I've been eating Fat Babies (or everything you need to know about Achocha)

There's not many places you could put a statement like that out in the open and not get immediately arrested but, in this case, it's absolutely true. They've been plucked, washed, sliced, gutted and fried in butter. And then eaten.

Fat Babies, the nickname for this particular type of Achocha, are my star experimental plant in the veg patch and balcony this year. Admittedly, I muddled my seed order and thought I was buying eXplOding Fat Babies so I was quite bemused to find that my babies were quite docile, if alarmingly vigorous in their growth.

I met gardener and author Alex Mitchell earlier this year and, over a mug of coffee in my sitting room, she spied the spiky Achocha fruits poking out of the vine growing across my balcony. Having just written an inspirational book about Edible Balconies, she was intrigued by this plant as I'd created a sort of mini Forest Garden on my tiny balcony. (It towered over herbs, tomatoes, chilli peppers, spinach, radishes, orache, beans, nasturtiums and violets.) But more of my balcony food growing later ...

The seeds came from the Real Seed Company who describe the young fruits as tasting of sweet green peppers; personally, I find cooking them in butter reminds me of the taste of asparagus. (For me, this is good.) Other people have likened the taste to grass (less appealing), having taken to heart the advice that they can be chopped and eaten raw in salads. From my viewpoint, I'm just really pleased to be able to pick 'peppers' in December from the veg patch. 

Given the vagaries of the weather this autumn, I'm uncertain if this late harvest is usual but the plants grown on the balcony have just about finished while the plants in the veg garden are still fruiting - I counted nearly 20 fruits ready to be picked.  I'm guessing that this is because the balcony plants had only a small window box to grow in and only saw the sun in the afternoon whereas the veg patch achocha had lots more sun and open space. Nevertheless, the vines grew up and across the pigeon netting, easily reaching 10 feet long from one spindly, seemingly dead stem.They put out long tendrils, rather like peas, that reach out for anything to grab and wrap around.

And, having found an anchor, form very strong spiral springs to keep their grip! An awesome protection system which has seen my Fat Babies sail through stormy weather this year.

I had two of these plants growing on the balcony and the vines filtered the sun beautifully all summer. Down in the veg patch, one solitary plant clambered around a 9 foot high cane wigwam and then got all tangled up as the vines had nowhere else to go. The vines can reach over 16 feet long! Real Seeds recommend that these should not be grown in a polytunnel as they can apparently completely take over, which I can easily believe. I think the plants would look lovely growing over a big wooden arch, like a grapevine, but they're an annual so die back in winter.

Achocha hails from South America, its Latin name is Cyclanthera brachystacha and, although it likes a nice sunny spot to grow in, it will happily thrive in the UK as long as the soil is free draining  and kept moist. There are a few variants but Fat Baby have bright green flesh with soft spines and, if allowed to mature, large black jagged edged seeds which look like small flat beetles.

The fruits can be eaten at any size, small (about an inch) or large (up to 3 inches). The larger ones have to be split open and the seeds removed before being cooked. If the spines have started to go brown, I just rub them off. They tend to fall off anyway when the fruit is being sliced. 

I've added them to vegetable chillies and eaten them fried with mushrooms but they can be sliced into a salad or onto a pizza, particularly when small. I think they would also be very nice in a stir fry with noodles. In any recipe that calls for a green pepper, you can reach for several of these instead. The flesh is thinner than a supermarket green pepper (so less watery), the taste greener and less sweet. Because they're very small, you need quite a lot to cook with, probably at least 10 to replace one green bell pepper. But these are much more fun to look at. 

The original seeds supplied are non-hybrid (ie, will grow again true to the original plant) and the Real Seed Company encourage future seed saving of all their seeds. Achocha seeds are very easy to collect because of their size so, come next April when we're all starting over, if anyone would like to try Achocha, I think I might just have a few spare. 

Beautiful brassicas

Earlier this year, Victoriana Nurseries sent me a parcel of veg seedlings for the garden.  I've already written of the much anticipated cut-and-come again cauliflowers.  I'm not entirely sure what to look out for to see signs of cauliflower heads forming but I assume that the lovely rich soil they're growing in will encourage them to carry on and do the right thing.  They're looking wonderfully strong and  healthy and must measure at least three feet across which seems like a very good thing to me.

Also in the parcel were Tozer brussels sprouts (and rambling strawberries but, for now, let's just talk brassicas). How exciting to grow your own christmas dinner sprouts - and purple ones at that! More by luck than judgement, they were planted into a patch of well-manured soil - which I now know is exactly the right thing for them.  I wish I'd known to plant them deep (up to the first leaves for stability) but they seem to be doing okay as I staked them young.  In fact, I think they're really rather beautiful.

I would have photographed the tiny sprouts forming but they're in shadow as the plants are between a raised bed and a low wall.  The tops have been catching my eye for a while now - the colours are stunning as the leaves of Tozer are richly veined with bright purple.  I'm not sure my pic does them justice but the shot that I missed last month was when bright orange nasturtiums had worked their way next to the plants.  The orange/purple contrast was sublime but it was too dark at dusk for photography so that one has to stay in my head.  The tops can apparently be cooked and eaten like cabbage - Sue at Backlane Notebook has been experimenting with cutting off the tops for eating.  I'm not sure whether this will inhibit the sprouts' growth or whether this will divert energy back into the sprouts.  Does anyone have any experience of this? I'd love to know as I don't want to waste the delicious tops!

Walking in a winter wonderland

The veg patch in early December.  As mentioned in yesterday's post, the slow onset of wintry weather has been kind to my veg garden (if not to me - I'm suffering with the beginnings of a winter cold today).

As seen on 2nd December - the last strawberry of the year?

Looking back to this time last year, it seems that I'd run out of things to say (!) and had suspended blogging activity. That probably means that all was quiet on the veg front and I remember that I didn't grow any veg through the winter - even my garlic and onion sets were planted out in the spring.  I recall heavy snowfall over south east England making it challenging to get to a family christening in Kent in early December.  I managed to drive there but was amazed at the sight of snow drifts in Central London and the Kent countryside under a blanket of thick snow!  This year is different.  My chilly, sunny, "winter" walk around the veg garden on Friday showed my echinacea (and primulas) flowering; if that wasn't crazy enough, I also found this just blushing strawberry (a one off feast for the slugs, I expect).

In the herb bed, fresh herbs are still available: sage, parsley, oregano, lemon thyme, fennel.  Nice to be able to put off buying fresh herbs in the shops, although most home-grown herbs can be dried, or frozen in ice cubes, for use in soups and stews throughout the winter. I should really make time to do this.

Clockwise from top left: sage, fennel, rosemary, oregano with thyme at back

A few other edible treats are keeping the garden alive:  chioggia beetroot, just a couple of sweetcorn cobs (yes, still!), horseradish root (really must dig all this up this year - it's a spreader and will regrow from the smallest root; I want to grow it in very large pots next year as it's a magnificent sight, very structural, but the roots can go very, very deep!) and, hopefully, a few Vivaldi and Charlotte spuds. The potatoes seem to have resprouted after I thought I'd emptied the tub in the summer.  Apparently I overlooked a tuber or two.  I've left them to grow because, well, you never know ... !

Clockwise from top left: sweetcorn, beetroot, potatoes, horseradish

And that's not all - this year I have my winter veg to look forward to!  I'm hoping for a few Tozer (purple) brussels sprouts before christmas (they're tiny at the moment) then, providing the weather isn't too severe, I'm looking forward to cauliflowers, kale and more sprouts in the springtime.  On a whim in early October, I bought some brassica seedlings then didn't have time to plant them out (this coincided with visits to my mum in hospital).  Not to waste a perfectly good plant, I've popped them into raised beds that I'd previously topped up with well-rotted horse muck or compost and we'll just have to hope for the best. All being well, this will give me some spring cabbages and PSB next year - and I also have a big box of seeds to think about over the coming months.  The winter doesn't seem so long when you still have veg growing!

On the First Days of December

Just popping in to show off what my true love (my garden) sent to me ... a coneflower with open pink petals!  (Tra-la-la, festive spirit in the garden and all that.)

So glad I had a finger-numbing wander round the veg patch yesterday morning. The sun was shining (but it was very cold), it was my day off and I had a couple of tubs of seaweed to drop off in the veg patch, not wanting to take them food shopping with me - and look! ...

As the Christmas rush started in the shops for a large percentage of the so-called civilised world, this little gal had been quietly unfurling her petals.  Cue flutter of excitement from yours truly!  Warm enough to tempt her to keep growing but too cold for this mere mortal's hands so I snapped this photo very quickly. There's quite a bit more still happening in the veg garden but, as I have to be at a workshop in an hour and I'm still in my pyjamas, the rest will have to wait until later today - if I can prise the laptop away from my teenager.

Gosh, looked out of the window at London's very leaden skies just now - quite glad I'm going to be indoors today! Hope it stays good enough to garden for everyone else,

Caro x

Too Soon to Prune ...

I'd earmarked November as being my month for thinking about fruit. I need to move half of my 3 year old fruit trees to space them out more and I also want to order more: a couple of apple trees, a peach tree, some blueberry bushes and two sweet cherry trees. No problems there because the milder weather will make the work much easier than digging and planting in the biting cold.

I'd also thought pruning would be on the task list by now but no.  The cherries are the only fruit trees that are dropping their leaves. Plums, apples and pears are still fully clothed.  The raspberries that I've grown are late fruiting Autumn Bliss - they started fruiting in August and are still providing the odd handful. In any case, I've read that autumn raspberry canes should be left until 'late winter' when they can be cut to the ground. What does that mean? Does late winter mean calendar December or, more likely, when truly cold and frosty weather is upon us?  Do the canes drop their leaves so that I know for sure? Help! For me, late winter is the last cold month to get through before temperatures start to rise, possibly late January/early February. Could anyone shed any light on this for me?

Pruning is a subject I knew very little about until recently.  (I'm reviewing an excellent book with very good chapters on this subject, more very soon.) As luck would have it, last Sunday afternoon I was invited to join a fruit pruning workshop in a local community garden behind a block of council flats. Fruit trees planted there a couple of years back by the Carbon Army (BCTV volunteers) had never been pruned so the council had booked a mid-November tree pruning workshop for the tenants. Problem was, with weather still continuing to be mild (for this time of year), we weren't able to tackle much. The only bushes that were obviously ready were the gooseberry bushes which looked like bleached thorny twigs.

Tom shows a workshop participant how to prune gooseberries.

We wandered around looking hopefully at redcurrants, blackcurrants, peach trees and espaliered apple trees, all holding onto their autumn leaves, and were advised that it was best to put our secateurs away. Tom Moggach from City Leaf was our teacher for the workshop and, having explained about the best time to prune different fruit trees and bushes, the hows and whys of shaping an espaliered fruit tree and airborne fungal diseases, he then told us of the 3 D's of pruning (dead, dying, diseased, all should be pruned out) and demonstrated how to shape.  We were let loose on the gooseberry bushes, pruning out any of the 3 D's and crossing stems, cutting back the strong leader stems by one-third (to an outward facing bud) and then trimming back any other stems to two buds (again, looking for a bud that would enhance the open basket shape of the bush). Tenants said that these gooseberry bushes had fruited well in the summer and were loathe to chop them back too much but Tom explained that this would promote healthy growth for next season, allowing air to circulate through the centre of the bush and so reducing the risk of any problems from pest or fungal infection.  It was really satisfying to get hands on with the job and I think it all looked much tidier when we'd finished!

It was a very informative couple of hours but I'd really gone along to have a look at the gardening space (and available light) as one of the tenants has asked for a bit of help with growing vegetables next year.  I have to say, I think she's doing a pretty good job by herself (wonderful nasturtiums, made into pesto for the winter picnic) but the trade-off was being able to see pruning in action.  I'm much better off actually seeing something being done (and being able to ask questions, if needed, to confirm that I've got the idea). I've come away feeling that my book learning has been reinforced and, yes, have the confidence to know what I'm doing with my trees (once the leaves fall off!).

Carrot characters

I may have spoken a bit too soon about the gloominess of the weather as we've had some lovely autumnal days over the past week. Fresh, breezy and crisply cold once you step away from the sunny spots. I'm always spurred into action by a bit of brightness in the day and last Sunday I found a few sunny spots in the veg patch that needed a tidy up so indulged in some warm lingering seed saving. Part of the tidy up involved removing some nasturtiums that were past their best; they were self-seeded from last year and had grown to cover the area previously occupied by onions and carrots. Once the nasturtiums (and baby snails and slugs) were removed, I found a good kilo of carrots still waiting to be harvested, although some presented a challenge to peel for the pot:

The good news is that none of them had any damage, whether from carrot fly or other beasties.  As they were grown in a raised bed, I'm uncertain whether this success (for the second year running) is due to the height of the beds or to companion planting them among onions.  Interestingly, I've also read that sage and rosemary make good companions for carrots. Worth a try for next year as both are very pretty herbs.

The main mistake was that I sort of forgot that the soil underneath the raised beds is not that great: quite heavy and given to clumping, if not obviously solid clay in parts.  These carrots are Amsterdam, a quick growing carrot that isn't supposed to get this big (but doesn't seem to suffer taste-wise for being allowed to grow on).  They've obviously encountered a few obstacles which have led to some very amusing results:

The self-plaiting carrot

The little walrus carrot

And my favourite:

Colin Carrott (by small child, aged 4)

Alas, they are no more.  They made a very delicious addition to a chicken and leek pie and a Root Veg Chilli.