Here at The Yorkshire Preservatory I try to eat as sustainably as possible throughout the year. Growing and eating as much of my own food as possible relies on me finding imaginative ways to preserve it or cook with it. I try to base my diet on what’s in season, in my freezer or in jars lining my pantry shelves. I’d like to think that my “sustainable” diet is not only a healthier one but a cheaper one too; that is until I count up the cost of all my seed packets, bags of compost and designer jam jars, not to mention the copious amounts of sugar stirred into all the jams and chutneys I make.
Rhubarb is one of the first “vegetables” to harvest in early Spring. Making a couple of jars of rhubarb curd is one of my guilty pleasures.
April is a busy month preparing for the much looked forward summer glut of fruit and vegetables I hope to harvest from my allotment to replenish my ever dwindling stores in the freezer. The tomato, chilli, pepper and aubergine plants have germinated and are silently and stealthily growing in the spare bedroom before being transported to the allotment green house. The kohlrabi, summer cabbages, purple sprouting broccoli, kalettes and kale are all sown ready for transplanting to their final resting place in early summer. French dwarf and climbing beans are patiently waiting in the wings along with cucumber, squash and sweetcorn to be sown next month.
In the ground now, the onions and garlic are putting on weight having survived the cold and wet of winter. Already plumped up the leeks have come into their own and are taking centre stage in many delicious meals. The purple sprouting broccoli is shouting its last “hurrah” as the last few precious florets are picked for the wok, and the humble rhubarb is just coming into its own with its ruby red stalks sprouting from the ground, almost growing before my eyes.
Over wintered leeks lend themselves to forming the base or starring in many delicious meals.
If there is one thing that I have learned from “growing my own” and trying to eat sustainably , it’s that you should only grow food that you actually like and want to eat! Each year as I browse through the seed catalogues I ooh and aah over the new varieties of fruit and veg paraded before me. In the beginning I admit I was seduced into buying seeds that on reflection I shouldn’t have bothered with. They were either unsuited to the soil and climate I was trying to grow them in or took up too much space for too long a time in the bed that I had planted them in. Blood, sweat and toil really rings true when crops you have nurtured come to nothing edible on the plate. I am now able to hold back and reserve better judgement in selecting my annual seeds and planning my seasonal harvests.
There are some perennial plants though that are worth persevering with though if you have the space and patience to grow them.
Top of my list is the flamboyant globe artichoke as it sways majestically in the height of summer. The excitement of seeing asparagus tips poke their tips through the soil in spring also never fails to delight me. Along with the bronze fennel , sweet cicely’s frothiness in mid April adds flavour to culinary delights and heralds the army of herbs that will soon spring back into life through the summer months. Sweet cicely is also a great bed fellow with rhubarb, the addition of which helps you reduce the amount of sugar you need to use when cooking it. By the end of April the chives have also reappeared ready to draw the emerging bumble bees back into the allotment to help pollinate the fruit trees and early spring flowers.
Finally, the fruit trees are breaking out in blossom; the plums and blackthorn burst first followed by the cherry pear and apples. Each tree beckons the bees and other pollinators providing a steady source of pollen and food for them though the months of spring. This spring I am hoping to see the first blossom on some of the trees I planted in my apiary in October 2018. They have put on good growth along with the rugosa roses planted around the perimeter.
Spring has truly sprung here at The Yorkshire Preservatory.
The plum and damson trees are usually the first to be clothed in blossom.