What I did today - 2016

[burnie]

Kale is my main winter crop this year, but the bit we've tried wasn't that tasty, any ideas for a low calorie recipe, neither me nor my other half eat butter or cream and just cooking 'em like cabbage was a bit disappointing. The soup was ok, but a tad green even for a brassica.

[ESBkevin]

Kale is my main winter crop this year, but the bit we've tried wasn't that tasty, any ideas for a low calorie recipe, neither me nor my other half eat butter or cream and just cooking 'em like cabbage was a bit disappointing. The soup was ok, but a tad green even for a brassica.

The thing with kale is to just lightly steam it when adding to a regular meal, I have eaten raw (with the stem removed) in a sandwich or as part of a salad. Never tried it as a main ingedient for a meal. Like spinach you could finely chop it and stir it into scrambled egg before nukeing it for 3-4 mins in the microwave. Slice of Tom and fresh basil leaf and jobs a goodun.

[bario1]

I use this recipe fairly regularly - it says Cavolo Nero, but you can use any kale - last night i used a mix of Pentland Brig and curly kale.

BBC Food - Recipes - Tagliatelle with cavolo nero, chickpeas and pecorino

[bario1]

This morning I planted about 50 daffodil bulbs, some in the ground, some in bags for the asparagus bed border.

[Mark_Riga]

I would just add some kale to a general vegetable mix of whatever you have - tomatoes being a key ingredient. With any of beans/olives/cheese/mushrooms. My base is onions, courgette (or now squash or pumpkin), carrots and TOMATOES with garlic. Then adding any of beans, mushrooms, cabbage , capsicums, aubergine, peas... until the pan is full enough. generally eaten as is with spuds or spiced up and then with rice or spaghetti.

The tomatoes being home grown - canned are not really good for this.

[Jay-ell]

It started raining today about 30 seconds after I lit the fire. Built a make shift shelter over the fire pit out of the Firewood to keep off the rain - took a couple of goes but in the end it went up with gusto (need to get another can of gusto).

Of course the shelter took aflame but by then it was raging away enough to ignore the rain.

My Yacon has finally died off from the frost - 10 pounds for the edible tubers and a couple of large crowns for next year.

Now all I need is for the sweet potato to keel over. I might just have to pull it out on Tuesday anyway as my bubble wrap came and the plant is in the way.

[Small pumpkin]

Inside of the polytunnle got a good scrub down today. Tomorrow it will have the last of the tubs emptied and bed covered then that's it, till it all warms up again.

[bario1]

Not overwintering anything SP?

[Cadalot]

I've set up two pages on my Diary / Blog to document and sort out exactly what I'm going to grown on each of my allotments, Historically I have produced plans on my computer and planting schedules etc but this year I want them easily accessible. Already made a couple of changes, and I'm sure there will be more as I flesh out my thoughts and plans for the coming year. See Alans Allotment: Planning the Plots

[Bigmallly]

I was not overly impressed with last years Squash Pallets so today I decided to restructure them..........as you do......

So here now is one 18ft x 3ft ( split into a 1ft & a 2ft wide beds) Cucurbit bed:
The theory being that Squashes will grow on the North side, up the mesh & scramble across the top as they wish whilst in the South facing bed, Courgettes can happily grow underneath the Squash canopy...............that's the theory anyway.......

[Snadger]

I was not overly impressed with last years Squash Pallets so today I decided to restructure them..........as you do......

So here now is one 18ft x 3ft ( split into a 1ft & a 2ft wide beds) Cucurbit bed:
The theory being that Squashes will grow on the North side, up the mesh & scramble across the top as they wish whilst in the South facing bed, Courgettes can happily grow underneath the Squash canopy...............that's the theory anyway.......

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I like that bif fella!I grew squashes and they always wanted to climb so I vowed if I grew them again I would give them summat to climb up. Hope your idea works for you. Gardening is all about experimentation and finding out what works isn't it. Although you would probably call that thinking outside the box!

[Bigmallly]

Cheers Snadge, the only thing I'll have to keep my eye on is that the Squash grow up the mesh & not through it. If it goes through rather than risk breaking the stalks feeding it back through, I'll simply tie them in.

[hamamelis]

Went shopping for Mountain Magic tomato seeds.
That's all the seeds I need now for next year.

Well, apart from some skirret, if I track some down.

But I'm sure that'll be all

[bario1]

Picked up some more gravel someone had advertised on Gumtree. Then constructed pallet compost bin 2 in the rain (after digging all the couch and horsetail roots out of the ground underneath and levelling it).
Picked up some large stones (Gumtree again!) for the blueberry rock garden. Darkness and rain stopped play.

[Bigmallly]

Finished off the Squash Structure, did a bit o' shopping. Lifted some Begonias & potted them up to overwinter. Lifted the last Squash & Courgette plants, started lifting the Bean plants but have still loads with fruit on. Lifted timber from a raised bed as it was in the way.............