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Yet More New Vegetables

After the mixed success with my other Beans, I wasn’t too hopeful for the Black and White Kidney Beans that were sown very late. However, although the plants were very small they did have quite a lot of pods on them, far more than I expected. Unfortunately, the continued wet meant that they weren’t drying off properly, so I had to pick them, de-pod them and dry them off in the house on a tray lined with dry tissue and newspapers. It took a couple of weeks for the beans to dry, but they seem to be keeping in plastic tubs all right now without going mouldy. Their vivid black and white colouring makes them look very appealing and with the previous batch of dried beans stored safely away we should be well fixed for making lots of stews this winter!

The fresh Garlic cloves that I planted in pots in the greenhouse at home to start them off are shooting very well, too well really and they need to go in the ground outside, where it is a little cooler. That should happen very soon now, because the plan is to plant them at home in the space where the Blueberry bushes are being moved from. As the bushes have dropped their leaves and the Jerusalem Artichokes are being dug up on the allotments, they can be put in their place where hopefully, they will like the soil better.

Although my Welsh Onions did not do so well this season as hoped for, I have decided to try another type of Onion in the coming season for fun and that is the Tree Onion, or Walking Onion. Like the Garlic, these onion Bulbils need starting off in pots before the Winter, so it means yet more pots in my little greenhouse. People often amaze me when they say they don’t do anything much with their greenhouses other than grow Tomatoes and a few bedding plants in the Summer and then they leave it empty all Winter! What with all the Citrus, the Fig Trees, Chrysanthemums, Dahlias, Chicroy and everything else in it, mine is choc a bloc now!

Another new type of plant that has been potted and will be over Wintered in the greenhouse, are some Yacon crowns. These grow a little bit like a Dahlia in as much as they are big, bushy, tender perennials that produce storage tubers. The difference is that they produce 2 types of tubers with one type being edible and the other a non-edible type that are needed to keep the plant growing. The edible tubers can be harvested at the end of the season and eaten either raw, or cooked as in a stir-fry.

I am also going to try a couple of different vegetables grown from seed. Root Parsley and Achoca, or exploding Cucumbers. It seems that the Root Parsley is like a slender Parsnip and is grown in much of Europe. The Achoca is a member of the Cucumber and Melon family and like them is a vigorous climber. The packet says that although the small fruits are spined, the spines are very soft and can be ignored. The “Fruit,” can be used as an alternative to Sweet Peppers in cooking. These seeds came from a new website that I found called “Real Seeds http://www.realseeds.co.uk/
where they specialise in seeds that will breed true to type and the seeds have not been hybridised, hence the name “Real Seeds.” The “not for profit,” company actually encourage their customers to save their own seed to replant in the coming years and even advise on how best to do this. This was of course how gardeners always used to get their seeds in the olden days before modern garden centres and seed companies. It will be interesting to see how many seedlings come up next year that are not true to type!



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