providing a link in the food chain.

Instead, there are ways of dissuading the animals you don’t want from entering your garden. Don’t feed birds, as this will attract rodents. If you must, use barriers such as nets to protect crops from birds, or liquid repellants such as Grazers’ Live, and Let Grow deterrent sprays for anything from lily beetles to squirrels. Create habitats among cover crops and wild patches for those creatures you would like to see: beneficial pollinators, predator insects such as ladybirds, hoverflies, lacewings and ground beetles.

Slugs are a pain because they eat young, green plants, so plant these out when they are more mature and less attractive to pests. Plant sacrificial plants, such as lettuce or brassica leaves, as an alternative food supply to the crops you want to flourish; pick off slugs by hand (gently); encourage slug eaters such as hedgehogs with wood and leaf piles, and by planting hedges instead of walls or fences. And if slugs do eat your salad leaves and bugs munch your apples, leave them to it – now, there’s a new idea.

source

[allotment86]

Allotment86 turned 5 today!

[allotment86]

Nasturtiums: Black Velvet, Bloody Mary, Crimson Emperor, Caribbean Cocktail.

Nasturtiums, the flowers that follow me everywhere

Something about these hopeful, haphazard English cottage flowers has always endeared them to Allan Jenkins

I measure my life in flowers. Nasturtiums marked my first home, red geraniums my first proper job, scented lily of the valley are for the love of my life.

On the table in front of me is a box of Blue Pepe nasturtium seeds, from Piccolo, a specialist in culinary plants. Also four packets from Plants of Distinction, all nasturtiums: Black Velvet, Bloody Mary, Crimson Emperor, Caribbean Cocktail. There are others downstairs, a multicoloured mix from Franchi, a climber from Higgledy Garden, plus of course some I saved.

I admired their late buds in December, miraculously surviving frost better than others sited just a few feet away (the Tuscan wild calendula are still flowering).

It is not so much that I adopted them as they adopted me

I sow my first nasturtium seeds in February. They have been my constant companion wherever I’ve had a pot, a plot or windowsill. Sometimes it is not so much I adopted them as they adopted me.

I never scatter nasturtiums on salads, though I’ll eat an occasional flower or leaf at the plot like peas, but they say something about me and the gardening I do that I can’t quite articulate.

They are hopeful, haphazard, a bit common (and yes, I am still talking nasturtiums and not me). They don’t need much to grow on, even a wall will do. They have toughness, a touch of character, they will sprawl most anywhere.

It’s my birthday this week (yet another midwinter-born) so I will look back as well as forward. I have never (honestly) needed much to make me happy, but somehow, at sometime, from a small boy, growing a gaudy English cottage flower, watching it climb and spread, seeing it carve out a home, has become part of my life, almost my garden signature. Sometimes even flowers mean more than they first appear to.

Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29 (4th Estate, £9.99) is out now. Order it for £8.49 from guardianbookshop.com

source

[allotment86]

Even Keith Richards has a cool vintage library. 

[allotment86]

How to grow pitcher plants at home

You don’t need a rainforest, or even a terrarium, to grow fascinating nepenthes indoors.

When I was a kid growing up in southeast Asia, I was fascinated by the bizarre native nepenthes pitcher plants I’d see on rainforest walks, not to mention the dramatic time-lapse sequences of David Attenborough documentaries. Yet even in those ideal, year-round tropical conditions, I could never get the damn things to grow. A frustration that was made even worse by a visit to Kew Gardens on holiday, where I saw the most magnificent specimens tumbling out of hanging baskets and trained over trellises. As they say, desire plus frustration equals obsession, so – 30 years later – I think I have finally cracked it. To share the love, here are my secrets (many of which are the opposite of what the textbooks say) to growing these spectacular plants indoors .

Almost anyone who has bought a nepenthes, laden with pitchers, and brought it home will know the story. It looks great for a couple of weeks, but soon after, the tips of the pitchers start to turn crisp and brown, eventually it works its way down to where the trap joins the rest of the leaf. This was my experience for years, creating plants that, despite being sort-of alive, didn’t have any traps or make any new ones.

Trap formation and retention on pitcher plants is directly related to humidity. As UK homes lack these sky-high moisture levels, this can be difficult to recreate outside of a terrarium. Yet, even in the sweltering conditions of southeast Asia, the same thing can be a problem. So what can you do?

When I started ignoring the advice about never feeding them, their growth rate almost doubled

The secret is simple: water. A lot of water. I keep my plants in pots without drainage, in growing media that is permanently saturated. Once a week, I fill the pot right to the top, so the water reaches the brim, about 1cm above the level of the compost – and never let it stop being as wet as a bog. Thanks to this I now have four nepenthes growing away happily, all of them outside the sealed confines of a terrarium. Despite living in an area with very hard tap water, I ignore the advice of only using bottled water and have had zero problems.

When I started ignoring the advice about never feeding them, as doing so resulted in them exhibiting yellowing leaves (a tell-tale sign of nutrient deficiency), their growth rate almost doubled. I don’t feed them heavily, just a half-strength liquid houseplant feed once a month, but the effect is dramatic and to me essential to success. And no, I don’t run around trapping insects to feed them. They don’t need it.

Finally, these plants are light hungry, so only grow them on a spot within 1m of a window, ideally a south-facing one as these are exposed to more sunlight. Don’t have a spot like that? No problem, just set up a grow light. There are now energy-efficient LED bulbs, which are very affordable and will fit into any desk lamp. But you do have to have one or the other to give them the light they need. After decades of trial and error, I have found if you do these three things, the plants are easy to keep and surprisingly fast growing. If only I’d known this back in 1989!

Email James at james.wong@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @botanygeek

source

[allotment86]

Len & Alex Deighton’s Italian Cookstrips:

Mostaccioli

Len and Alex: A distinctive taste or faint aroma can bring back an old memory. The striking taste of pisto spices reminds us of a family Christmas spent in Naples years ago.

Len Deighton is the author of the Action Cookbook and French Cooking for Men (HarperCollins)

source

[allotment86]

Rolling stones: moss-covered ground and sculptural forms at the Sanzenin Temple in Ohara, north of Kyoto. Photograph: Kaomike/Shutterstock

Timeless moss gardens are springing back

An ethical solution if you want to grow moss indoors

I am fascinated by cultural differences in gardening. In Japan there are more than a dozen named cultivars of moss, the basis of an ancient tradition of moss gardens, but in the UK the only thing you can buy in a garden centre with the word “moss” on it is moss killer. It wasn’t always this way. In the 19th century, as part of the obsession with ferneries and terrariums, special “moss gathering” trains were organised from London to the South Downs. Sadly, as most temperate mosses won’t survive the excessive warmth of indoor growing, fresh supplies were constantly needed, leading to a decimation of some natural populations. For those that long to grow moss indoors, there is a solution that is ethical and effective: aquarium shops.

An unusual thing about plants sold for the aquarium trade is the practice seems to exist in a parallel world to the rest of horticulture. This means they have thousands of species that most landlubbing gardeners have no idea even exist, including loads of ornamental moss cultivars. Despite being specifically selected for growing underwater, these adaptable species will be just as happy grown on dry land, as long as humidity levels are kept up – in fact they are commercially grown that way. They make perfect inhabitants for terrariums, living walls, indoor water features and as groundcover over the soil in pots containing bigger plants, such as bonsai.

In the round: prepared moss balls.

I love using Java moss, Taxiphyllum barbieri, which creates a dense, velvety mat of intense bottle green. Being the most popular, fast-growing species, it is sold in individual portions (loose mats about the size of a deck of cards), and also trained over coconut husks, even wrapped around bamboo canes. These lush green shapes are perfect as instant, established-looking landscaping features in terrariums. Given bright, indirect light and good humidity, it will swiftly colonise the space, looking even more natural as it creeps over woods, rocks and larger plant leaves.

Flame moss is an upright form that grows in vertical clumps to create tiny, apple-green spires like mini stalagmites. It is sold in plastic cups containing nutrient gel. All you need do to get started is rinse off the gel, split the contents of the pack into little tufts and insert 5mm squares of it into the compost, or even superglue them on to moist rocks or wood. A third species, weeping moss, Vesicularia ferrieri, has the exact opposite habitat, forming cascading curtains of emerald green over branches and crevices.

All of these are propagated artificially under sterile conditions, meaning no risk of bringing in pests and diseases, plus of course no impact on wild habitats. Being tropical, they are well adapted to indoor conditions, and so are a pretty perfect solution all round. One last thing, as I know I will get questions – I get all mine from online seller Aquarium Gardens, which has the widest selection in the UK.

Email James at james.wong@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter@botanygeek

source