Winter veg successes
25Saturday 25 April, 2015 by Uncle Spike
After such a long wet and cold winter (not compared to most of yours, but it’s all relative), the vegetable successes were perhaps different to other years. We found that the broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower for example, were pretty much a dead loss – ok, we had a few meals there, but not much harvested of any value. On the other hand, the ‘alternative weather conditions’ provided successes with other crops.
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The beetroot and carrot patch was not as good as other years, but the yield was sufficient for our needs for the coming year; so on balance, a success. The carrots were just a few, and a bit bendy and strange shaped, but not diseased, and still tasty enough.
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And some yummy carrot tops for the chooks
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The beetroots started to run to seed tops, so we pulled the lot this morning
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But not a bad haul. Enough for pickling (using both Turkish and British recipes), and plenty for freezing down too.
Oh and guess what, one of the Spikette’s, from My Beautful Things, has a great recipe which we are gonna have to try out – Chocolate Beetroot Cake 😀
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Turnips and swede were a first for us, having tried out some seeds brought over from the UK. Delighted with the results though 🙂
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Uncle Spike's Adventures 
[…] follow-on post about the winter veggies, and this time focussing on our ‘above soil’ varieties this time. A few times […]
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Your beets are OUTSTANDING! I read that your soil goes extremely hard, I know you use compost, and the sand is a good thought. We have spots where the soil is hard (clay) and growing a green like wheat or turnips, then turning it under can help next year. Just a thought.
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
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I dig in plenty of goat poo (one wheelbarrow per 4 sq/m) twice a year, plus gradually adding our own compost too. It’s very stony ground here – I was digging over a well-used part of the veg area last week, and still extracted two barrow loads of rocks in three hours; oh and one that was 30cm in diameter! The soil is not clay-like, but loses moisture very quickly, and then goes hard. Mulch is the answer, and each year it improves.. I generally garden with a pickaxe most days, lol. 🙂
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Oh, my goodness! You do haveyour work cut out for you. Two Thumbs up, you deserve it.
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Looks like a pretty good harvest to me!
Try planting garlic in amongst your carrots next time. Yours look like they could have been attacked by nematodes – garlic repels nematodes (so do onions to an extent as well as marigolds). It worked in our veggie garden and this year’s carrots looked less like monsters from some far-fetched alien movie than they did last season (I would post pictures, but it would scare the kids).
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Ok, will try that next year. We always have a fair amount of garlic and fresh onions growing. I do that with the cabbage incidentally, which tends to reduce the amount of cabbage white we get. Good tip, thanks.
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I’ll be interested to hear if it works for your carrots too.
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Chocolate Beet Cake is amazing! I tried it about a year ago and it quickly became a favourite.
… and roasted beets has to be one of my favourites …. and pickled beets … ok, maybe I just like beets 🙂
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Roasted, hmm… worth a bash. Unpeeled? Wrapped in foil or open?
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I’ve done both … wrapped in foil, or if they are relatively small, tossed in oil and roasted open. Roasting seems to enhance the sweetness 🙂
… and yes, unpeeled.
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Your crops look very successful to me.With all those beets, I would be making at least one Chocolte beet root cake, utterly delicious! The beets add colour and moistness to the cake. The recipe can be found in my Recipes-sweet menu! 🙂
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Thanks for the tip – will have to explore that one 😀
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Updated the post to tell others about your recipe 🙂
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Thank you very much! 🙂
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Great crops of turnip and Swede .. I haven’t grown either before. Bet you were happy with those beetroot. The soil may have needed to be more friable for the carrots. Doesn’t matter though, bet they still tasted great
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Yes, great surprise with the crop. Tried all sorts for the carrots, but hey ho, chopped up they taste superb 🙂
The soil here does go rock hard easily. What if I added a few buckets of building sand to loosen it up?
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Hey Spike .. might be a catch 22. If you add sand then the soil won’t hold as much water .. so maybe not such a great idea. Might just need a good fork before sowing/planting. Doesn’t matter though … they taste just as good don’t they?
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They do indeed. The soil was all rough sieved (down to say 12mm, which is very fine for these parts, and is really dug over well and open when planting.
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I always like your crop photos. This frustrated gardener has given up and will just enjoy the successes of others. ps. Funny shaped carrots 🙂
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Yes 🙂 I tried removing all the stones, and using less goat poo, but they still came out weird. No worries, soaked and scrubbed them, then chopped them into chunks and into the freezer for later.
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Nice!
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🙂
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Looks a good haul of root veggies there. I love a nice dollop of mashed neeps with my haggis, but it does get confusing here where they call swede turnips (neeps) and turnips well, just turnips too!
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Beets?
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Yep, as in image 5 and 6 Fred
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