Lift Mikhallil - Pickled turnips

My little helper just likes to watch, doesn't eat turnips!

I wasn't able to get to the allotment for a few months (fractured, chipped & dislocated shoulder), and I had told a friend they could help themselves to anything that was ready to harvest. 

I got down there for the first time this week and had quite a few turnips/swedes to harvest.  I wasn't sure how much of them were saveable - you can never tell till you cut them open, because they'd been in so long.

I decided to pickle them, using an Egyptian recipe, so I hope they turn out as nice as I remember when I was there!

The usual disclaimer applies - I fudge recipes, so what actually happened is in itallics.

2kg turnips (2.3kg turnip/swede mix - before top'n'tail)
1 beetroot (didn't have any, sent b/f to the shop for one)
6-8 cups of water (forgot to measure)
3-4 tablespoons salt (used more, because I didn't read the recipe properly!)


Wash turnips & beetroot, scrub well. (turnips needed peeling, b/f came back with 5 precooked beets)  Cut into pieces. 

Sprinkle with salt & leave to sweat for 24 hours (used all salt).







Boil water with salt and put into pickling jar to cool (this is how I ended up using more salt). 







Drain turnips, squeeze gently and put in jars with the beetroot.





Should be ready after 24 hours.

1st visit of the year - just browsing

I managed to fracture, chip and dislocate my shoulder on 8 December, so this is the first time I'd been able to get to the allotment.  I only took photos this time round, and was pleasantly surprised at the lack of work needed - I'd imagined it a million times worse!  All beds need some work, and if I was back to full health, it's really only a full day's work.  I need to be patient and pace myself, which will be hard.

Dogwood rose (rosehips)

Asparagus bed

Monty frame for beans/peas

3 sisters bed

Strawberries & herbs

Bed 2

Bed 1 - turnips & swede still okay

Bed 3 - bronze fennel ok

Bed 4 - yams & roots ok

Manx Codlin apple tree

Strawberries

Bed 5 - not used yet

Fruit cage

Rhubarb corner

I wasn't expecting a harvest!

26 Aug 2012 - Our first ever Artichoke!

Here's today's crop - a hellava lot of garlic, some turnips, rainbow spinach, 4 raspberries, 2 plums and our first ever globe artichoke!

We nibbled on the raspberries while trying to work out what to do with the artichoke!

 Two bags of cut turnip for the freezer, one for soups, the other for steaming.

Unfortunately, it looks like we've missed out on using the middle leaves for a salad, but the outer ones look okay (to us beginners, anyway).









Mike sets to with cutting the tips off, and we just put it in the oven with some oil and the potatoes.

(We did find a really cool recipe, but it looked a bit much for our first attempt!)

....and not much left, it was great!

23 Aug 2012 - mostly tidy and check up

One path needed to be covered up, we managed to get hold of some offcuts of carpet - weeded then black plastic bags, then the carpet - that should do the business!

Happy bee day!

Here's how the carrots and scorzonera are doing - we use the Bushy's beer glasses from TT's gone past - with the bottoms cut off, to protect from predators (looks like it's working!)

The turnips are doing fine, check out the size of this one!  As you can see the leaves are quite tasty, but at least they keep away from the veg.

Here's how the Jerusalem artichoke and sweetcorn are doing.  Our corn is a bit behind others at the allotment, but still, we've got 10 plants and 3 ears showing!

Very happy with that because we never even got the seeds to take at the old plot!

2 Aug 2012 - success stories

Today was a very successful, but hardworking day.  I had a day off so I spent 5 hours pottering at the allotment in the sunshine - be rude not to!

I mowed some of the lawn, turned over a new bit of plot and planted out some more beans and peas and changed the protection of the cape gooseberries.  I also put in a rose plant to attract bees (and hide a wee gap under the mesh). 

potatoes & raspberries

The newly dug plot gave us a few potatoes, which was a nice surprise - I swear the guy before us planted nothing but potatoes!  Also managed to rescue a few more raspberries (raspberry fool, anyone?) and 4 redcurrants - see if you can spot them..... I guess any redcurrant jam on our shelves will be bought this year!

brocolli & sprouts

There were some other pleasant surprises - in the row of brussel sprouts is a very nice looking brocolli!

flowers on squash

There are also some flowers on the squash plants, although most of them are ornamental gourds, which is something I'm going to have to learn to dry out (or whatever it is I'm supposed to do with them (afterall, you never see one in the shops with a giant hole in it where the seeds have been taken out!)

Apart from that, everything else is coming along nicely, if not a wee bit behind schedule - but we have had a pretty wet summer. 

I've been impressed with the fact that the sweetcorn has grown - something that never grew for us at the old allotment.  It looks like one is definitely going to produce, not sure about the others, but fingers crossed!  We'll be freezing sprouts till the cows come home - that's the best crop we've got so far, and it looks like turnip wine might be on the list of things to try soon!  The garlic is doing well, but it looks like something had a nibble at one - will need to watch for that next year.  The carrots are coming along now as well, we were using up old seeds, so it's going to be a colourful Christmas dinner - there's samurai red, purple, orange and who knows what other carrot seeds we put in!

29 July 2012 - protection from bunnies

Mike did some protection work at the weekend - he's put a lot of thought into it and when we do the weeding, just pull the posts out because the netting is attached to the posts, and not the boards.  He also made sure that they were only half bed sizes so that one person could do it without getting all tangled!  How cool is that!

carrots growing nicely

22 July 2012 - how it's going so far!

Me & my turnips!

Mike & his snack

Amaranthus Calaloo

 My plan for putting toilet rolls round each seed so I'd know when an experimental seedling has come up - got a big FAIL - here's the 4 different types of seedling for amaranthus calaloo - definitely recognise 2 of them as weeds!  No idea what the plant should look like... Google images, here I come!

Leaves bed 1

Here's the first "leaves" bed - the brussel sprouts have survived their rabbit attack, nasturtiums doing fine and the toilet roll farm is growing well (whether they are seedlings or weedlings is a different matter altogether!). Got some brocolli and cauliflower come up, the leeks are doing fine between the leaves rows and the spinach is surviving at the end of the bed.

Sweetcorn

The sweetcorn has started to come up, I'm not sure if we'll get any crop but this is inspiring because I never got this far with sweetcorn at the previous allotment.  Very excited to see more coming up too!  It's not the crop, it's the growing something that counts (that's the link to when all these were planted!)

Here's the first roots bed, with the turnips that we're thinning out gradually (in the middle).

Mike's protected the Jerusalem artichokes at the end (just behind the sweetcorn, and I've protected the smaller sweetcorn and carrot seedlings.

At the front, we've protected some of the Scorzonera and right at the front is some carrot and the unknown-but-probably-beet seedlings coming up.  We've got a few beetroot coming up right by the turnips as well.

Sweetcorn, Carrots, Artichokes

Everything's a bit slower this year, probably because of the amount of rain & lack of sunshine, but here's hoping that everything works out!

Ornamental Gourds plants

Globe artichoke

Potatoes bed 1

First raspberry crop

2nd turnip crop

Slug eater bathing!