Well, it's time to say goodbye to the little garden. We've had three very happy years here. Some more fruitful than others. It's time for the little gardeners to scale up and move to some bigger and (hopefully) better. In three weeks we'll be the proud owners of a slightly larger patch than what we have now – a whopping 100ft x 65ft garden! We are very excited :-)Last weekend we harvested the remainder of our crops. The highlight of which was our parsnips. Look at these beauties! This was the first time we'd grown them and they were a breeze! I think we got about 10 all in all and they were all a really good size. We roasted them up with some of the beets and carrots for a delicious last meal from our patch.
Talking of beetroot – we had a bumper crop this year. I almost don't know what to do with it all! Beetroot chutney – check. Roasted beetroot – check. Pickled beetroot – check. Beetroot soup – check. Not sure what to do with the rest!
We got a huge batch of toms this year too. We went for Gardener's Delight which have well and truly lived up to their name. We have hundreds and hundreds! As we've only got three weeks left here we picked most of them including the green ones.
And of course there's only one thing to do with green tomatoes and that's chutney. I found a great recipe by Nigel Slater.
Green Tomato Chutney
• 900g tomatoes, mixed green and red
• 350g onions
• 90g raisins
• 250g light muscovado sugar
• 1 medium sized, hot red chilli
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp yellow mustard seeds
• 300ml white wine vinegar
Halve or quarter the tomatoes – depending on how big they are. Put the green tomaotes in with all the other ingredients. Bring to the boil and then simmer for around half an hour. Then add in the red tomatoes and simmer for another half hour. Simples. Pop into sterlised jars and I let it mature for a few weeks at least. If you make it now it'll make great Christmas presents – what more could you want than some home-made chutney to spice up that left over turkey on boxing day.
