Footprint 15: Getting into the swing of things

One of the very best things about growing one's own veggies is that one knows exactly when they were picked and exactly how old they are.  I have enough radishes now to pick more than I can eat, without living on a subsistence diet of only radishes.  Radishes are interesting.  They outgrow the ground.  At some point the round red root bit pushes its way out of the soil, and only the thin little white tail remains embedded in the ground.  This means that it needs to be picked, otherwise the radish itself will spoil.  So what I have learnt to do is pick them, and then put them into a jar of water, instead of putting them into the fridge.  They stand on the counter for a day or two, and the leaves remain fresh:

Radishes in a jar

 As can be seen, I am losing the war against the caterpillars.  Some of these leaves are going to have to be composted.  On the caterpillar issue, I understand that as long as there is the tiniest bit of green available to the radish it will carry on growing.  So I have decided to leave the caterpillars to munch away on the green part of the radish.  They seem to leave the radish itself alone.  As I watch the butterflies chasing each other around the garden, I figure it is worth it to have munched leaves.  One just has to pick the caterpillars off before washing them and preparing them for the kitchen.

Here are the remains of the alfalfa and beet sprouts:

Alfalfa and Beet Sprouts

Despite the fact that beet sprouts take ten days to look like this, they are pretty enough to persevere.  And if one has other sprouts going at the same time, it is just one more bottle to worry about.  These sprouts have contributed to two meals so far.  I figure that that is a fairly good return on the investment of two tablespoons of sprouts.

Here are this week's sprouts:

Fenugreek, sunflower, lentil and aduki beans

Fenugreek is going to become a standard for me.  They are very tasty, as are alfalfa sprouts.  I didn't have enough room to repeat alfalfa, as I want to experiment with others as well, and have decided that four concurrent bottles is more than enough.  I purchased the hulled sunflower seed and aduki beans from our local health store.  The lentils are black lentils from Imbo, purchased at a local grocery store - the same lentils that I cooked up for a lovely supper this evening.

And here is a new method of sprouting:

Rocket, sunflower and pumpkin

The two methods are different.  The bottle method focuses almost entirely on the root of the sprout.  This method is what is known as micro leaves, where the plant grows until the first leaves have developed.  What it basically entails is a large recycled plastic container filled with water.  Into this goes a smaller recycled plastic container with drainage holes pierced into the bottom.  One then places a growing medium, which could be compost, vermiculite, perlite, river sand, or any combination of those.  I chose vermiculite only, as this means not having to wash soil off the sprouts once they are ready to eat.  Also, the vermiculite can be re-used with very little effort.  These take longer, as one waits for the leaves to develop.  I will take a piccie when they are further along in their development, and record the time that they take.  There is one other major difference between bottled sprouts and these sprouts.  The bottled sprout process takes place predominantly in the dark.  These sprouts need light.  At the moment they are on my window sill.  I plan to take them out into the sun when I think about it.

One last little note.  If one looks up Tansy as a deterrent for flies on the internet, the jury seems to be out on whether it works or not.  I now know it works.  I had a major fruit fly infestation hovering permanently around my worm farm and on two occasions had to pick maggots out of it.  I purchased a Tansy plant, and put it, still in its black growing bag, onto a plant saucer on top of the bin.  By that evening, the bin was pretty much fly free.  Although this plant is classified in the United States as a noxious weed, it was once so revered in the UK that it was considered a 'must' in every herb garden, for human consumption.  I am not sure that it is going to become a gourmet delicacy for me.  It is going to be a 'must' in my garden for its impact on flies.

Although a lot is happening in the garden,  news on that needs to wait for a future post.