Leaf of the Week: Rainbow Chard

Now here’s a great salad leaf cum vegetable. If you eat them young, as pictured here, they add some lovely colour to your leaf selection – in particular, the stems which give them their name. Let them grow a bit more and you can pop them in the pot and cook them as you would spinach.

The rainbow effect is actually only achieved by planting white, red and yellow stems together, though of course this is a bit of a lottery when you grow from seed. Less unpredictable is the goodness that you’ll get from eating it – just like spinach, eat this chard and you’ll have a fantastic source of iron, magnesium and Vitamin C.

Bits and bobs on the wild side…

Every week the majority of leaves that go into the salad bags we pack are those that we grow in the main section of Allens Garden – the green oakleafs, the red oraches, cos, the lollo rossos etc. etc. All good leaves, sure, ones that you would find in any salad worth its salt. But it’s on the wild side that things get more interesting. In this section of Allens Garden we follow a more forest-garden approach. It’s not as managed as the other area and when you harvest you really feel like you are foraging. So, of course it means we spend a bit more time picking these leaves, lifting up other plants sometimes to get to them, but the taste that they bring to the salad makes it all worth while.

In a little bit of a departure from my usual blogging style, I thought I would share them all with you – something like a rogues gallery of ‘bits and bobs’, as Ru calls them, ‘the unsung heroes.’ Hope you enjoy!

First up is mint – one of the largest beds on the wild side, this plant has been producing since I arrived in April. Mint in salad is a must – makes it very fresh and surprising. You just pluck out the tender tips…

Next up is salad burnett. A delicate little string of leaves, with a very subtle taste and oh so pretty in your salad bowl…

Then come chives, featured last week as Leaf of the Week. Here they have already been cut back.


The next is a truly delicious leaf called saltbush. It is, as its name suggests, salty. It’s almost as if the leaves were finely dusted with salt.

Then there is buckle-leaf sorrel. This grows voraciously on our site, so needs constant cutting back, which is great for us and, if you like the sour taste, great for our salad eaters too. It’s good with a sweet dressing…

And here, looking nothing like the buckle-leaf variety above, is common sorrel. It does, however, share its taste…

This next one is marjoram, typically used in cooking, as a herb, but as you’ll know from my last couple of leaves, herbs get tossed into our salads too. We make sure we pick the young tender leaves.

And as grand finale, this is Ceylon spinach. I love it that this is spinach. It’s so succulent and it climbs! The leaves get pretty big, which is great because for a moment we thought they weren’t going to get a chance to grow at all – something, we think it might be fleas, rather liked the young plants. Now they are doing really well, climbing up and round the stakes we optimistically put in a few months back. Apparently they can get to 30 ft in their true habitat in Africa and southeast Asia. Now that would be something!

And in conclusion, here they all are together, picked and mixed up, ready to go into this week’s bags. All together they gave us just over a kilo of leaves. It might not seem so much out of a total of 10.8kgs. Yet, without these bits and bobs, the salad just wouldn’t be the same.

Weekly stats…
Grower: 1 | Apprentices: 2 | Volunteers: 4 | Support workers: 1 | Dog: 1

Harvested from the site…
Salad greens & edible flowers: 10.8kg | 2 punnets blackberries: 600g | Tomatoes: 24kg!! – yes, I know, it’s amazing! We thought the tomatos would peak last week but here we have a whole 6kg more! Those calabash toms are incredible!

Leaf of the Week: Chives

Eek! We have another herby interloper this week! This feature is becoming seriously controversial! But this time, I think the controversy comes more in the question of shape. For chives, as you can see, really are more of a blade rather than a leaf. You call them  chives, with an s, because you never get just one chive…

But, whatever you think, whether chives should really be leaf of the week or not, these blades have played a pretty much constant role in the salad bags I’ve helped to grow over the last few months. Never too many but just enough to give their delicious onion-y flavour to the pack. Bruce, my fellow apprentice, doesn’t think a salad is a salad without them. Chives are the smallest member of the onion family. We grow them in clumps, because they like to grow that way, and also because it is so easy to cut them for the salad.  And they are not only good tasting but the growing plants also help to repel pests from other plants…so surely worthy of being featured here?

Is a tomato, always a tomato?

Today I picked 37 punnets of tomatoes. There’s something really special about reaching through the vines and snapping off the bright red fruit, always careful to break the stem at the right point so it can heal properly.* In characteristic Ru-style, we are growing some unusual varieties, all in the greenhouses at Springfield Gardens. Each variety seem to be fairly good producers, though today’s harvest will most likely be their peak.

Most conventional is Early Outdoor. A bright red tomato with creases at the top to distinguish it (at least from the other ones we are growing).

Behind it, you see Tigerilla, a rather more interesting tomato visually. More orange-y than red, with green tiger stripes, which colour up nicely as the fruit matures. And it does have a more intense flavour. Here it gets centre stage…

The Kondine Red is another conventional looking tomato. This is a tomato that Ru’s grandfather used to grow years ago. Hearing tales of how good it was, Ru hunted down these seeds with some effort. Though they haven’t quite met Ru’s expectations on flavour, (even his granddad says they aren’t as good as he remembers) I think these are still rather good, if not overly special.

The next is the most unconventional tomato I’ve ever seen. If you’ve agreed with nothing else I’ve said on this blog, you have to agree with me that this, the Calabash tomato, is the weirdest looking tomato you’ve ever seen, unless, of course, you’ve seen this variety before! This tomato, pictured here…

…is not a strange one-off, an anomaly amongst its peers…for here it sits in the company of its rather ugly kin…

So, why, you might ask, are we growing this strange-looker of a tomato? Well, they cook up to be pretty damn tasty, are a great conversation piece, and, as you will see by the harvest figures below, they are especially rampant producers.

Once all the tomatoes were picked, support worker Annie had to do some interesting handiwork to get each punnet weighed up into 500g lots.

Here, in the greenhouses, is where we do all the weighing and packing up of the salad bags and other bits and pieces when the weather outside is unpredictable – which, of course, is most of the time!

Weekly stats…
Grower: 1 | Apprentices: 1 (Bruce is still at Climate Camp) | Volunteers: 5 | Support workers: 1 | Dog: 1

Harvested from the site…
Salad greens & edible flowers: 17kg | 2 punnets blackberries: 480g | Basil: 90g| Tomatoes: 18.5kg!! | Shallots: 9kg | Chard: 5kg

Tomato breakdown…
Calabash: 8kg | Early outdoor: 4kg | Kondine Red: 1.5kg | Tigerilla: 5kg

* Thought I would share the harvesting technique with you. Have to demonstrate on my tomato plants at home, as didn’t think of this til now…

The Calabash tomatoes can pose a challenge to this picking style, as they grow up around the stems but with a bit of careful twisting, it can be done.

Leaf of the Week: Basil

Yes, yes, I know. Basil is a herb. But it’s still a leaf and it does go in our salad bags – at least the leftovers do. We normally pick as much as we can and bag it up in 30g packets, ready to be sold at the farm shop. “Where’s the farm shop?” I hear you shout. Calm down, it’s at the Old Fire Station in Stoke Newington, where people come to collect their weekly vegetable boxes. That’s where we sell all the extra bits and pieces that we grow around the sites. But I digress, the leftovers of this pungent-smelling, oh-so-delicious herb, make it into the salad bags and really get us salad-packers salivating when it’s mixed in. Just the smell is enough to make you really hungry, especially after a long day on the site!

I don’t think I need to tell you too much about good ol’ Basil – am sure you know him very well. All that’s left, really, is to show you this fresh, shiny-leafed variety. We grow these plants in the greenhouse, where it is nice and warm, regardless of how August is behaving….

We don’t let the plants get too big I’m afraid, basil’s always well in demand!

Hard labour, farewells and ‘summer’ pumpkins…

Harder day today than any other yet. Nine whole wheel-barrow loads of soil to be dug, scraped and shoveled off the former cos-lettuce bed and carted to various piles around the site. Then five loads of compost to be brought to the bed and raked smooth ready for planting. Raised beds normally mean no digging is needed but with the infestation of lettuce-root aphid a couple of weeks ago, Ru deemed it best to take no chances of a repeat attack. So off comes as much soil as we can handle.

A truly exhausting exercise which took three of us all morning to complete. First we used shovels to get the top layer of compost off and into the barrow. Then Nat got out the pickaxe to try to break up the compacted soil beneath. I used the cultivator to try to scrape it up. It’s a strange movement, using this tool, kind of like scratching at the surface. Very tiring, even taking turns with Nat! Meanwhile Ann-Marie was down the way on compost sieving duty, getting it all ready for when we needed it. Then when the compost was on and level, in went the rouge d’hiver, another lettuce Ru’s trialling for the salad bags.

Really can’t complain about the hard work. It wasn’t too bad a day for working up a sweat – cool and with only a threat of rain. The threat became reality at lunch though. Held off until we were all seated down, outside because the smell of garlic in the classroom, the only shelter other than the shed, was totally overbearing. Still soaking for the concoction to treat the soil from those dreaded aphids… My friend pitched up to join us and check out the site, and we had a little leaving party (in the rain and all!) for our volunteer Nat, who’s sadly done her time here and is going back to the States. Ann-Marie stayed on for lunch and we had some cake to commiserate Nat’s departure. Will definitely miss her and her hard-working-always-willing-to-help attitude.

On another sad note, one of the volunteers said today, and I am hoping this is not true, that today was the first day of autumn. Was kind of fitting since we harvested the first of the pumpkins, but summer surely can’t be over??!!

Here the pumpkins sit on the window shelf of the shed, in the sun (when it shines) and out of the rain, ready to eat come Halloween. These pumpkins have been growing on the Wild Side at our Allens Gardens site.

Weekly stats…
Grower: 1 | Apprentices: 1 (Bruce is at Climate Camp) | Volunteers: 8 + one baby in tow | Support workers: 1 | Visitors: a few | Friend: 1 | Dog: 1

Harvested from the site…
Salad greens & edible flowers: 16kg | 3 punnets blackberries: 750g | Basil: 120g| Tomatoes: 8.5kg!! | Figs: 10

Leaf of the Week: Nasturtium

So this one’s a bit controversial. You find nasturtium in pretty much every garden these days, and here we are growing it for salad. But that’s because it tastes so good,  just like a mild mustard. And don’t just trust my word for it, I have it on very good authority that the leaves are appreciated in our salad bags – Nat, our lovely volunteer, says she particularly enjoys them! When I was growing up we used to have it in cheese sandwiches. And these days my parents say that it’s a sign that I’m home when the salad on the table is filled with its fragrantly tasting flowers – which rather gratuitously I am including in this week’s pic too, along with the leaves – if you’re lucky you might find those in your bag too!

This particular variety has variegated leaves and unlike other more voracious types, has a fairly confined growing habit, which means that it doesn’t take over the whole of the beds that we plant it in. This, as you can imagine, is rather important in a site as small as ours,  certainly wouldn’t want to swamp the salad bags with the strong flavoured leaves. Although with all the Vitamin C you find in nasturtiums, it might not be a bad thing!

Sowing dem seeds…

I’ve been at Growing Communities now for a whole four months and though every week I put plenty of plants in the ground to ensure that there’s a constant supply of salad leaves, I’ve not actually grown any of those plants from seed. The reason for this is not of my doing. It’s a matter of geography and the way the work’s been carved up between Bruce, the other apprentice grower, and me. As you might know, if you read this regularly, I work at Allens Gardens on a Tuesday, planting, maintaining, attending and harvesting, until four when we all head over to Springfields to do the rest of the harvesting and the packing. All the seed sowing, however, is done on a Monday at Springfield Gardens (the day that Bruce works), where there is a wonderful greenhouse which is just perfect for the job. Perfect though it might be, it does mean that in all my apprenticing so far, I’ve not sown a single seed.

Today, this changed.

Having told Ru I was keen to get the whole experience, we set today as sowing day. Or at least sowing hour – all the usual work still has to be done at Allens no matter what kind of sowing experience I want to get. So we meet at Springfield Gardens at 8, rather than our 9 o’clock start at Allens. This gives me an hour to get a feel for sowing.

And it’s a satisfyingly methodical experience, sowing seed in bulk, especially when everything is set up for you. This is the ‘seed bench’ we use…

With everything on hand, here’s my take on how to sow your seeds…in ten easy steps…

One, make sure you have the seeds you need – today we are sowing four types to be ready for winter: giant red mustard, rocket, ornamental cabbage and red oak leaf lettuce. ( = these need to be planted out while it is still fairly warm so they have time to establish themselves before the cold months set in.) All the seeds are kept in an airtight container (seed bank) in the shed, out of the light, damp and sun.

Two, get a good sized pile of seed compost to hand. We make this ourselves by twice-sieving leaf mulch. Sieving it makes it really fine and gives us a low nutrient base to which we add sand – 5 parts leaf mulch to one part sand. You don’t need a high nutrient growing medium as the seeds pretty much have all they need within them to germinate. A low-nutrient compost means the roots will grow stronger, really challenging them to search for more nutrients as those in the seeds are used up – at which you point you plant them out.

Three, you take a seed tray and fill it up with compost. We use plug trays which make it easier to plant out the individual seedlings once they’ve grown. You need to really pack the compost in, so you push it down with your fingers and then fill it up a second time.

Four, put the whole tray into a shallow basin of water (about an inch deep) so that the seed tray is soaked from the bottom. When the compost at the top starts to glisten, you know the tray is ready for sowing. If you don’t have time, then you can just water the top – using a watering can with the rose facing upwards means that you can give it a light soak.

Five, place the tray on a drain to get rid of any excess water. We use a drum covered with a plastic grate…

Six, making the peace sign with your fingers, as Ru tells me, you make small indentations in each module.

Seven, sow the seeds! The number of seeds you put in each depression depends on the type of plant you are growing. With the mustard, as it is a plucking leaf, we put in one seed in each. The rocket, on the other hand, is cut and come again, so it makes sense to have more than one plant growing in each plug. This is called multi-seed sowing.

Eight, sieve a light coat of sand across the top. You only cover the soil as much as the thickness of the seed. So really not very much if you are planting lettuces which are tiny! The sieve allows you to really control how much you put on.

Nine, label the tray! It’s really important to do this at this stage so you know what is in each tray as it starts to grow! You can get special labels for the purpose but a cut up yoghurt pot works just as well and you get to recycle those yoghurt pots you didn’t know what to do with at the same time…We put the name of the plant (i.e. mustard), the type of plant it is (i.e. giant red) and the date it was sown.

Ten, cover with a propagator lid and put in a good spot. We keep them in the greenhouse until they start to grow. Then we harden them off for a week before planting them out ( = this is where plants are allowed to get used to being outside), either at Allens Gardens or at Springfields. All in all, they should take around 3 weeks before they are ready to go forth…

Check out my handiwork! Managed to sow 7 trays before dashing off to Allens Gardens to work out how much was to be harvested today. Yes, I know, there are more than 7 trays here. If I’m honest with you (which of course I always am) it took quite a bit longer than an hour to do these 7 and Ru finished off the final four trays quickly while I went on ahead. Still, I’m very pleased with the experience.

Weekly stats…
Grower: 1 | Apprentices: 2 | Volunteers: 8 | Support workers: 1 | Visitors: a few | Dog: 1

Harvested from the site…
Salad greens & edible flowers: 21kg | 3 punnets blackberries: 750g | Basil: 90g| Tomatoes: 2kg | Chard: 5kg | Figs: 30

Sown…
Red Leaf mustard: 3 trays | Ornamental cabbage: 2 trays | Garden rocket: 2 trays | Red oakleaf lettuce: 4 trays

Leaf of the Week: Amaranth

“Amaranth? Leaf of the week? But it’s a grain!” I hear you protest. And you’d be right. Except that we are growing the leaves for our salad bags, and fine looking leaves they are too! Here they are growing in the bed…

They look pretty small but we cropped the larger leaves for the salad bags this week.

And here are the backs of the leaf.

Just think they look amazing so had to show this to you in detail!

But so much for looking great, what, apart from fine features and a good topic for conversation, does the leaf bring to your salad? A lot! Just like the grain, it’s high in protein, has loads of Vitamins A and C, and apparently it gives you more iron than spinach! One site I came across said that amaranth is considered to be one of the most nutritious plants in the world! So not just a pretty face! “Bring on the amaranth!”