Beets, roots and leaves

I have found beetroot fairly easy to grow. Particularly nice is that you can use the young leaves in a salad or instead of spinach. They seem pretty immune to pests, which is another good attribute. They're a bit bland on the dinner table, but Moog's favourite recipe is for me to pan-fry them in balsamic vinegar and olive oil and serve with crumbled Roquefort cheese.

I have just spent an hour or so pickling the last of my crop. I am left with astonishing purple fingernails as a result. I also have four jars of pickled beetroot. Looking at them, I realised that this probably represents more pickled beetroot than I have ever eaten in my life to date. So, another vegetable creeps onto the 'not going to grow that next year' list.

Garlic Update

Most of the garlic is starting to turn brown now, and there's a lot of leek rust on the leaves, so Moog thinks we should pull it all up this week. I'm well pleased as they were the first thing I planted when I took over the plot. Most of it will be dried and stored for use in cooking, but we're going to try eating some of it as 'wet' garlic, using recipes from Hugh Hairy-Wittingstall's TV programme River Cottage Spring that was on last week. If they're nice I'll report back, and plant more next year!

This picture doesn't really give you an idea of the size of these plants, they're much bigger than the bulbs you can buy in the shops.