Courgette and Beetroot Salad

Occasionally, in the almost-constant downpour of rain that has been summer so far this year, a rare day of sun happens to coincide with my day off work. A salad lunch in the garden always seems to be a satisfying way to make the most of such temporary warmth, so I combined courgette 'ribbons' (cut with a peeler) with chunks of boiled beetroot and topped them with Calendula petals and shredded mint leaves, as well as a dressing of oil and balsamic vinegar, sea salt and pepper. I love the flavour combination of mint and courgette, which I first tasted in a soup at a farm-shop cafe. I wish I could say the courgettes and beetroot were home-grown, but mine aren't quite ready yet, although the petals and mint both came from the garden.

Yesterday I planted out into the garden the watercress cuttings which I rooted in water some weeks ago. They have grown into reasonably-sized plants since being potted on into containers, seemingly able to cope with slug and snail attacks, so I thought I would move them on into the ground to see how they get on there. 

They have a rather sprawling growth habit (perhaps because the weight of the stems are usually supported by water?) which caused them to trail out of their pots so that instead of forming upright clumps of leaves the stems now lie across the soil. I'm hoping they will root where they lie and spread about to fill the space I've planted them in - a semi-shaded patch of deep, damp soil near the pond.

Hawthorn flower tincture

A little more than two weeks ago I got married. Four days before that I was using precious pre-wedding time on one of my two days off before the big day to pick hawthorn flowers. Obsessed? Maybe, but one has to take these opportunities when they arise!

It was a calm, sunny Sunday in mid-May and I saw the chance to finish making the Hawthorn tincture I'd started back in August last year (see my earlier post if you're curious). My plan was to make a tincture using hawthorn berries (which I did) and then finish it by using that tincture to steep hawthorn flowers, producing a complete hawthorn tincture. I just had to wait for the hawthorn blossom, and last month when the hedgerows were full of the sickly-scented white flowers I took my chance.

I spent an hour or so in a small meadow near where I live, happily and unhurriedly picking the small bundles of blossom, taking only those which looked freshly opened or even with a few unopened buds. At home I simply bundled all of the flowers into my bottle of hawthorn berry tincture, using a wooden spoon handle to push them in and topping up with a bit more vodka to make sure all of the plant material was covered. I then added the date and contents to the label and put the bottle in a cupboard, hoping I would remember to give it a shake every few days. I'd kept a small handful of flowers back to try as a cup of fresh hawthorn blossom tea, which was sweetly refreshing and more than a little soporific!

In several weeks' time I'll be able to taste the finished product. Most of the information I could find about making this sort of tincture varied in terms of how long the flowers should be left steeping before straining, ranging from ten days to two months. I'll try six weeks as a reasonable compromise.

Growing Watercress

Watercress (Nasturtium officinale) is one of my favourite leafy greens, with its rich, dark colour and spicy, pungent flavour. It goes well in salads and soups and I'm even eating it in omelettes at the moment, just wilted by the heat of the eggs as they come out of the pan. My home village in Wiltshire has a fascinating history of growing watercress, providing local employment for the villagers until as recently as 1970. It lies in a flat-bottomed valley with meadows which were once flooded by river water, although now the watercress beds are gone and the land has been drained, only flooding occasionally in winter.

But I read recently that although watercress thrives when planted in gravel beds under clean running water it can also be grown in soil as long as there is plenty of moisture. Apparently, the obliging watercress plant will also root easily when placed in a jar of water providing it has been freshly picked. As I buy watercress regularly (in bunches of stems and leaves, not just bags of leaves) I thought I may as well try rooting some stems to see if I can grow some, so I took several of the most sturdy-looking out of the bunch, trimmed off the base and put them into a pot of water on the windowsill with a clear plastic bag over the top (to stop the leaves wilting too much).

Less than a week later the stems have grown lots of spidery white roots and I have removed the plastic bag. They are even growing new leaves. My next step will be to pot up the stems individually and grow them on into sturdy plants so that I can try planting them outside, probably at the allotment. It will be interesting to see how they grow and how much water they need to give a good crop of leaves.

Strawberries in Pots

I'm growing strawberries for fruit at home for the first time this year. Most of my previous experience of growing strawberries has been with wild strawberries, propagating them from runners to sell as plants when I worked at a herb nursery. So now, trying out more commercial varieties with the aim of producing fruit feels like a leap of faith - will the berries get eaten by pests? Will I get a reasonable crop? Will the plants produce anything at all? The thought of eating home-grown strawberries, juicy, sweet and sun-warmed, was enough to convince me that the expense of buying the plants was worth it, especially as my previous efforts to grow alpine strawberries from seed have always failed (not enough constant heat I think).

The next leap was to decide which variety to grow and where. When I bought the plants I didn't know I would be lucky enough to get my hands on an allotment, so due to lack of flower-bed space in my garden I thought it better to grow my strawberries in pots. This also meant I could make the most of the sunniest aspect of the garden, which is largely taken up by a patio.

Rather than pin all my hopes of glorious fruit on one variety I decided to grow a range of different strawberries, both as a way to extend the cropping season (hopefully), and to try out a selection of types to find my favourite.

So this year I'm growing:

'Honeoye' - An early season variety with tolerance of powdery mildew and botrytis. It is supposed to be productive and vigorous. Hopefully tasty too!

'Red Gauntlet' - This is a mid-season variety which may produce a second crop later on (in September) if the summer is good. Apparently it is really sweet and tasty and has excellent disease resistance.

'Mara des Bois' - I'm most excited about this one, a perpetual-fruiting strawberry which combines the flavour of a wild strawberry with the yield and fruit size of a modern cultivar. It is resistant to powdery mildew, but may not be as productive as other varieties.

'Sophie' - A late season variety producing high yields of good quality fruit.


I bought my strawberry plants in 9cm pots from the garden centre where I work, but many varieties are also available as bare-root plants by mail-order ready for potting earlier in the year.

At the beginning of April I potted three plants of each variety into multi-purpose, peat free compost in some large plastic pots and watered them in well, picking off any flowers on the plants to encourage root growth. As they grow I'll feed them with an organic liquid plant feed and make sure the compost doesn't dry out - no problem at the moment with so much rain! They all seem to be putting on plenty of growth so far, especially the 'Sophie' plants which are producing very large leaves.

Strawberries from left to right: Red Gauntlet, Honeoye, Mara des Bois, Sophie

Cooking with Nettles

Stinging nettles are abundant, nutritious, and free. All good points to recommend them for dinner, as long as you are prepared to take certain precautions to protect you from stings until they've been cooked! They contain lots of vitamin A and vitamin C, as well as iron and protein. The best time to collect nettles is between March and early June, while the leaves are still young and tender. Older leaves are bitter and gritty and should not be eaten.

I regularly drink tea made from nettles but had never tried eating them, so I headed out to a local nettle patch with gloves and scissors to snip myself some greens. I collected only the tips of the plants, and considering how much spinach shrinks when cooked I did my best to fill a carrier bag so that I would get a decent amount of cooked nettles.

Back in the kitchen, I followed the recipe for cooked nettles in Richard Mabey's 'Food for Free'. I trimmed the leaves from the stalks (wearing rubber gloves), discarded the stalks and washed the leaves well. After draining the leaves I heated them in a covered pan for about five minutes until they had wilted down. I then added a knob of butter, some chopped onion, salt and pepper and mashed it all together, cooking for another five minutes.

The resulting nettle and onion mash was certainly palatable, although the main flavour was onion as the nettles didn't taste of much. The nettles had an interesting texture, a little fibrous but not at all unpleasant. I made enough to have some the following morning to fill an omelette for breakfast, which worked very well. The mash would also make a good base for nettle soup.

Cleavers Spring Tonic

One of the simplest herbal tonics I can think of, cleavers spring tonic makes use of the abundant early growth of this hedgerow plant. At this time of year the base of every hawthorn hedge I pass on my cycle to work seems to be filled with the vibrant, green, upright stems and leaves of cleavers.

Cleavers (Galium aparine) is familiar to most people, especially children, as the 'sticky' plant which readily attaches to hair and clothing. Herbalists use it as a gentle but effective cleanser of the lymphatic system which is helpful in clearing up skin problems. I have heard its action described as 'a pipe-cleaner for the body', and its appearance seems to echo this!

My interest in making and drinking this tonic is to clear up a few spots on my face in time for my wedding at the end of May. I'll be taking it every evening until then and hopefully in concert with changes to my diet (such as avoiding sugar) I'll have lovely clear skin on my wedding day.

The tonic is made by filling a glass jar or other similar container with chopped fresh cleavers (stems and leaves) and adding water to the container until the plant material is covered. The container is then put in the fridge overnight and can be drunk the following day, when the water will have taken on a pale green hue and the flavour of the plant. It will keep for two to three days in the fridge.

Before collecting any plant material consult a good field guide and ensure that you can identify exactly what you are picking. Cleavers should only be collected from places away from vehicle fumes, where you can be sure that no dogs have urinated on it, and it's good practice to collect a little from a number of plants rather than stripping an area entirely, so that the plants can recover.

Surprisingly, cleavers is in the same plant family as coffee, and later in the year after flowering it produces seeds which contain caffeine.

Spring hedgerow and garden salad

Dandelion leaves and petals

Jack-by-the-hedge

Hawthorn leaves

Bittercress

Yarrow leaves

Claytonia

Mustard leaves

Parsley

Chard

We may be in the 'hungry gap' as far as vegetables are concerned, but while out for a walk this morning I found plenty of fresh young salad leaves in the hedgerows. I added some leaves from the garden for a lively spring salad which I seasoned and dressed with vinegar and good olive oil.