13 April 2020 – 16 April 2020
In the past two weeks I have been sowing, planting, building and cooking – and worrying about the state of the world.
Food Security in the news
Covid-19 has changed the way people in the UK, at least for the moment, think about food and people are becoming more aware that food actually comes from somewhere and is picked or made by someone. The just-in-time infrastructure and the highly specialized supply change is buckling. The UK is now in full planting season and some harvesting will begin in earnest in May and as some of the stories below highlight, the UK now does not have enough skilled people to do this tough and vital work – hence my continued efforts to try to grow as much as I can.
Here are some stories I thought were interesting:
- The end of farming? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/25/the-end-of-farming-rewilding-intensive-agriculture-food-safety
- Farmers call for ‘land army’ to sustain UK food production during coronavirus crisis https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/20/farmers-call-for-land-army-to-sustain-uk-food-production-during-coronavirus-crisis
- British workers reject fruit picking jobs [for some valid reasons] as Romanians flown in https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/17/british-workers-reject-fruit-picking-jobs-as-romanians-flown-in-coronavirus
- Italian suppliers ration stocks of tinned tomatoes after surge in demand https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/17/suppliers-ration-stocks-tinned-tomatoes-after-surge-demand
In the Garden
Planting Raspberries
12 raspberry canes arrived. There are two different kinds of raspberries: summer fruiting, which have fruit on last year’s cane and autumn fruiting, which have fruit on this year’s cane growth. Photo #1 shows the variety I got, called Polka, which are autumn fruiting. A week ago, I placed them in a trench filled with horse compost (photo #2). I am waiting to see my first green shoots. Hopefully we will get a good crop in September.
Photo #1 Photo #2
Sowing seeds
More moonlight or lamplight gardening (photo #3). Here I am sowing seeds into a tray (photo #4) and when they germinate I will prick them out into larger growing cells.
Photo #3 Photo #4
Makeshift Greenhouse
Photo #5 shows a shelf we got to go behind the loo at a previous rental house! For years, it languished in the garage with much of our other stuff, but I reassembled it and found a large thick, clear plastic bag to go over it, and voila – a mini greenhouse/cold frame! (see photo #7). In the Photo #6, you can see the pea plants ready for hardening off before planting.
Photo #5
Photo #7
Seed sprouting in the porch
Here (in photos #8 & #9) are some of my beans starting to sprout in the small, glassed-in south-facing porch – which makes an accidental greenhouse, especially when you rescue an old Art Deco shelf, which was once a valve radio from the 1930s, to put all the seed trays on. I have planted runner, French and drying beans.
Photo #8 Photo #9
And a bit later in the week and they are really starting to grow.
Photo #10
The first planting out
In each corner of photo #11, you can see fledgling ‘pumpkin pie’ plants, grown from seeds which I saved two years ago from a pumpkin I bought at the supermarket to make an American-style Thanksgiving pie. These are definitely not the same kind of pumpkins used to make Halloween Jack O’Lanterns!
Photo #11
Pricking Out
The little seedlings in photo #12 germinated from the seeds I planted by moonlight (see above). I gently ease out each seedling out of the soil with just its root and put each seedling into its own cell of a container (photo #13) to grow bigger, before being planted out. The pencil is a good way to open up the soil so that the long root can be guided in and then firmed over by pressing your fingers gently into the soil or compost around the seedling.
Photo #12 Photo #13
Gardening Method
I am using a no-dig method which comes partly from Permaculture theory. I have found these websites to be helpful:
- A garden planner with timings of when to sow and plant: https://www.growveg.co.uk/
- I have really been enjoying these informative videos from Charles Dowding: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB1J6siDdmhwah7q0O2WJBg/videos
- Dowding has also written some very good books, including ‘How to Create a New Vegetable Garden’, which I have found very helpful. I think this book will inspire beginners or those who haven’t had a vegetable garden for a long time.
Jobs for the next week
The seed potatoes (photo #14) and onions which I ordered last month, finally came in the post. Not exactly the varieties I ordered, but similar enough.
Photo #14
Provisioning
I am concerned about spending too much time in large supermarkets given what current research suggests about aerosol transmission and the virus’s longevity on surfaces. Fortunately, our village corner store has increased its selection of fruit and veg (photo #17) and other perishable ‘real’ foods – as opposed to their more usual fare of chocolate bars, crisps, candy and lottery tickets! I walked there – it’s less than one block – and got enough fresh food for the week. Then I came home and, outside, wiped the bags and packaging down using disinfectant (photo #16) and then rinsed the food in the kitchen sink – just with cold water. The local store has had to reduce its hours (photo #15) by about half to enable them to collect and re-stock its shelves with all the extra food. A cauliflower takes up a lot more space than a Mars bar and they cost about the same, so you can see that the shopkeepers have to put a lot more physical effort into their business now.
Photo #15 Photo #16
Photo #17
Foods of the week
Different questions to ask:
Ask not “what do I want to eat?”, but rather, “what do I already have in the cupboard to eat?” Then, with what I have, which of the many recipes that those ingredients could possibly make should I cook? To do this, I think about what are interchangeable ingredients in recipes. In the examples below, for instance, I have used different kinds of flour and also oil substitutes. I find that vegan cookbooks have great examples for substituting ingredients. One of my favourites is ‘How It All Vegan’ by Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer, both from Vancouver where I am from.
Soda Bread
I have run out of plain flour and it is very hard to get at the moment, so I made this soda bread with Atta flour, which is an Indian mixture of whole wheat and legume flours used for making roti and chapati bread. I got a large bag of this from Sainsbury’s just before the lockdown was announced, because there was no flour then either and this was the nearest substitute actually in stock.
Photo #18
Fish-From-The-Back-Of-The-Freezer Pie
While re-organising the freezer in readiness for the lockdown, I found a number of single portions of different kinds of fish lurking at the back of the freezer. As I have four people to feed (including me), and I didn’t feel like making four separate dishes, which is a lot of work, I combined them all into one fish pie (photo #19) and made a feature of the fact that there were different kinds of fish in it. I tied it all together with a Japanese-inspired white sauce, made of cream and miso, and added leeks and cauliflower to the pie along with a side salad topped with homegrown broccoli sprouts. Sprouts are one of the quickest things you can grow. In photo #20 you can see the strainer I grew the broccoli sprouts in. I will explain how to sprout seeds and legumes in the next diary entry.
Photo #19 Photo #20
Lemon Crispy Tofu Stir Fry
I made the tofu myself. You can’t really buy ‘firm’ (as opposed to ‘silken’) tofu in Beaconsfield and it is one of Raphael’s favorites. It reminds him of California, where he lived as a little boy on our experimental urban farm.
Photo #21
Apple+ Cake
This cake was supposed to be just apples, but I didn’t have enough and I had other fruit that needed to be used up, so I added some pears and some mixed berries from the freezer. Oh, yes and I also substituted one banana for most of the oil because I didn’t have much oil at the time. I had no orange juice either, so I made my own using the zest (grated peel) from an orange, which had been sliced up earlier in the day, and added some water to make up enough liquid.
Photo #22
Fermented Carrot Salad with Toasted Pumpkin Seeds
I made the sauerkraut-esque carrots on 25 March 2020 (photo #23) using some rather wonky surplus carrots and the usual 2% salt for the pickling solution. I will talk more about the wonders of lactose-fermented vegetables and how easy they are to make in another diary entry. Though I usually don’t put any spices in my pickles, this time, after seeing an Indian side-dish recipe somewhere or other, I decided to experiment with putting different spices in with the carrots. I included bay, mustard, cardamom and fennel. On the whole, I wouldn’t put spices in again as my eaters were not that keen on them unadorned. However, once the carrots were put in a salad along with toasted pumpkin seeds and fresh garden herbs (photo #24), everything quickly got eaten, especially when accompanied by delicious, fresh hot pitta bread (photo #25), which I will describe how to make another day.
Photo #23 Photo #24 Photo #25
Gifts
Mushroom Compost
A friend in the village had more mushroom compost delivered to her new garden than she could use and gave me six tubs full. She left them at the end of her drive – sorry no pictures, it’s hard to take photos with rubber gloves on, but here they are back in the garden (Photo #26).
Photo #26
Pumpkin Pie Seedlings
In my turn, I had a surplus of pumpkin pie seedlings (see earlier), so I shared them with several people who like to bake pumpkin pie. I invented a coronavirus version of Nicky Nicky Nine Doors (I don’t know if you have this in Britain) in which I leave the little plant on the door step, ring the bell with my elbow and run back to the kerb! Then I wave and shout greetings at my friends until they spot the little gift (and before they tread on it).
Photo #27
Rhubarb Forest
Another friend let us raid her giant rhubarb patch again this year (photo #28). I got a huge bag of rhubarb sticks and they are absolutely delicious! I stewed up this large pot (photo #29) of sticks, adding one rather withered mandarin orange, half a cup of granulated sugar and a splash of water to get the cooking started and help the rhubarb to cook quicker without burning.
Photo #28 Photo #29
Disasters!
In case Schadenfreude helps you get through the lockdown, here are some of my not-so-great successes!
Over-wrought Geraniums and Dahlias
The geraniums I saved from last summer in a box in our storage room, seemed to be all black and rotten (photo #30). I was upset. The dahlia tubers that I saved, at first glance, didn’t look that promising either (photo #31). On closer inspection there were a few tiny signs of life in the dahlias (photo #33) and I chopped all the geraniums back to the roots (photo #32) and I potted them all up in some of my donated mushroom compost (photo #34). Fingers crossed, I hope something grows.
Photo #30 Photo #31
Photo #32 Photo #33
Photo #34
Dead ‘Bean’ Sketch
I found these French bush beans (photo #35) in the back of the fridge (in an open seed packet). They didn’t look too happy from the start, but I planted a few to see if they would grow. They didn’t. Before they meet their final end in the compost bunker, I did one last sprouting test on them. One lonely bean sprouted. You can just about see it in the bottom right-hand corner of photo #35. All the rest went mouldy. You can’t win them all.
Photo #35
Some pictures of Seer Green from our daily walks
The Chiltern Hills are known for their ancient bluebell woods and this is the time of year to revel in their colour and fragrance. Since we are still allowed out for a walk, we made a bee-line for the bluebells (on advice from from a friend who knows every bluebell in Buckinghamshire by name).
And finally, from the borders of the garden
Celine Rich-Darley
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