Orto di Casa Cecconi

My first allotment, and then one thing leading to another…

L’orto di Casa Cecconi Plants Recipes Me & Kew One Year at Wisley

  • Fruit picking in the orchard

    My first full day in the team and we were all working together fruit picking in preparation for the ‘Wisley Taste of Autumn Festival’ that will take place in mid-October. A number of colleagues from across the Society and numerous volunteers joined us, in addition to the regular Fruit Department volunteers and the fruit pickers hired for the season.

    The day could not but start with some training in the use of picking ladders. They have three legs, and come in two types: we have Welsh ones, that are good for picking in the orchard, with a spike at the bottom of one leg to fix them in the ground and that finishing in a triangular point which is easier to place within the tree canopy, and Japanese ones that are more lightweight, have an extendable leg for uneven ground and terminate in a platform.
    

    Welsh style ladder
    Japanese style ladder

    How to use a ladder safely

    1. Check that the ladder is fit for use, without broken or damaged parts, frayed cord etc.
    2. Open the ladder, pointing to the centre of the tree that is being picked
    3. Ensure the ladder is stable on the ground
    4. Always keep three points of contact between the body and the ladder, facing it at all time
    5. Never climb to the last two steps (usually labelled)
    6. Do not overextend to the sides, keep within arm reach from the centre
    7. Never leave the ladder open when finished using it
    8. Place out of the way between trees, with the steps up (in case of frost in winter)

    We picked: apples (there are 450 cultivars only of dessert apples, then there’s the ‘cookers’), pears and quinces.

    It was my first time picking professionally, and realised that the techniques to pick each type of fruit vary.
    Apples tend to come off the plant rather easily, with a gentle twist in your cupped hand, while lifting towards the plant (not pulling away from it). However, much depends on the cultivar, and the shape of the stalk. One has to be careful, as sometimes short-stalked apples may be very close to next year’s fruiting buds, damaging which would of course compromise next year’s floriferousness and size of crop.

    Pears seem to be trickier to remove as they hang on tighter to the tree, and I found it is useful to keep your index finger on the peduncle while twisting them gently clockwise, then anticlockwise. Sometimes, however, depending again on the pear cultivar and how the individual fruit developed, it is very difficult to find where the peduncle starts and the stem ends, and the abscission layer is not clearly marked; that is accentuated by the fact that we tend to pick fruit slightly unripe (so it keeps better), when the abscission layer may not yet be completely formed.

    Ideally, one would always detach the fruit at the abscission layer, because that is where the plant naturally heals the wound faster and more effectively. But, for example in the case of quince, their abscission layer is right at the bottom of the peduncle next to the fruit, and, if picked unripe, they require secateurs to remove the fruit without damaging the stem.
    

     

     
    Apples: stalks: barely visible abscission layer (left), short stalk close to flowering
    bud (right)

    

    

    Pears: no abscission layer visible, awkwardly positioned stalk, clearly marked stalk

    
    
    

    
    

    

    Quince: stalk and abscission layer at its base

    Leaving frayed edges, in fact, is unadvisable as they do not heal quickly on the plant, encouraging pest and disease attack, which is especially risky at this time of the year when the air is rife with fungal spore. Also, frayed edge may cause tears and damage in the fruit when it’s being stored. If the stalk came off altogether, in the case of pears and apples, that would also be a potential ingress for pest and diseases, making the fruit unsuitable for storage.

    It is also rather important not to bruise fruit when picking as that would impair quality, and quality is of primary importance, as we sell the fruit both here in the garden and at events, beside supplying the restaurants on site and some other venues.

    Quality control is of primary importance in the case of the fruit that we sell, so we have a system by which we organise our pickings:

    • Show layer: the fruits that are more representative of the cultivar: unblemished and of good size, they are used in displays
    • Fruit for selling: undamaged, of good appearance and with minor blemishes only (for example small scars from the apple sawfly larvae, or small scab patches). If the fruit is for cooking, appearance is considered less important than for dessert fruit
    • Fruit for juice/cider: blemished but not bruised and smaller sized fruits
    • Bruised, damaged and rotting fruit is raked into the centre of the orchard corridors where they are flailed with a tractor, so that they decompose faster, returning nutrients to the soil. 


  • Lifting safely

    I have been here at Wisley for over a week now, but this is the week when we start doing some real work in our departments after a few days of induction. It started for me with a full day’s training on safe lifting, which I had never attended before.

    Do we have to lift a weight? Can we use some manual handling aid? And, if it is repetitive lifting, can we mechanise the process?

    Those were some of the main questions raised by the trainer, as he explained that the best he could do for us was to make us aware of the risks of lifting and the best ways to minimise them, the most part had to be done by us in changing our ways and, together with our employers, the workplace processes whenever we found that they were not suitable.

    My main takeway was that nobody gains anything by doing more effort than is needed: work-related illnesses cost in the millions of lost days every year to the UK economy (there is quite a lot of information about this on the HSE website), and to the individuals their health, of course.

    I was aware of the standard rules for lifting: bend your knees, keep your back straight. But I had not quite realised – being quite stockily built myself, and enjoying hard physical work – that there are marked differences in bone structure that make it safer for men to lift heavier weights than women and that it is silly to ignore, for example. In fact, health risks for women increase, more than the UK Health and Safety laws consider advisable, from lifting anything above 15kg. Also, I had not quite realised than the position of the weight makes lifting more or less risky: for example weights picked from the ground  or lifted above shoulder height pose a greater risk than those picked from waist height.


    A practical exercise also made me consider the difference that using a correct tool makes in minimising the lifting effort. We were asked to shovel some soil. I offered to try, and found the tool was so short I had to bend quite low, almost to the ground, which was hard work. Then, we were made to try a long-handled shovel, customary elsewhere in Europe. The leverage of the long handle made it light work indeed! The legend goes that English short-handled shovels originate from when miners were living the mines (where they were digging while kneeling) and carried their tools with them to other professions.

    It may not be the whole story, but it certainly highlights the power of tradition in the practices we use, and the difficulty in introducing new ways of doing things where practices are established.

    I will be certainly more careful now in considering my personal capacity to carry out a task and the possible consequences of excessive lifting, planning ahead to minimize the stress on my back (twisting it when handling weight is particularly damaging): hernias felt like a rather real risk after we got graphical explanation of bones and muscles in good detail.

    Here’s what HSE suggest about manual handling:

    • Remove obstructions from the route.
    • For a long lift, plan to rest the load midway on a table or bench to change grip.
    • Keep the load close to the waist. The load should be kept close to the body for as long as possible while lifting.
    • Keep the heaviest side of the load next to the body.
    • Adopt a stable position and make sure your feet are apart, with one leg slightly forward to maintain balance

    And I will be remembering to drink more to avoid reduced muscle performance from dehydration.

  • Horticulture and innovation

    Today I was tidying up my shed, one of those routine horticulture jobs that you could do without and that invite numerous breaks. During one I checked my Twitter and James Wong’s caught my attention:

    @Botanygeek: Yey! My first article for a weekend paper is out today. Why UK hort needs to be dragged into the 21st Century…. http://t.co/uxcjJYMJiZ

    so  I went and read the article.

    It is a rather interesting description of how Singapore aims to be a garden city by incorporating landscaping in the city planning process. Examples describe the airport’s very efficient indoor & outdoor gardens, kept always immaculate by replacing any faded plants with new ones from the on-site nursery; the Marina Bay Sands resort, which indeed looks quite spectacular with an immense pool and garden extending across the top of three hotels; the new harbour front botanic garden.

    Very much focusing on garden design and cool in a 20th century kind of cool, no environmental considerations there, at a time when the world’s ecological systems are so strained they might be approaching irrevesible tipping points (when I pointed that out, James challenged me: wasn’t urban greening intrinsically good for the environment? I don’t think that necessary follows, especially from the examples in his article). The article concluded

    Singapore’s glossy, thematic approach to horticulture may seem theatrical and gimmicky, but in many ways it is more faithful to the pioneering spirit of the British Victorian gardeners we often try to emulate than our own obsession for rehashing the past.

    Fascinating as the article was to read, I could not find how it related to the question “Why UK hort needs to be dragged into the 21st Century”. Why did I bother to point that out to the author?

    Well, you know I am trying to make a career in horticulture, and I am aware that James is heavily involved as an educator in a motivational campaign to get more young people into horticulture. Apparently, there’s not enough young blood in the industry, it is “dying”, and so is farming.

    If it is true that in the free market scarcity means higher value, and higher value by-and-large means more money, one would argue: why is the salary for the average horticulturist in the range £15-25k? Also, why are there no more botany degrees in UK universities? We are, after all, talking about plants… in this specific case, do plants like growing on buildings? A botanist should know.

    I guess one would have to define horticulture to start with. The Oxford dictionaries say “the art or practice of garden cultivation and management” but Wikipedia “technically the science, technology, and business involved in intensive plant cultivation for human use.” Quite a different starting point, rather different implications, right?

    Anyway, to cut a long story short, James basically replied to me that we need to “drag” horticulture in the 21st century because we need “cutting edge innovation” because young people want it and because that is really the UK heritage that we should follow.

    I was rather confused by then. We need innovation, because that is what the UK heritage really means. And that is what the UK youth wants.

    In his words:

    @Botanygeek: @mpaola Want a copy of my original text outlining why flagging youth interest in UK hort is due to lack of innov & our nostalgia obsession?

    and

    @Botanygeek: @mpaola What we need is pioneering hort innovation. Ironically THAT is our heritage, not the Disneyfied rehashings of ‘heritage’ gardens.

    Well, heritage or not heritage, I don’t think I would be too far off the mark saying that UK youth, like most youth in the world, does not like getting dirty, doing hard physical labour for a miserable pay, exposed not only to the weather but to an astonishing range of toxic chemical substances, that are apparently essential to the smooth running of the “industry”. Would that be fair enough?

    But, you see, I go by the Oxford definition of horticulture (which I would slightly modify as “art, science and practice of cultivation”). James obviously goes for the Wikepedia one, and in the industry so defined there are indeed a few better paid, office jobs: TV show presenters like himself, magazine journalists and editors, architects and garden designer, high- and bio-tech engineers and researches of various kind, and – like in any other industry – plenty of managerial, marketing and sales roles.

    Even by the Wikipedia definition, though, the article does not explain what it is meant by “pioneering/cutting edge innovation” and why we need it. And, in general, I have issues with the innovation argument.

    Innovation is the normal state of life. Things change, improve and get worse all the time, in all areas.

    The pursuit of innovation per se has no meaning, and does not add value to anything. A new thing is not necessarily good for being new, just as an old thing is not particularly good for being old. That is a wrong assumption in the (quite outdated) Western concept of progress, that assumes history is a linear progression towards improvement. But I once read a very simple statement that was rather mindblowing: when you are on the brink of a precipice, progress is taking a step back.

    How does innovation make horticulture better for its purpose? First one would have to define the purpose of horticulture. The innovation argument assumes the self-perpetuation of the current industry is the purpose of horticulture, I guess. And the current industry implies some highly paid jobs for the services around horticulture, and rather miserable pay and conditions for the people that actually cultivate those plants, the people on whom all the industry is built.

    Is that something you want to drag kids in with the illusion of some shiny and cool future?
    I myself, with my strong motivation, and a good baggage of experience in my career, find those conditions hard to stomach.

    Horticulture, well defined, is however a fantastic profession.

    Plants are amazing: they have supported life on the planet since its inception (we owe the oxygen we breathe to them), they support and nourish us (as food and medicine), they are beautiful, a joy to work with and have a calming effect on moods. We still know very little about how they work: it teaches one humility, at the same time understanding them and being able to grow them is a continuous learning experience.

    It is often frustrating: things do not always turn out as you would them too, for example the weather. But success is exhilarating. You can actually enjoy (smell, taste, touch) the fruits of your labour, and you have the bonus of getting fit in the process (I am not joking when I say that in 5 months I worked at Kew I lost 6 kg and my body turned so much leaner and muscular I felt great). But you get very tired, aching at times, cold and wet in bad weather, and hot and weak when the temperature goes up.

    I am talking of essentially organic horticulture, where you do your own weeding by hand, where you bend your back to dig, where you look at plants close up and make an effort to understand how they fit in the environment they live in, how pollinators and pests affect them and why, and how you can facilitate the work of one and outsmart the other; how the soil does not just hold plants in but contributes to their growth, thanks to the complex interactions of the organisms that live in it. It’s a highly skilled job and not one that I see much of around.

    What’s the skill in spraying to kill weeds and pests, keeping plants just alive in contexts where they would normally not survive, damaging one’s own health in the process? What’s the skill in the industrial replacing of one plant, as soon as it’s faded, with a new one straight from the production line?

    From that point of view, James is right: we need to help horticulture out of the 20th century. Gardeners need better pay and healthier, more skilled jobs. Horticulture should contribute not only to feeding people, to their enjoyment and physical wellbeing, but to sustaining wildlife and the environment. Then kids might get more interested in a profession that has a worthwhile purpose. But it’s not by the innovation argument that that will be achieved, I think.

  • Young apple trees, old apple trees

    The London Orchard Project gave me the opportunity to spend another two lovely days pruning.


    Yesterday, we were in Fryent Park, taking care of a young orchard that had never been pruned before and whose trees required formative pruning.

    It was a lovely sunny day, and a rather big team was set loose on a strip of trees 1200 m long! We had kids with us – very keen to learn indeed, and passers-by would stop and enquire about the orchard and what we were doing. There was definitely a community feeling, even though the project had gathered together people from all over London, some from as far as Croydon.

    We had Bob Lever with us again, and it was great, as he was just as informative this time as he had been before.

    Also, I got to work with Amy again, and you know what? we ended up making a very strong team, architect and horticulturist: we did a good job and I had a lot of fun in the process!



    We worked all day, with a brief break for lunch, to open up the centres of those trees (so as to get the sun in to ripen the apples),
    nudging the canopy to develop into a goblet shape, while bringing the energy down to the lower branches, where it’s easier to pick the fruits.

    But there were a few saplings that were bucking the trend, having sent out numerous branches at the very bottom of an otherwise naked main stem. In the picture, Bob explaining how to deal with them.

    It is the case with those plants, that the energy needs sending higher up the main stem, rather than downwards; therefore, all the low branches need to be removed. Then, the main stem must be cut to a suitably healthy bud at the height required. In such circumstances, the bud in question would acquire apical dominance, and grow straight up towards the sky: the new leader. That is avoided by cutting a notch right underneath it. The next bud down would then try to become the leader, growing straight up, says the theory. So it’s disbudded.  Following that procedure, the hormones should distribute more evenly, and the other buds should – with a bit of luck (not an exact science!) – develop to wider angles, the ones suitable for cropping.

    Such a different job, that at Fryent Park – with secateurs and handsaw – from the polesaw restoration pruning of the 70-or-so-year-old apple trees we did at Stanmore Hospital last time. In both instances, it was good learning and great practice, and really lovely to be back at Stanmore today for more, completing the work on the orchard for this year.

    Amy and myself, the winning duo, decided to tackle a couple of big trees, one of which had unfortunately started to rot at the base, but still retained a great shape from its past life, aside from a couple of “trees on top of the tree”; we had to be careful not to throw it off its balance. And one that had been maimed, and responded by sending out a massive, eventually unealthy, limb growing inwards, which we removed.

    Tree 1: almost there
    Last but one cut
    And it’s done
    Tree 2: on the right… and you’re only as good as your last cut 🙂

  • What a worthwhile pursuit to restore an orchard!

    It was Twitter that brought that to my attention: volunteers required for an orchard restoration project.

    Restoring an orchards is such a worthwhile project.

    Appeals against the disappearance of the traditional British orchard have gone on for a while now, the NT and Natural England have long campaigned to save orchards as a  matter of conservation: they are a wildlife heaven, besides providing us with healthy, local food. Don’t you think it’s crazy that most of the apples we eat nowadays come from the other side of the world, when Britan has such a rich history of cultivating our own, a country that in Victorian times had more varieties than anywhere else?

    There’s that, and then you know I love pruning: there is nothing I enjoy more than restoring a badly pruned tree to a dignified shape. I had no professional experience of fruit trees though, so this sounded like a good opportunity to learn more, and it was indeed.

    Our very generous trainer was Bob Lever, orchard expert from Norfolk. The site Stanmore Hospital. The organisers: local Hoi Polloi project with the Urban Orchard Project.

    The old orchard, just behind the hospital restaurant, has gone neglected over the years and, as part of a community project, it is going to be brought back to life for the enjoyment of all (and to make delicious juice and cider, which we had the pleasure to taste).

    “A tree on top of a tree”

    At some stage, all the lower branches of the apple trees – originally goblet-shaped – had been cut, and the plants had responded by pushing towards the sky, in some case creating what Bob called “a tree on top of a tree”. That results in apples growing high up, and  in productivity of lower branches going down.

    Besides, unmanaged trees tend to produce smaller, poorer quality fruits, but pruning can re-invigorate them. You can tell a branch has been left too long when there is lichen growing on the tips: as lichen is very slow growing, it means it had plenty of time to get established. Also, in this season, the fruiting buds should be rather big and plump (the leaf ones much smaller), but that was not always the case on the trees in that orchard, that had tiny buds.

    Larger fruiting bud
    Smaller fruiting bud

    Our mission, as the first stage of restoration, was not so much to get rid of dead wood – which can be a good wildlife habitat (unless is obviously causing a problem to the plant or enabling access of pest and diseases) – but to start pushing the energy of the plant slowly backwards towards the lower branches, freeing the centre of the tree, so that more light could reach lower, and to relieve some of the trees – which, at their respectable age, start to get hollow in the trunk – of some excessive weight.
    The fascinating thing is that the hollow inside the trees is actually quite beneficial to their longevity, as it makes the wood more flexible to the tensions of growth. And most fungi growing on apple trees feed on rotting heartwood, so they pose no threat to healthy trees. But too much weight is too much.

    Bob suggested we take no more than 20% of the branches (plus any dead wood in the way), as trees that are pruned too hard push out vigorous vegetative growth at the expense of fruiting, and usually send it up almost vertically, at awkward angles that make the union rather weak. Incidentally, the most productive branches tend to have a 45° inclination.

    A phoenix tree

    “Phoenix trees” is another term we got to learn from Bob: it describes a tree that has fallen on its side, from which the side branches have taken over as a new tree – almost rising from the old tree’s ashes – to give it another lease of life.

    Phoenix trees only have part of the rootstock still in place, so they must not be left to grow too big, and they are actually sitting on the fallen trunk, so cutting it away is usually a bad idea (if anything, it should be propped, especially if there is a chance someone might be tempted to climb over it).

    Giving more space for the young, healthy branches, and clearing around the tree for easier maintenance were the suggested interventions.

    After such great introductions, we worked in groups on individual trees. I had a great time, teaming up with lovely volunteers Amy and Sue: we got to work on two trees, establishing a routine that got us quite far!

    In fact, one of the trees we worked on was the “tree on top of a tree” (in the picture above) from which we removed a large crossing branch, mostly dead, and an even larger vertical branch that was causing excessive weight on a tree that was already leaning.






    At the end of the day, and just before it started raining the usual torrents, we were proud to have pruned the apple tree to a much more proportionate, less top-heavy shape, that over the next three to four years can be restored to production and be enjoyed by the community.

    Before
    After
    Note: some more suggestions on how to prune apple trees on the Urban Orchard Project website

  • I’ve got seedy penpals… and musings

    January, that time of the year again.

    Forcing yourself out on a sunny, yet frosty, day to clean the greenhouse – your fingers numb – so it’s ready for the new sowing season…

    … and, of course, planning & scheming and getting all ready for sowing new seeds!

    That’s when the first round of the seed swapping scheme happens that goes by the Twitter name of #seedypenpals; it’s the brainchild of @carllegge and @ediblething and I wrote about this 2 years ago when I first joined.

    Two years on, and the 4th round of swapping underway, I have had some lovely pals and received a wide range of seeds…

    … from Lucy…
    … Suzy …
    … and Linda!

    Some of those I have grown and enjoyed already,


    while others are on my sowing plan for this year, but what is it I liked most of the scheme?

    I definitely loved best to receive home saved seeds. 

    It has made me reflect on the skill that saving and storing seeds is: you have to pick them at the right time, clean them (so you get rid of any possible weeds, pests, or diseased material), store them so they keep alive albeit in suspended animation (not too dry and hot: they would dessicate, not too humid: they would mould) … and you have to know your seeds, as not all are suited to be dried and stored. Yes indeed, some seeds are recalcitrant! There’s also the question of seeds coming true to type (if you are an RHS member there’s a very good article in The Garden November 2013 p.68, which incidentally does its best to put you off from trying to save your own).

    Prettiest of all, pond iris seed
    Acanthus seed an pod

    Over the summer I had the opportunity to visit the Wakehurst Millennium Seed Bank, and it really opened my eyes on what an effort it is to do the work properly, the patience that’s needed. It must be said, though, that it is such a pleasure to get to know all the various seeds and the engineering magic the seedheads employ to scatter them around.

    My revelation this year was Acanthus: it almost caused me a heart
    attack when the capsule exploded at midnight, the central rib gone stiff with drying, propelling the seed on my wooden floor with a loud thud.

    I also got thinking about the value of local seeds and locally adapted plants, which thrive on the local climate and you don’t have to fuss over them to keep them alive. Of the fact that seeds with scattered germination and uneven growth are more resilient: they don’t risk germinating all at the same time (think what would happen in case of a late frost if they were all out and at their weakest stage, the seedling!). That is also a good thing for home gardeners, who don’t normally love gluts followed by hungry gaps, but obviouly prefer a reasonable distribution of produce throughout the season – exactly the opposite of commercial growers, who need all the produce to look uniform and  be ready to pick at the same time… for so-called “efficiency”. You may have heard there’s a debate about a EU seed law touching just on that – I liked Lia Leendertz perspective on it most (on page 3 of 4).

    All of that thinking has no doubt combined with concerns related to my career change and much reduced income. Seeds have become for me less of a collectors’ item, purchasing which distracted me from a depressing London commuter’s routine, while growing engaged me physically to relieve the mental stress from office work, and more of a precious source of relatively cheap (you still have to work to grow them!) and nutritious food for my family.

    So… what have all those musings and reflections meant for me and my garden? 

    I had always picked as many seeds as I could lay my hands on, stuffed them into envelopes and mostly forgotten about them after the first excitement (though some I have grown on, often rather carelessly, with varied amount of success). But since #seedypenpals began, I have been much more diligent in picking, cleaning and storing seeds. 

    And, while I had always been shy to share them with others (as I thought they might not be viable) I have taken courage and spread some far and wide, even outside the swapping scheme, exchanging them with friends from Twitter. I have really enjoyed that. And the growing. And the eating.

    If you are curious, the highlights of my extra-#seedypenpals edible swaps have been: puntarelle, red kuri squash, and some purple perilla that should be on its way!

    And my first major crops from my new seed saving regime have been 10 delicious shark fin melons to cook in my soups (from seed saved last year after a Garden Organic member’s experiment) and abundant achocha for my antipasti (from Heritage Seed Library seeds).

    So, to the new seed sowing (and growing, and saving, and swapping) year! 

    I’m off to write to my new seedy penpal, whose contact details I have just received. If you feel inspired to start on your own seedy path, this is for you!

    seedy penpals

  • Cardoons

    Cardoons (Cynara cardunculus) is not a very common vegetable, either here in the UK or indeed in Italy, where, however, they make the occasional appearance in the shops.

    One of the odd and little known vegetables that are kept alive by elderly people eating them and that have seen better days, when they even had different regional names (while “cardi” is their Italian name, my mother-in-law from central Italy calls them “gobbi” or “hunchbacks” as they sometimes come in a bent shape) or maybe have ever only had primarily regional relevance (like the “bitter roots of Soncino”, Cichorium intybus, my auntie loves so much, or the “lampascioni”, Leopoldia comosum, my husband’s granny calls such a delicacy), and are slowly being forgotten in our globalised world.

    Cardoon is however a rather nice vegetable, and, what is more, it is available in the winter, when variety in the vegetable garden may be limited. C. cardunculus is a perennial, which makes it more interesting for me as less effort produces more crops. In particular, cardoon is a herbaceous perennial, which means it dies back after flowering in late summer and grows back in the new season.

    My cardoons have flowered beautifully every year, rising to 2+ metres high with their mighty purple thistle-like flower heads, covered in bees. As a plant, they also attract quite a lot of green and blackfly (possibly away from other crops) and with them plenty of ladybirds (mostly harlequins, but what can you do).


    Because of the flowering, they have then died back and I had no opportunity to taste them. I have been a bit downhearted because of that, until I found that Riverford the-professional-veg-growers themselves have tried and failed to grow them this year, so that cheered me up a little.

    Shortly after that, I spotted one of the plants had grown back straight after flowering. This was my opportunity!

    As you eat the stalks, like with rhubarb, and chlorophyll makes them rather bitter, you need to blanch them. I wrapped the leaves in some fleece and came back after a couple of months.

    The stalks looked rather miserable, as the slugs had obviously had a great time with them. But I decided to have a go anyway. Oh I was so glad I did!

    You need to strip the leaves and peel back any stringy fibers from the ribs (as you do with celery). Cut them in large chunks and keep them in acidic water (with lemon or vinegar) to prevent them from going black (as with artichokes). Even if you blanched them in the field, you will have to blanch them again in salty water until they are tender but not mushy.

    Here is how they looked after I took them out of the water. I can assure you they looked much better after they went into the oven with some butter, mozzarella and grated parmesan on top, and came out coated in a nice, crispy cheese layer. They tasted sweet, mildly artichokey: delicious! They did not last long enough for a picture. And the husband test never fails.

    Definitely something I will need to work on this year. I am going to grow more plants, and flowers buds may need to be removed, altogether, or maybe just cut back early in the season, so the plant has time to recover (I quite like the idea of the flowers). And I have to find the most suitable material for wrapping them and keep out the slugs. Unfortunately there is not much information that I could find either in books or online. Riverford went all the way to Italy to learn the tricks of growing cardoons – I tried asking them if they could share it, but I’ve never been too lucky getting answers from them on social media. I’ll try to investigate with my Italian network… I’ll get there somehow!

About Me

M.Paola M.Paola, that’s me

I got my first allotment in the UK in 2007 and started growing my own food. Learning as I went along was not enough, so I studied horticulture. Faced with the horticultural warfare, I became a conscientious objector: I use no chemicals and support organic principles and regulations.

Brexit gave me a new life in the Netherlands, three new plots by a nature reserve and an MSc in sustainable food systems.

I write in my personal capacity and, as a language perfectionist and a non native speaker, I keep reviewing my entries’ text for clarity.

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