How are the veggies coming along?

[sime42]

Mashed Swede with lashings of butter and black pepper is excellent. An integral part of Christmas dinner when my aunt cooks it.

 

 

[Peasgood]

Everything feels very late here and only just warm enough these last few days. Tried to work my garden yesterday but it is still a very wet  pudding.

Got some garlic in that is doing ok. Last year I bought a load off ebay and grew it on, something like 100 sets or more. Was disappointed with the harvest but it has kept us in garlic until even now so was pretty good in reality.

Rhubarb has done very well, an abundance of that and lots of people commenting how it is expensive to buy. Should start selling it.

Have a lot of tomatoes but little more than seedlings yet, I did buy a few plants yesterday to try and advance that crop.

Got some greyhound cabbage ready to be planted out, some sprouts too. Had late planted kale and broccoli in my polytunnel which cropped well and was very nice. The kale was especially nice and the best I have ever had, not that bitter leathery stuff you can get on an outdoor plant.

Last years onions have just about come to an end, this years are not even planted out yet. I started a lot in plug trays but too wet to plant yet and they are maybe 9" tall now. I am expecting them to bolt. Got some more yesterday in the bargain box at B&Q so will give them a go. Also got a very poor asparagus plant that I will try to rescue.

I do have salad leaves in the tunnel that I am picking, they are growing quicker than we are eating them and are good as no flea beetle seen yet. I'm sure they will be here soon enough.

Cucumbers are up, courgettes are up, pumpkins about to be sown. I will sow 250 pumpkin and sell to local greengrocer. They don't make me a fortune but fun to grow and the grandkids delight in them.

[Steven P]

Garlic.... I broke one up from the supermarket years ago and planted that - the bulbs have never grown large but I am guessing I have about 50 of them growing just now from that single bulb. However Mrs P doesn't do garlic so it is destined to grow and grow, same with the horseradish, planted a piece from the supermarket and last year dug up a 1m long root - and again, Mrs P doesn't do horseradish (however, Garlic and Horseradish on a Sunday roast.. I can go with that)... same with the gooseberries... anything useful that she likes do nothing (carrots, beetroots, normal potatoes (the weird ones did well)...). I suspect the veggie patch just doesn't like her.

[david lawrence]

Spoke to Dutch lady today. They eat rhubarb as a vegetable not a ‘fruit’ boiled down into a compote then eaten with meat and another veg 

[AHPP]

35 minutes ago, david lawrence said:

Spoke to Dutch lady today. They eat rhubarb as a vegetable not a ‘fruit’ boiled down into a compote then eaten with meat and another veg 

 

 

[Peasgood]

Lots of recipes for rhubarb and mackerel. Not for me though.

[Stere]

Bit of ginger with it is ok.

[Peasgood]

We (me and my family) used to grow possibly up to 50 acres of rhubarb. We would send 3 wagon loads a day into Liverpool and Manchester wholesale markets. All handballed in 18lb boxes and all after a full day of picking the stuff.

That family in Yorkshire famous for rhubarb, they used to buy wagon loads off us. We sent artic loads of it off to jam factories, they mixed it into the more expensive jams to bulk out the raspberries etc.

We also sent artic loads of plants to Yorkshire and the rest of the country. Back in the day a lot of prisons had farms that fed the prisoners, they bought lots of rhubarb sets off us and most seasons involved a delivery to one HMP or other.

I think I worked out that we as a family partnership were producing 12% of the UK crop.

As trends changed and sales went to supermarkets rather than wholesale into greengrocers numbers dwindled to the point where one van load a week was enough.

We stopped farming and nobody seemed to notice much but I hear you can't get rhubarb now because it is too expensive.

 

 

[AHPP]

1 hour ago, Peasgood said:

We (me and my family) used to grow possibly up to 50 acres of rhubarb. We would send 3 wagon loads a day into Liverpool and Manchester wholesale markets. All handballed in 18lb boxes and all after a full day of picking the stuff.

That family in Yorkshire famous for rhubarb, they used to buy wagon loads off us. We sent artic loads of it off to jam factories, they mixed it into the more expensive jams to bulk out the raspberries etc.

We also sent artic loads of plants to Yorkshire and the rest of the country. Back in the day a lot of prisons had farms that fed the prisoners, they bought lots of rhubarb sets off us and most seasons involved a delivery to one HMP or other.

I think I worked out that we as a family partnership were producing 12% of the UK crop.

As trends changed and sales went to supermarkets rather than wholesale into greengrocers numbers dwindled to the point where one van load a week was enough.

We stopped farming and nobody seemed to notice much but I hear you can't get rhubarb now because it is too expensive.

 

 

 

 

Those are impressive numbers until I realised you said that's what the UK grows, not what the UK eats. Go on. Depress me. How much imported vs UK grown?

Edited May 6 by AHPP

[Peasgood]

1 hour ago, AHPP said:

 

 

Those are impressive numbers until I realised you said that's what the UK grows, not what the UK eats. Go on. Depress me. How much imported vs UK grown?

I don't know but I expect we are pretty self sufficient on rhubarb. There will be some forced stuff from Holland and most likely outdoor from Poland. Our trade into the jam industry stopped when Polish rhubarb undercut us to the point it wasn't viable, from memory we were getting £120/ton and that was only just worth doing.