The Saturday Foodie Bit!

Sqaure Foot Gardening

The Square Foot Garden!

First Earlies Arran Pilot not 2 minutes
 out of the ground

Sunshine across the veg patch today!  I started on this veg patch on or about the last day in March. I probably started a little late this year. The intention was to experiment with the patch to see if I could produce some veg for a family of four!  Weather permitting there was the potential to produce some veg. However, drought then too much rain and more importantly cold overcast days and cool nights conspired to make a poor showing!  However we did have some results with  potatoes grown in bags!

Square foot gardening is a concept readily achieved in any garden.    A good guide to square foot gardening can be found at http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/schools_organic_network/leaflets/SquareFootGardening.pdf .   This is a leaflet I have been using for many years.  I was very surprised to see the number of square foot gardening sites that turned up in the Google Search.  This is obviously a trending movement since a year ago when I last looked there were relatively few sites!  A blog article I wrote awhile ago explains a little of the theory behind this form of micro-farming http://2pointfiveageofman.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=square+foot.

With Summer almost drawing to a close the all round veg patch can be kept going!  Now is the time to sow turnips, winter lettuce, japanese onions, winter radish, swiss chard ( very popular ingredient in a lot of Mediterranean countries), perpetual spinach, cabbage and kale.  These are all hardy and will survive most of what the British weather can throw at us.  If you are not going to want to produce produce through the winter, sowing a green manure crop is a useful alternative.  Not only can they add nutrients and structure to soils but also act as a weed suppressant as they out compete by vigorous growth and cover!  For adding nitrogen to soils deep growing Alfalfa (good for improving structure of soils) and crimson clover (sowing season March to August so just within the window).  Alfalfa can be left for a year or more before before digging in.  Crimson clover can be dug in just before flowering, this prevents self seeding and it becoming a weed (a plant growing in a place where it is not wanted).

New "sowing" has been a bit of theme this week.     I have been experimenting with starting off a sourdough culture.  This is a bit of ancient microbiology relying on natural airborne yeasts.  So potentially each batch of sourdough is unique in it's microflora owing to geographical position and time of year.  This is a bit like local honey that contains local pollen that some people recommend as a supply of antigen for controlling hay fever reactions.  Potentially also a good way of acclimatising the bodies immune system to local yeast strains.  Using River Cottages Bread Handbook as the reference I set up a culture.  A flour and water (1 cup flour, 1 cup water) batter was made in an earthenware jar and set aside to ferment.

The Batter

Fermentation and checking, started
fermentation within 36 hours  

Preparing for the first feeding of the culture
with 1 cup of flour and and one of water

Have found that the recent warm temperatures during the day and much cooler temperatures during the night do influence the rate of fermentation.  The aroma from the culture has also changed during the process to a now pleasant sweetish alcohol laden "nose" (makes it sound like a fine wine).

Next step is to discard halve and add more flour and water.  In the next next few days hopefully I will making bread!

The Sunday Foodie bit part 5

Shot from Inside my parish church St Mary's Haverhill
( well it is Sunday) where I was dropped in the font.
Marble tablet on wall in refrectory states
date of first priest was 1190.  Last time I attended was
for the baptism.  

Started Sunday 27th February 2011 0744 GMT
Words

Fairtrade and buy local


Fairtrade fortnight starts tomorrow.  This is a great branding excercise for small producers (originally) from overseas that are looking for a recognisable symbol and who meet sustainable criteria.  A similar scheme to promote small businesses is the Buy Local  campaign.  A number of businesses are part of this Haverhill including the cafe (with internet) which I use.   De Ja Vu is run by a local business man which is even better, who has helped give youngsters help in their footballing endeavours.

Farmer's markets are another buy local group.  They have attracted some comedic criticism mainly based on the fact that some of the produce is from outside the 30 mile criteria (ie not a local as you would think).  However, with the olive oil trees in Coggeshall a farmers market selling products made from these would qualify in a farmers' market in the Haverhill area.

So the recipe for this week to be found on 2pointfiveageofman.net (later in the week I will put these on fully) is Cauliflower cheese.  A very topical recipe given the news (was on BBC Breakfast but again cannot actually find the actual story on the BBC website) about early Brassica crops in Holbeach St Marks.  The crops have been hit for the third year running by bad winters.  They were at the point of being ploughed-in. The story was that the solution to these climate change events would be to grow the Cauliflowers in more temperate parts of the country or to use new varieties bred for the changing climate while maintaining the yield of current varieties.  Any body have any old seed left from 100 years ago plus?

Sunday morning so just watching the Andrew Marr show.  Very interesting set of guests?  Peter Mandelson for some reason appears a little uncomfortable!