Sunday, May 27, 2012

Sunday In The Garden

poached quinces
The yellow fronds of the asparagus are now cut back to ground level and the bed has been given the gift of some blood and bone along with 3 buckets of precious compost. Even though the bed is a few years old now I never seem to get enough producing at the one time. Most often it is a spear here and there and they are eaten fresh while looking around at what is happening in the rest of the garden. My asparagus are Mary Washington but I ordered some heirloom seeds from Diggers ‘Fat Bastard’ now that sounds promising and ‘Sweet Purple’ which I hope will add some new colour to my paintings. I have left it a bit too late to plant the seeds out now so they will have to wait until the spring. I pulled out the zucchini plants, dug the ground over with some blood and bone along with a bucket of compost. I have planted a punnet of mixed lettuce (only 6 plants) but I discovered some self sown oak leaf seedlings that have come up from the summer planting that bolted to seed in January after some scorching hot days. I have now transplanted them into the richer soil. After much deliberation I have finally decided where to plant the rest of my leeks, in the hope that they may become perennial. There are still some Lebanese eggplants there that the frost has not killed off yet. In warmer climates eggplant are perennial so I have decided to dig them up and plant them in the courtyard out of the frost just to see if they will survive the winter. You can only try and I have nothing to lose by the experiment. While weeding I found a few rocket seedlings so I have transplanted them between the new artichokes. Red cabbage and cauliflower seedlings have been planted this afternoon so the ‘to do’ list is getting a bit shorter. The last of the quinces were delicious, slowly poached for hours in a light sugar syrup with a final small dash of rosewater towards the end of cooking. Dinner tonight is homemade potato gnocchi sauteed with mushrooms, garlic, fresh tarragon and rosemary from the garden with a hint of freshly shaved parmesan cheese and a drizzle of burnt butter....sound good?          

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