Winter warmer

The switch from BST to GMT is a particularly hard time for allotmenteers: for those of us who work full time it means the end of post-work visits in the fading light, and means we're limited to the already-busy weekends for out plot kicks.

I am most definitely a "summer person", if there is such a thing. I love being outside but have a profound fear of the cold, and the nature of my job and commute means that I am usually going to and coming home from work in the dark, staring out of the train window and wondering what's happening down on the plot.

It's the delights of jolly veg like this rainbow chard and my red cabbages that keeps me going down the plot at this time of year: they're so gaudy I can't help but smile. Any regular readers of this blog will know that I have become a bit of a chard evangelist: I really can't praise the stuff enough - colourful enough to grow in ornamental borders, easy to sow and grow, lasts for at least a year and a half, and you can eat both the stems and the leaves as an all-year round addition to your salad. (In fact, once the cold weather really sets in my salads will be largely made up of sorrel and baby chard leaves).

Other comforts at this time of year are:

• Beetroots, still going strong for me and providing plenty of fodder for the beetroot soup pot
• The dozen or so pumpkins sitting squat on the table in my garage, ready to be roasted and mashed up with gruyere
• Pink fir apple potatoes, stored away in the cool of the garage in old wine boxes (the compartments mean one rotten potato shouldn't spread to the others) ready to make salad nicoise, or to be boiled and served with parsley sauce
• Jerusalem artichokes, pulled up, scrubbed and sliced in a stir fry, roasted with thyme and rosemary or magicked into a delicious soup

Comments

[David]

Man alive, but you're making me hungry. No mean feat as I'd just finished dinner when I read this. The pumpkin sounds wonderful - I shall inform thee mistress of Wild Burro Paddocks that we shall be experimenting again (only to see her relief when I explain it's with tea).