AtWaG - (All the World's a Garden)

Cooking carrots whole - keep the nutrients

I just heard a news item on radio 4 about new research that indicates the benefits from cooking carrots whole. Now, that sounds like very old news to me. I recall my first cell biology practical at Bristol Uni back in the 70's, we cut carrots into varying size pieces (with whole carrots as a control) and then after boiling them analysed the 'cooking water'. The very clear result was that the smaller the pieces the more concentrated the levels of salts etc. in the water - ie. the less remained in the carrots.
This simple experiment came close to proving the bleeding obvious, but heyo, us young scientists had to start some where and I guess a lot of important principles came out of the experiment.

The recent research discussed on Radio4 also shows that cooked, whole carrots have more flavour than cut ones - no surprise there either. So the simple message is cook carrots whole if you want to keep the nutrients, anti-cancer agents and flavour. 

The study, carried out by Dr Kirsten Brandt and researcher Ahlam Rashed, from the University's School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, found that "boiled-before-cut" carrots contained 25% more of the anti-cancer compound falcarinol than those that were chopped up first.

How to grow carrots - the sure fire way to succeed.

Carrots are probably the top vegetable in both popularity and versatility, and yet they are the crop that fails most often for a lot of gardeners. The seed is small, has short viability, germinates slower than weeds, new growth is loved by small rodents, and hand weeding is tricky because of the hard-to-spot foliage - so many reasons to fail!

After decades of frustration with hit and miss carrot growing Sue and I now use a technique that gives close to a 100% success rate. This simple technique gets round all of the above problems and a few more besides.

So here's how it's done:

Heritage seeds - 2008 varieties.

They have arrived, seven nice little brown packets full of promise.

I don't remember which I chose as my top six - it doesn't really matter. What I have ended up with is:

Lettuce - Emerald
Cabbage - Delaway
Tomato - Veefro Paste
French Bean - Climbing - Ryders Top o' the Pole
French Bean - Climbing - Madeira Maroon
Lettuce - Bronze arrow
and
Lucky Dip: Dwarf French bean - Yugoslav II (not sure if that's eleven or two)

Last one standing - Sarpo

This has to be the worst year I have known for late blight. It struck early this year and I know a lot of gardeners have had Tomatoes wiped out and their Potatoes defoliated before the crop was really fully developed.
I've grown the blight resistant Sarpo variety of Potato for three years now and this season has been the toughest test yet.
As in previous years Sarpo has shown excellent resistance, it's foliage standing proud months after the other varieties had turned to mush. Both Sarpo Mira and Axona survived the blight with Axona perhaps being the toughest of the pair.
You'll see from the photo that there is some damage to the foliage, it looks as though the leaf tissues compartmentalise the infection and a smallish dark spot is left as the result.
The plant pictured is yellowing because the growth is just beginning to naturally die down towards the end of the season. In warm autumns Sarpo growth has continued green and healthy right through until October, this year the cold is causing them to shut down early.

Achocha - Trifid warning

  Achocha - a trifid for temperate climates 
  Originally uploaded by AtWaG

Before sowing seeds of Achocha I looked it up on the web and found it described as 'a vigorous climber that produces masses of useless tiny cucumbers'. Now that I have it growing in my greenhouse I can confirm that description - especially the vigorous bit!
Last weekend my potting bench was an Achocha free zone - now look at it.
I would add to the description above that Achocha is fun to grow, pretty, and the tiny cucumbers look a bit like clangers. When very small the cucumbers are a good addition to mixed salads, providing texture rather than flavour.

This would be a great plant for kids to grow, the seeds look like squashed dead flies and the prodigous growth rate is impressive and exciting. The plant gives a great lesson in how tendrils work.

I didn't try the plant outdoors but I will next year, I'm confident it will do well in a sheltered place.

Vole damage in the garden

Most years we get some damage to our root crops - rodent style nibblings. I had always blamed the odd rat that hangs around the place. This year the nibbling has been severe and not limited to root veg, we have had damage to tomato stems, potatoes, carrots and all kinds of beet.
This has coincided with an explosion in the vole population - it doesn't take a mastermind to figure that voles are the culprits. Checking textbooks shows that it is indeed vole damage; that's the gratitude we get for creating wonderful wildlife habitat!