Posts from ‘November, 2009’

There’s nothing quite so off-putting as badly cooked cabbage - limp, watery and horribly bitter. But the same is true for courgettes - and we have all suffered at the hands of school catering which murders the flavours of both. Fortunately, F&F has the marvellous Vegalicious blog to combat any cooking disasters. And these Good [...]

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Come winter and most gardeners crawl indoors for a hard-earned rest. Not so the team at Anglesey Abbey, who this week will head down to their winter garden with jet-washers and scrubbing brushes. Washing the trees keeps the extraordinary display of colourful and ornamental barks pristine in preparation for the busiest season.
The Winter Garden is [...]

I admit to finding it very difficult to don my waterproof coat and head off to the allotment when it is blowing a gale or very cold. I worry that I am indeed a bit of a wimpy gardener, a fair weather one.
So it should come as no surprise that this year I’ve decided not [...]

The leaves have fallen from the trees, there is a distinct nip in the air, and Thanksgiving is just around the corner. These altogether mean pumpkin time at our house. You might use this versatile vegetable to make a jack-o-lantern, or only as a pumpkin pie. But there are as many sides to this delicious [...]

‘But my garden really isn’t very stylish,’ objected Irene Knightley when I first approached her about a Real Garden feature. She must be an incredibly modest woman, as this is one of the most romantic gardens I have ever seen.
True, La Ferme de Sorrou, a garden in south-west France, isn’t manicured to right-angled perfection. And [...]

Radishes and broccoli are the hare and the tortoise of the vegetable world. While radishes are ready within three weeks of sowing, broccoli requires great patience and a willingness to surrender a bed for an entire season. But come early April, when most vegetables are pathetic little seedlings, broccoli fills that ‘hungry gap’ before harvesting [...]

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Let’s face it: not every gardener likes shovelling manure in the rain and spending all Saturday fussing over their sweetcorn plants. If you’re brand-new to gardening, this whole dirt-under-the-fingernails thing can be off-putting enough without the vast swathes of knowledge you are expected to acquire.
So what if there was a book aimed at girly gardeners [...]

I absolutely love Victoriana Nursery Gardens. They have such a marvellous selection of unusual seeds and plants, and the company is family-run. They’re a lovely bunch of people too, and have teamed up with Fennel&Fern to offer a 10% discount to all our readers forever. To get the discount, all you need to do is [...]

A new month and it seems like an entirely different country. Autumn now seems to be heading inexorably towards winter as posts in our weather blog show.
We made just a flying visit to the plot to harvest a few vegetables and make sure plants in the greenhouse had sufficient water. We didn’t even stop for [...]

I fell in love with the Hercules Garden at Blair Castle in Fife when I was a young teenager. It wasn’t difficult: a walled garden complete with bothy, Japanese bridge, a folly, vegetables beds and fruit trees running down in stripes to a lake. The beds are beautiful from Spring to late Autumn, as pictured [...]

Parsnips are underrated, and globe artichokes are under-grown. It’s a shame because if you cook them properly, they taste utterly incredible. Once they have successfully germinated, parsnips are completely undemanding, and you can almost forget about them for seven months, save the occasional watering in hot weather. And globe artichokes earn their keep in the [...]

Digging up root vegetables is so exciting: especially when you’re not sure how much buried treasure lies beneath the soil. Pulling out a hoard of golden new potatoes, all honey-flavoured and flaky-skinned, is a marvellous feeling. And, as childish as this might be, I love the bizarre shapes some carrots present when forked out of [...]

Tomatoes and garlic are best of friends in the kitchen. But while garlic settles happily into the soil and asks nothing more, tomatoes crave your attention. There are sideshoots to pinch out, blight to guard against, and fruits which get grumpy if you don’t water properly. Today’s cards demystify the two plants so you can [...]