Monthly dressing

This month we pitted the new apprentices against each other, to fight for the increasingly feted title of Monthly Dresser. Ru picked a perfect mix of leaves…

These we split into two bowls, then tossed each with a different dressing.

This time there were four volunteers on hand to do the taste test, plus Ru and I. New rule is that the makers of the dressing can’t vote. It was a tough call, as the apprentices had gone for very similar mixes. But it was Annie who walked away with the title, 4 to 2, with her (now not so) secret ingredient of black current and sloe jelly.

The leaves are still strong enough tasting to warrant a sweet dressing. Try this one, courtesy of Annie, at home:

A splosh of balsamic vinegar
A double splosh of olive oil (use Palestinian for best result)
2 tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp black currant & sloe jelly (“or any old jam, to be honest,” says Annie)

And on the right…Annie’s winning concoction…

Growing growing growing!

Just wanted to give you a little update on what’s been happening at my site…As you might know, if you have been reading this blog, in my new position as assistant grower, I am tasked with looking after the smallest of Growing Communities’ market garden sites. At this site, we have 3 rotations going – two new ones which we have turned over to salad production this year (now that I am on board to give the salad the attention it needs) and one with longer maturing crops such as pumpkins, garlic and chard.

Last week I planted up the first bed with tatsoi ( = a Japanese salad leaf ) and another with wild rocket, both of which I had sown last month. And this week I sowed some salsola soda straight into the earth. This is a bit of an experiment, both the plant itself and sowing straight in – normally we sow seeds into trays at our Springfield site and take them to the various sites when they are ready for planting. But we thought we would give this a try to see what happens…will keep you posted!

All three beds are covered with fine mesh to keep dem pesky birds from causing damage. One thing about this site is that there are loads and loads of pigeons. We are very close to the deer pens and those opportunistic birds are always around waiting for the Park guys to feed the deer (if you look very closely at the picture, you can just about see them in the background). I’m hoping that the deer feed will hold more of an appeal to the pigeons than our tasty young salad leaves…

Harvested from Clissold this week:
1.5kg rainbow chard – this has been growing over the winter and gave us 6 really beautiful bags of greens with colourful stalks to sell at the farm shop, which is where people pick up their veggie bags.

Leaf of last week: Cornet de Bordeaux

Not only is this one of the biggest leaves on our site at the moment but wow, what a mouthful of a name! It’s the escarole type of endive and I just had to resurrect ‘Leaf of the Week’ to show it to you.

It has been a hugely successful crop over the past winter and has continued to grow nicely over the last few weeks of unsettled weather. If you get the salad bags you should have no difficulty recognising it! This type of endive is less bitter than the other types.

Last week was the first day back harvesting on the sites. Now that British Summer Time has arrived (even if summer itself seems far off!), we are back to harvesting on a Tuesday. This means super long days which end in trailer loads of salad bags being cycled from our growing sites to Growing Communities’ HQ, ready to be packed into the veggie boxes the following day.