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Posted Friday, 24 February 2012  /  Written by The Twig  /  Post a Comment

At this time of year we start to see the first signs of new growth in the garden. Unfortunately for the purely aesthetic horticulturalist, that often means weeds rather than seedlings. You really need to stay on top of things from the very beginning if you want to avoid a sea of undesirable intruders. Fortunately for the seasonal foodie who is willing to entertain a small number of green interlopers, these young weeds can be a source of free and delicious food. Nettles in particular feature on the Well Seasoned menu (more as a consequence of our rubbish gardening skills than anything else - there always seem to be plenty around).

To get flavoursome and delicate leaves, only pick the first few centimetres of the plant tips.The standard measure of nettles in any recipe appears to be the "plastic bag" so get one of those and don a pair of good gloves. As with most freshly picked, green leaves, nettles will keep for a good few days in the fridge.

There is a definite spinachy tang to nettle leaves and they can be used in most recipes as a substitute. Just don't be tempted to go for a salad! In terms of accompaniments, you'll find that nettles have an affinity for nutmeg and most recipes will be perked up by a fresh grating. Nettle soup is delicious but very straightforward (and there are lots of recipes out there to try). Why not try something a little more adventurous this weekend? There's a triple whammy of in-season ingredients in this Seabass with Scallops and Nettles

Posted Thursday, 12 January 2012  /  Written by The Twig  /  Post a Comment

2011 was Year of the Allotment. Well, alright, not officially, but it certainly saw one of the biggest surges in allotment ownership applications for many years. The climate of austerity combined with various publicity campaigns and the renewed interest that the whole country has seen in local, seasonal food, means that tens of thousands of people have decided to put their names on their local waiting list. In some parts of London the lists are said to be more than 40 years long.

Many allotments, in addition to private patches, provide space for community food projects to grow produce while educating local people on the delights of 'growing your own'. If you're a London resident and keen to get a bit of experience or just fancy getting your hands dirty, how about lending hand for the Big Dig? Capital Growth is hoping to mobilise thousands of volunteers across London to help community food-growing spaces prepare for the new growing season. The dates are Friday, 16th and Saturday, 17th March 2012. Check out the Big Dig website for more details. 

Posted Friday, 6 January 2012  /  Written by The Twig  /  Post a Comment

Every year, as regular readers of the blog will know, we grow a crop of chillies. We usually grow two or three varieties and, having planted in March, we usually enjoy fresh chillies from around July onwards. Then, some time toward the autumn, we take what's left of the crop and dry it out to store and use over the winter. So, we know the basics of chilli growing. However, we are but amateurs compared to the giant of the jalapeno, Michael Michaud. Michael runs Sea Spring Seeds, a mail order seeds and plug plant business in West Bexington, Dorset. It was here that he developed the now-famous Dorset Naga, a contender for the world's hottest chilli! Michael really does know pretty much everything there is to know about growing chillies and has just posted his top 10 tips on his amusingly titled blog, Mr VegHead Says. Interestingly, he recommends sowing your slower growing chillies now. Yes, it's deepest darkest January and you should already be getting those slow growing habaneros in the soil.

Posted Monday, 17 October 2011  /  Written by The Twig  /  Post a Comment

One of the bitter-sweet seasonal moments for us around mid-October is the chilli harvest. Having planted most of our chillies in March, we've seen them sprout in late Spring, bloom throughout the Summer and produce their first fruit from around July onwards. By mid-October, we can expect a large crop of bright red, fiery chillies. Unfortunately, as we slip into Autumn, they can't stay outside any longer because the first frost will kill them. Even without a frost, some of the more delicate plants will start to wither in the lower temperatures and so we tend to harvest the whole of the remaining crop around this time. It's a sign that Autumn really is here and that we can't expect any more warm weather for a while.

This is the harvest we took this weekend from two of our Super Chilli plants. An odd name because they aren't that "super" in terms of strength. At around 36,000 Schoville Heat units they are a mid-range chilli, with similar strength to a Cayenne pepper. This makes them a great multi-purpose cooking chilli. The other reason why we love them is that they are incredibly easy to grow. They positively enjoy being kept in a confined growing space and so they thrive in window boxes and flower pots. Our two plants yielded exactly 70 chillies between them.

So, how to preserve them? Well, our preferred way is simply to dry them. Once properly dried, a chilli will last for years. We find that a decent crop from three or four plants will be enough to last us through the year, by which time the next crop is due. You need consistently warm and dry conditions to dry your chillies. It's vital to remove all of the moisture so they are crisp and brittle. If you don't remove all the moisture they will rot over time. With some larger chillies it can pay to split them in half and de-seed them to ensure that all the moisture can be driven off but for our smaller chillies like these we don't bother with this.

There are a few ways to dry chillies. You can buy purpose-made food dehydrators. These work well but unless you are intending to dry food on a large scale, you can achieve much the same job, and at lower cots, with your oven. To oven-dry your chillies, heat the oven to a very low temperature (about 100 degrees). If necessary (see above), slice and de-seed your chillies. Then spread the chillies thinly onto a baking tray lined with baking paper and place in the oven. It is critical to keep an eye on your crop. If you burn them they will be bitter and unusable. Start by baking for 10 minutes and then check every few minutes until they are crisp and dry. Once completely dry, remove and allow to cool.

If you have a bit more time on your hands you can do what we do which is to dry them by hanging, or placing in a large bowl, in an airing cupboard. If you use the bowl method a metal bowl works best and you should give them a good stir every few days. To make a simple "riastra" or chilli string, simply take a needle and a few feet of fishing line or strong thread, tie a large knot at the end of the line and thread your chillies on (piercing at the top of the chilli, just below the stalk). Hang in your airing or boiler cupboard. Either of these drying methods will take about two weeks. Once you have dried your chillies, they need to be kept in a warm dry place to avoid re-absorbing water. The simplest way is an air-proof tub or, if you have made a riastra, you can hang this near to your oven or in a bright kitchen window.

One other alternative, and one which gets you slighly nearer to a fresh chilli taste when cooking, is to freeze your chillies. To do this, spread the chillies on a baking tray and put them in the freezer overnight. Once frozen, put them into a freezer bag and take them out one by one as needed (you can restore them by placing in warm water for a few minutes). Freezing them on the tray means they won't stick together in once big block. They will keep for 6 months or longer this way.

So, with the chillies harvested and Autumn unquestionably here, we'll start to think of some imaginative ways to use our dried crop, safe in the knowledge that we've got something in our store cupboards to provide a bit of extra warmth over those chilly (chilli?) Autumn and Winter months.

Posted Monday, 8 August 2011  /  Written by The Twig  /  1 Comment(s)

At Well Seasoned we've always tried to encourage people to do what they can in terms of seasonal living. Not everyone has space for a vegetable patch and it's pretty rare for anyone to be completely self-sufficient these days, especially if you live in a town. But, at the same time, we're pretty confident that everyone should be able to find somewhere to grow something. Our first ever blog piece (on the old Well Seasoned blog) was about growing chillies on your windowsill and in fact we still do that today, even though we're now lucky enough to have the Barn and the WS allotment at our disposal. If you still think you don't have enough space to pot a potato (let along swing a cat), have a read of our latest guest blog piece from rooftop gardener and newly-published author, Helen Babbs...

My tiny rented flat sits atop a 1930s terraced house in north London, on a cul-de-sac that’s sandwiched between three busy main roads that heave in the direction of Camden and King’s Cross. Buffeted by traffic noise, and framed by the backs of Mary Poppins style townhouses and chimney tops, my small home is found in an urban but oddly idyllic spot.

What makes my part of this paltry palace extra special is the fact my bedroom has a door that opens out onto a fenced-in flat roof. Just three metres square in size, I’ve made it my mission to turn this patch of grey into an aerial, edible garden.

Despite having no gardening skills whatsoever, I’ve managed to turn the rooftop into an allotment of sorts. I’ve grown myself a set of green fingers and toes, and I’m pretty proud of them. Floating on its cloud of noise and dust mere footsteps away from my bed, I confess I’ve done some of my best roof garden work still in my pyjamas.

I’ve discovered that lots of plants can bear an entirely container bound life. This week I’ve harvested a haul, albeit a humble one, of heritage purple potatoes that were grown in a hessian sack lined with a bin bag. Their skin is an iridescent indigo and their flesh an equally inky purple.

A few weeks earlier I dug up some gorgeously striped bulbs of garlic, grown in a large pot from supermarket bought cloves. At the moment I’m growing runner beans, squashes and tomatoes, all in containers, alongside various salad leaves and fragrant herbs.

Evening primroses are blooming in an old paint pot and a strawberry plant is getting bushy in a rusty colander. Sweet-peas are tangling themselves in knots as they tumble out of a beautiful picnic basket that I found discarded on the street. Wooden vegetable boxes house oregano, sage and mint, and a couple of tomato plants have found a happy home in an upended, broken cat travel basket.

Alongside edible crops I’ve also sought out fragrant and night blooming flowers. Warm evenings on the roof are perfumed by lavender, tobacco plant, rose and jasmine. I’ve turned my urban balcony into a true living room – an outdoor space woven about with plants where (when the weather is kind) I can daydream, moon bathe and entertain friends.

A city girl, I also love nature and I’m fascinated by urban ecology. London supports a wealth of wild species and natural land covers an impressive swathe of the capital. What already exists is valuable and should be protected. I wanted to create a little bit more green space, and I’ve made my roof a wildlife friendly one, full of flowers that attract bees, butterflies, birds and moths.

I share the space with various creatures. There are havoc-wreaking squirrels and hungry slugs and snails, but also welcome beetles, bees, butterflies, birds and even bats. Bugs like undisturbed areas that are allowed to grow a little wild, while other creatures are attracted by specific plants or the promise of nesting materials and food.

Pollinators are drawn in by the nectar-rich likes of lavender and sweet-pea. Runner bean, strawberry and potato flowers are also loved. Evening primrose and tobacco attract moths. Ladybirds eat my aphids, birds eat my slugs and bats pick off any biting mosquitoes.

My favourite visitors are a dishevelled blackbird and his lady wife. He sits and sings on my fence posts, while she steals string from my bean poles. Their efforts mean a space that’s sandwiched between the Camden and Holloway Roads is sound-tracked with birdsong as well as bus hum.

There’s something extra special about the wildlife and wild places found within a city sprawl. The fact that nature can be vigorous and that a range of creatures can survive and even thrive in such a seething, heaving place as London is brilliant. I love the fact my tiny rooftop kitchen garden has become a nature reserve of sorts.

Helen has just written a book about the glory of growing things and urban ecology. It charts a year spent on her Holloway rooftop and adventures off into London’s wildernesses. My Garden, the City and Me – Rooftop Adventures in the Wilds of London is published by Timber Press. Read more at www.aerialediblegardening.co.uk and www.helenbabbs.wordpress.com

Posted Saturday, 9 July 2011  /  Written by Alex  /  Post a Comment

New wife, new job, new house, new garden. I'll leave you to decide which of the four causes the most angst in my life at the moment. Well, perhaps I won't. It's obviously the bloody garden.

Having got back from honeymoon at the beginning of last week, I was hoping for progress for our little salad patch, herb garden, various strains of ridiculous looking tomatoes provided by Jamie@Homebase, corn, raspberry and loganberry plants. I was expecting a scene of devastation, death and decay but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Clearly the rain we've had in the last fortnight (not on the day of the wedding, fortunately) has done wonders for the flora.

The salad patch had gone from what had risked being pulled up as weeds to gargantuan, lush and leafy plants. Although the leaves had grown slightly too mature so as to develop a pretty robust flavour, they were happily added to the salad bowl to supplement a salad of sheeps' milk cheese and chorizo that had made it back in the sack from our honeymoon to the Basque country. 1 nil to the gardener.

Next I tended to our tomatoes. They had all started out at the same size back in late April and have all benefitted from identical amounts of sun. Clearly though, not all tomatoes are created equals. Red zebra and black cherry have punched their way into the lead and needed tying up to the bamboo. Tomato limmony, a heritage variety that is supposed to produce monstous beefsteak fruits is the runt of the litter. Let's hope the latter is a grower and not a shower, because I'm not holding out much hope. At this rate, I will be sending a very disappointed letter to Mr Oliver because the chances of me enjoying some Laverstoke Park buffalo mozarella with at least one home-grown beefsteak tomato is looking ropey.

From a fair degree of satisfaction, to abject despair. The raspberry and loganberry (a cross between a blackberry and raspberry) plants looked miserable. Totally devoid of greenery where they'd previously shown vague signs of life. What had happened? They were my leftfield-hope for the garden - something to prove to Lara that we could grow some cool stuff, even in Tooting. I had images of late summer raspberries piled high on vanilla ice-cream, of enough berries to go into the vodka bottle for this year's winter warmer. I've got two single sticks in a pot of dirt that don't look they've ever been alive. Bugger.

Anyway, it would be great to hear about any of your home-grown stories. If you've got any tips for 'berries then do let us know at the usual address, because I'm not sure Gardeners' Question Time is quite ready for Well Seasoned.

Posted Sunday, 3 July 2011  /  Written by The Twig  /  Post a Comment

As many of you will know, the Well Seasoned team are big fans of growing chillies. They are fairly easy to grow and, unless you're a real heat freak, you need a comparatively small crop each season to satisfy your needs.

Most chillies originate from the South America and so need hot, humid conditions to thrive. This does mean that, in the UK most chillies will need to be planted indoors and should only be put outside only when the Summer weather really takes off. Back in March we planted a selection of cayenne peppers, jalapenos, Dorset nagas and these Super Chillies.

It's now July and all of our plants are outside, basking in the Summer sunshine. Most have been transplanted to polytunnels on the WS allotment but the Super Chillies, a Thai variety, love compact habits like window boxes, and so are ideal for small gardens, patios or balconies. Each plant will bear a large number of thin, pointed lime-green fruits which slowly turn red later in the Summer, intensifying in their heat as they do so. By the way, the photo is the right way up - these chillies grow pointing upwards! Rated 30,000 on the Schoville Heat Scale, they aren't the hottest we're growing (in contrast the Dorset Nagas can top 1 million SHUs!) but they are one of the easiest to grow and great for first timers.

If, like us, you plant in March, your chillies will be ready for picking at the end of the summer in August/September. Those that don't get used immediately can be dried in the airing cupboard until they are crisp, and they will then keep right through to next year.

Posted Tuesday, 17 May 2011  /  Written by Patrick  /  Post a Comment

On a recent shopping excursion, I overheard a conscientious lady complaining about the glut of strawberries on the shelves and how this was going to lead to an enormous amount of waste. With a quick look around and I could see that she was justified in her complaint as there were strawberries everywhere at hugely reduced prices!

Last week we tweeted a piece in the Guardian pointing our that, because of the mild Spring one producer's strawberry crop is up by 150% this year compared to usual years and a major UK supermarket retailer has reduced foreign strawberry imports by 50% as a result of the numbers of strawberries being picked in the UK at the moment. With 400 tonnes of strawberries headed to the supermarkets this season, prices have dropped and, best of all, the heat and sun has made British strawberries particularly sweet and delicious this year.

One of the other features of the warm weather has been an increase in variety of British strawberries succesfully making their way to the shelves; in the last 24 hours alone we have been eating delicious Florences from West Sussex and juicy Sweet Eves from Berkshire.

Of course, there are always question marks surrounding the supply chain of such good value products, but the fact is that there are heaps of very tasty and very cheap strawberries being sold around the country at the moment which, if not eaten, will criminally go to waste. We say: "Do Your Duty; eat as many strawberries as you can in this vintage British strawberry year!"

Posted Friday, 6 May 2011  /  Written by The Twig  /  Post a Comment

At the beginning of this month, My-Farm.org.uk launched. MyFarm is a new National Trust initiative based around the Wimpole Estate in Cambridgeshire. After paying a subscription fee of £30, 10,000 people will get to vote each month on the running of the 2,500 acre farm for the next year. They will be given a say in matters like which crops to plant, which animals to breed and how environmental issues on the estate should be handled. With £300,000 in their pocket the National Trust can't go too badly wrong financially and the farm will still be overseen by an experienced manager so it's not as if they've completely handed over the reins to the uneducated public but at Well Seasoned we love this project because its underlying aim is to re-educate people about where our food comes from. Spread the word, get the kids involved and get back to your (beet)roots.    

Posted Tuesday, 12 April 2011  /  Written by The Twig  /  Post a Comment

Last week we tweeted this article from the Telegraph suggesting that a third of adults in Britain claim they will grow most of their fruit and vegetables this year. Now, there are a number of reasons why the article should be taken with a small pinch of salt, not least because the survey was undertaken by a well-know garden equipment retailer! However, we can't ignore the fact that more and more people are turning to growing their own food. It feels like we are in a "perfect storm" of green fingered fever at the moment with high food prices, economic uncertainty, some high profile campaigning and a snowballing interest in food and food ethics. The fantastic weather we've been having recently won't do any harm either!

In some areas we've seen ethical stances take a back seat when cost gets in the way (see the recent article about a 6% drop in organic sales as an example). But when you can grow your own, cost doesn't really come into it. Seeds are (literally) ten a penny and you can get up and running with a few pots and compost for just a few pounds.

Our first ever blog post (on the old WS site) was about growing your own and it's great to think back to that and see how much we've learned over two years. We've been practising our skills in and around the Barn and have been lucky enough to get our hands on an allotment near our London HQ (no mean feat - we've heard tales of allotment waiting lists in the smarter parts of London currently topping 15 years!

The points we made in that original post are still true; not everyone has a big garden or an allotment. If you live in a small flat you're unlikely to have space for rows of potatoes and carrots but you will have room for something – maybe on the window sill or out on a balcony. A few herbs or other plants that go a long way (for example chillies or garlic) really won’t take up much space and yet the sense of achievement you will get from nurturing them from seeds to full grown plants is completely disproportionate to the effort required. In these tough times it's cheap, rewarding entertainment that we can't recommend enough. You can do as little or as much as you like from a single pot to a whole allotment or even an orchard - choose whatever suits your lifestyle.

Whether it's a third of people growing their own or, as we suspect, rather less, the fact is that more and more are rolling up there sleeves and giving it a go. And hooray for that we say.

It’s definitely not too late to do some planting this year – May is a good time for broccoli cabbages, lettuce, radishes and corn. Make a start now and before you know it you too will be feeling the smug self-satisfaction of the home-grower.

If you'd like to grow your own but don't know where to start, have a go at winning our bumper pack of colourful and unusual vegetable seeds here.