A new frontier in outdoor cooking

For my Masters dissertation last year I did some research into gardeners who choose to grow unusual edible crops. I settled on two species to investigate, achocha and oca. In the past I’ve written about how to grow achocha – it’s a nice, easy plant and in a temperate climate you should have no problems getting a significant yield. You may have more of a problem dealing with the glut….

Whether you made a New Year’s resolution to cut your carbon footprint, or the credit crunch is putting pressure on your food budget, now is the perfect time to try growing some of your own vegetables. You don’t need a lot of space, or expensive kit, to get started – and it doesn’t need to take up a lot of your time.

We half-finished the back garden last year, in that we installed and planted half of the raised beds. In truth, we did a lot more than half, as we had all of the paving done and installed the two sheds. But the wet weather over the winter stalled progress, and it has remained unfinished. It has been frustrating, but has become even more so since the sowing season arrived and I faced the fact that the plants I wanted to grow this year had no home to go to. And so it is with great excitement that I can say that weather, time and energy coincided over the weekend, and we have broken new ground!

Ryan and I first visited Butser Ancient Farm on a blustery, cold day in February 2014. We loved it so much we decided to take some workshops there this year. Ryan is booked on a sword-making workshop next month, and we both recently spent a morning there learning about ancient cooking.

Everywhere I go lately, I seem to be tripping over the idea of allelopathy. The amaranths in the picture above might look like pretty, harmless and useful plants – but they’re hiding a darker secret. During our class field trip to the Eden Project in December I discovered that they produce chemicals that can inhibit the growth of other plants nearby. This is allelopathy – chemical warfare that gives plants a competitive edge over their neighbours.

Part of my dissertation involved immersing myself in the history of plants that have been adopted as crops outside their country of origin – novel crops, as I referred to them. It’s a long history, with recorded attempts to move plants from one place to another going back as far as the ancient Egyptians. Even before that, probably for as long as we’ve been human, we have been moving plants around, whether by accident or design.

Following on from our first foray into cooking on the new frontier stove, we found we had plenty of heat left in the fire and decided to make a cup of tea. There is an attachment you can buy (although it’s not readily available at the moment, and costs around £100) to turn the stove chimney into a water heater. That would keep the flat of the stove free for cooking while you heat the water. But there’s also a metal plate you can remove to give a pan or a kettle direct access to the fire.

Well, we’ve been here a couple of weeks now, so it’s time I introduced you to the garden

Happy midwinter everyone! For the last few weeks I have been deliberately trying to slow down, to spend some time relaxing and recuperating after a busy year. The garden has been doing the same, and so I have been leaving it to its own devices. When I have thought about it, it’s been more in terms of what I might choose to grow next year.

I have been given the opportunity to review Celia – an organic, gluten-free premium Czech lager. There’s just one problem – no one in this house likes drinking beer

I had a bit of time to do some garden things this morning, and finished my sowing list for the spring season, and sowed a batch of agretti seeds.

I have been sent two very different books on healing plants to review this spring. The first is ‘The Herbal Apothecary’. It’s written by JJ Pursell, an American “board-certified naturopathic physician and licensed acupuncturist”, and published by Timber Press.