Coincidence or what - I've just taken advantage of a dry spell to go out and pick some Buerre de Rocquencourt was beans and a yellow Goldrush courgette for our supper this evening
The beans are delicious and so are the Goldrush courgettes.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Chacun a son gout really. Any size of fresh organic carrots beat shop bought ones into a cocked hat, and you don't have to peel them to remove some of the pesticide either.
Only tried white beetroot once when a rogue seed had got into the packet. Yum.
I'm with Hester. I can't stand mangetout or petit pois. Give me fresh peas with a bit of body to the every time. The only veg I like really small is new spuds.
I agree you shouldn't leave them to become massive and stringy, but too small they haven't really developed any flavour apart from extreme sweetness.
Me thinks it's a matter of different growers taste.
I usually start picking veg small because I'm keen to start eating what I've grown. If I wait too long there's a glut. Wouldn't say there's a huge amount of difference in taste but then most stuff get's something else added when cooked. Even roasted veggies get drizzled with a little olive oil.
For me, different coloured veggie's add to the pleasure of growing my own and often can't be bought in the shops.
Different coloured beans are easier to see on the plant - yellow, purple and red/cream - they all turn green when cooked and they all taste good. .
White strawberries are best picked early as it's difficult to know when to pick them, leave them to late and they go seedy.
I also grew a mixed seed bag of radish this year in white, yellow, red and purple in between spud rows, they were picked early before the foilage of the spuds hid them. They tasted better than bigger radish, ever so peppery.
A mixed beetroot pack of seeds grew red, orange and white/red when sliced, didn't notice much difference in taste though.
White tubular swede is very nice and not at all difficult to peel if picked young, the biggest was about the size of a hand. The smaller swedes had not been nibbled by soil pests either so sometimes there are benefits from picking early.
Has anybody else raised the new Cucamelons? I picked half a dozen over the weekend and got all my visitors on the count of 3 to taste them - greatly relieved when everybody said they really did taste of cucumber and/or melony (the other name for them is apparently Mexican bitter gerkins!) The vine is going great guns up to the roof of my small leanto greenhouse, they are about the size of a grape and you can eat them straight off the vine just as they are. Ideal for single people perhaps?
Modern varieties seem to be bred for commercial use, so that all the crop is ready for harvest at the same time (eg the only variety of sugar pea I could lay my hands on this year at the GC). Older ones may be more disease-prone or variable, but have a better flavour...
Verdun, I grow parsnips using the crowbar method. Magnificent roots but really difficult to harvest when the ground is soggy!
Re odd coloured veg: my dad had an allotment in Walthamstow just post-war and had problems with theft of his vegetables - so he searched out seed of the oddest-looking things he could find, including purple beans and asparagus peas, on the grounds that the thieves wouldn't like the look of them. It worked! Not these days though, when they'd be seen as gourmet varieties...
Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
One area of changing attitudes is that of clearing up the garden. Weeds, leaves, etc were cleared away and usually burnt. Now we are encouraged to leave old dead growth on perennials overwinter and leaves uncollected for bugs and frogs and the like to live and proliferate.
im just waiting for some influential pundit to start telling us to pot up what we think of now as weeds and prize them as the new ecological pot plants. Actually many of them are fabulous. And cheap. Betcha it's going to happen!
Posts
Coincidence or what - I've just taken advantage of a dry spell to go out and pick some Buerre de Rocquencourt was beans and a yellow Goldrush courgette for our supper this evening
The beans are delicious and so are the Goldrush courgettes.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Chacun a son gout really. Any size of fresh organic carrots beat shop bought ones into a cocked hat, and you don't have to peel them to remove some of the pesticide either.
Only tried white beetroot once when a rogue seed had got into the packet. Yum.
I'm with Hester. I can't stand mangetout or petit pois. Give me fresh peas with a bit of body to the every time. The only veg I like really small is new spuds.
I agree you shouldn't leave them to become massive and stringy, but too small they haven't really developed any flavour apart from extreme sweetness.
Me thinks it's a matter of different growers taste.
I usually start picking veg small because I'm keen to start eating what I've grown. If I wait too long there's a glut. Wouldn't say there's a huge amount of difference in taste but then most stuff get's something else added when cooked. Even roasted veggies get drizzled with a little olive oil.
For me, different coloured veggie's add to the pleasure of growing my own and often can't be bought in the shops.
Different coloured beans are easier to see on the plant - yellow, purple and red/cream - they all turn green when cooked and they all taste good. .
White strawberries are best picked early as it's difficult to know when to pick them, leave them to late and they go seedy.
I also grew a mixed seed bag of radish this year in white, yellow, red and purple in between spud rows, they were picked early before the foilage of the spuds hid them. They tasted better than bigger radish, ever so peppery.
A mixed beetroot pack of seeds grew red, orange and white/red when sliced, didn't notice much difference in taste though.
White tubular swede is very nice and not at all difficult to peel if picked young, the biggest was about the size of a hand. The smaller swedes had not been nibbled by soil pests either so sometimes there are benefits from picking early.
That's why I like to grow some Heritage varieties - lots more flavour even if they can be a bit more variable than F1 hybrids in growth etc.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Has anybody else raised the new Cucamelons? I picked half a dozen over the weekend and got all my visitors on the count of 3 to taste them - greatly relieved when everybody said they really did taste of cucumber and/or melony (the other name for them is apparently Mexican bitter gerkins!)
The vine is going great guns up to the roof of my small leanto greenhouse, they are about the size of a grape and you can eat them straight off the vine just as they are. Ideal for single people perhaps?
Modern varieties seem to be bred for commercial use, so that all the crop is ready for harvest at the same time (eg the only variety of sugar pea I could lay my hands on this year at the GC). Older ones may be more disease-prone or variable, but have a better flavour...
Verdun, I grow parsnips using the crowbar method. Magnificent roots but really difficult to harvest when the ground is soggy!
Re odd coloured veg: my dad had an allotment in Walthamstow just post-war and had problems with theft of his vegetables - so he searched out seed of the oddest-looking things he could find, including purple beans and asparagus peas, on the grounds that the thieves wouldn't like the look of them. It worked! Not these days though, when they'd be seen as gourmet varieties...
One area of changing attitudes is that of clearing up the garden. Weeds, leaves, etc were cleared away and usually burnt. Now we are encouraged to leave old dead growth on perennials overwinter and leaves uncollected for bugs and frogs and the like to live and proliferate.
im just waiting for some influential pundit to start telling us to pot up what we think of now as weeds and prize them as the new ecological pot plants. Actually many of them are fabulous. And cheap. Betcha it's going to happen!