The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #165215   Message #4091668
Posted By: Raedwulf
05-Feb-21 - 04:46 PM
Thread Name: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
SRS - Yep! That sounds like my standard "Anything" recipe! And isn't it amazing how it always turns out so tasty... ;-)

Veg & ground are funny things. Here's something daft that'll make folks grin. And produce quite a few "I never..." or "So that's why..." I can grow onions. I can grow snowball turnips. I can't grow purple-top / Milan turnips. Now, isn't that daft? I don't know why. When I moved here a dozen+ years ago, my neighbour told me the land was no good for e.g. swedes. They rot in the ground before they're worth harvesting. Ditto Milan turnips, but not snowballs. Isn't that silly? I've no idea why it should be so...

I can grow onions, but... You lose 10% to wastage anyway, and most of the rest, size-wise... I dunno, it's probably me, but they never seem to make any size. I can pick up more than a year's supply from gleaning. I'm back to where I was. When I lived in suburban London, onions & potatoes were a waste of my small garden. They're cheap supermarket staples. I can pick bigger & better off the fields & the verges, so why bother? I do grow potatoes (if anyone wants a decent multi-purpose Main-crop spud, I recommend Lady Balfour; don't believe the seed spud F1 nonsense; I've been replanting spuds from last year's crop for more than a decade!), but it's leeks for me.

Again, they don't usually reach anything like s/m size. But, swipe me, are leeks ever easy to grow! Easier even than onions. And whilst mine don't reach s/m size, leeks are relatively sodding expensive in the shops. Oh, plus leeks will happily stand over winter, if your winters are none too harsh. Much depends on how much space & time you have. But if you're trying to grow your own, always start at value for money.

Potatoes, onions, carrots are all dirt (!) cheap sm staples. So grow an unusual spud, something else from the allium family, etc. Higher value crops like tomatoes & peppers will grow very happily in containers, so even if you've not got a garden, just a sunny windowsill...

Etcetera! Sorry, this is supposed to be a recipe thread, not a gardening one...