Sauce, tools and the dreaded blight!

Green Team members Lara & Joe join Lucas to show off the giant Radiator Charlie Mortgage Lifter tomato

[Photo courtesy of The Wandsworth Borough News]

It's been a busy week for the Green Team who have also been invited along to a garden tool recycling project run by the Conservation Foundation in conjuction with HMP Wandsworth. The general public have been invited to deposit their worn out and damaged garden tools at recycling centres (such as the one near Wandsworth Bridge), and these tools have then been repaired and refurbished by prisoners at Wandsworh prison.

Belleville were donated a full set and it is hoped that these can be used in the construction of the wild garden which is due to be built before the end of the year (email me if you'd like to help with this project).

The cold, wet weather of a couple of weeks ago took its toll and blight swept through the tomato plants - we lost more than half of them. Blight is characterised by brown patches that appear on branches and stems and soon reach the fruit which would go brown and rot, given the chance. The disease spreads rapidly from plant to plant. In theory the plants should be burned and tomatoes shouldn't be grown in the same soil for three years to halt the spread of the disease. Nasty.

On a happier note the Cream Sausage tomatoes grew very well and I made a sauce based on an Italian recipe.














You basically heat onions and garlic, add the chopped yellow tomatoes, add a yellow pepper and when cooked, blend to make a sauce which goes well with pasta and fish in particular.



Currently the foxes are driving me mad and we've had to resort to physical barriers to stop them destroying the new crops [right]


The mini Indian summer has helped the surviving to tomatoes to ripen.

The giant Radiator Charlie Mortgage Lifter is no more. I ate it.
Almost all of it.

And it was extremely tasty which you might not expect such a whoppa to be. Up there with the Coeur De Boeuf that we ate in France in August. I added a little seasoning, extra virgin olive oil and a drop of balsamic, and wow, tomato heaven.
Served with grilled Haloumi. Yum. Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter was the success of the year, especially considering the poor weather. I'll be selling seedlings and small plants in the playground next April for sure.

While we're on the subject of sauce, we've made use of the surplus by making lots of tomato sauce, some spicy using chillies from the garden, and these have been sold in the playground for the PTA.
The most recent batch we made was a simple blend of tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, a little balsamic vinegar and seasoning.

A new academic year, three new monsters!

LOOK OUT, IT'S BEHIND YOU! (Monster No1)

[Click on any picture to enlarge]

A new academic year starts at Belleville and there are some new seedlings to be planted, new parents to involve and older crops to dig up and put on the compost heap (along with the old parents)

Left: New parent gardeners wondering what they've let themselves in for. They/you can receive the email newsletter about produce and sales etc by emailing jd@motionrecords.com

Right: They were spicy green
chillies but now they're
larger red chillies.
What does it all mean?

MONSTER No2.

Left: Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter demonstrating its claim to be the world's largest tomato. Yes it looks like three sections but it's actually one tomato. It weighs 920Kg and the circumpherence is 18 1/2 inches. The Wandsworth Guardian photographed it with Lucas (nepotism) and two of the green team.

Right: New crops: oriental salad including Mizuna lettuce and pak choi. Note the homemade protection from the fox (that dug some up yesterday) and footballs.

Below: Brassicas (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower) ready for planting.




To save time I ordered these as seedlings from Dobies. They arrived in the post and as I wasn't around they might have died in their box were it not for the quick thinking of Robert De Niro (lookalike Baki) who planted them in the window box. I think he has it in for me, as he didn't label which were which. Now only time will tell....

.

MONSTER No3 Below: The hazards of vegetable gardening. I spotted this man eating spider 'Spideris Horiblis' today next to the giant Tornado F1 tomato plant. Weighing in at roughly 1 Kg it paralyses with a nip of its sharp little teeth and then eats you slowly from the feet upwards. So if you don't see me for a few days and the spider looks bigger.....

Belleville goes exotic

[Above & below] Three Aubergine plants in all their glory.
For some reason these are doing much better than expected.

The variety is Long Purple, and it's obviously well suited to the rather cool weather we've been having.(Cream Sausage tomatoes in the background).

The chillies and peppers are also doing well. All sorts of varieties are thriving again despite the weather. The one disappointment is that the pumpkins and squash have been a disaster - they grown to about two or three inches and then rot or wither and die. I'm blaming the weather. Nothing to do with my incompetent gardening obviously.

There's also a new crop of oriental salad (Mizuna, Pak Choi etc) which is something of an experiment. Looks good though!

Next produce sale is today (Sunday) at 6pm, Wakehurst Rd entrance. There are LOTS of tomatoes, as well as the above crops.

Post holiday produce

Just back from our hols and we have a new look for the Belleville blog. We've also harvested lots of tomatoes which are now ripening nicely.


Two Omar's Lebanese tomatoes alongside a couple of giant Radiator Charlie Mortgage Lifter tomatoes [right]
We also have spinach, chard, rocket. The carrots are just about ready but too small. The parsnips are also doing well.



Chillies and aubergine are also coming along nicely, and should be available in a couple of weeks, touch wood.

STOP PRESS: Below is a BRANDYWINE tomato, considered by some to be the tastiest tomato in the world. This one looks slightly more weird than they normally do so I didn't sell it. Which meant I could eat it myself. It was VERY tasty, so look out for them at the next produce sale on Wednesday (if any more have ripened by then). Midday and six pm is the plan.

Good news! We have a major new addition to the veg garden team.
Duncan Marshall (left), who lives right opposite the main entrance to Belleville School in Belleville Road, is semi-retired and looks after the children while his wife is at work. He is going to drop in every day while I'm on holiday to water and tidy up, and will harvest only if the Lola Roja team have left anything. Also pictured are Cristina and Antonio, owners of Lola Roja on the Northcote Road. Antonio is also the chef and is particularly interested in the Tres Cantos tomatoes which originally hail from the Andalucian region of Spain and should be rather special, given a little more good weather!

Lola Roja and sunflowers

Lola Roja on a sunny July evening, the beans being received in the kitchen, sunflowers showing over the school wall on Wakehurst Road, and tons of Gardener's Delight cherry tomatoes, on the vine. They'll be in Lola Roja in about a week!
[Click on the photos to enlarge]

The plan is to replace the summer crops (such as salads, tomatoes, courgettes and beans) with winter crops - probably in October. These will not only include the usual brassicas (brocolli, cauliflower, cabbages etc), but also winter salads such as Winter Gem, and perpetual spinach. I think swiss chard is also a winter survivor, but will have to check to be sure.

Holidays, foxes and tapas

There's a fox (or foxes) at work in the garden. This morning I had been gardening for a few minutes when one climbed out of one of the raised beds and sauntered off. Looking a bit miffed.
Every time I use the organic fertiliser he digs up the watering pots (which is where I sprinkle the fertiliser) and digs holes in the soil. I believe the fertiliser uses chicken manure which would account for the fox's interest. I've tried to fox-proof the veg garden, so volunteers are advised only to use the gate near the greenhouse, and please make sure both gates are closed when you leave. And look out for foxes on arrival!

Well the holidays are here and there's lots of work to be done before we go away to France for a couple of weeks.

Having harvested the potatoes there was a whole empty raised bed to fill. Rather than sowing seeds I planted all of the sunflowers left over from the competition and I added a couple I had grown myself because I couldn't face seeing them die in pots that are too small for them. I then planted three or four tomato plants that were also stuck in smallish pots. These should lead to us having a continuous supply for some months as they were sown much later than those that are fruiting now. If the weather holds out there's no reason why we shouldn't have tomatoes up to October maybe.
Some of the bigger tomatoes are ready to eat now (see pic below), and the first of the cherry tomatoes (Gardener's Delight) are ripe too. The latter are super sweet and will probably all ripen when I'm away, darn. I keep meaning to mention to harvesters that they shouldn't be over-watered as that makes the taste too, er, watery.

The onion bed also has a big space where the onions were. I'll sow some oriental salads there.
For later in the year I have ordered fifty brassica plug plants from dobies.co.uk. These will save loads of time and effort and are relatively cheap. I've also sourced a variety of other winter season goodies including Winter Gem seeds which allegedly produce a crop of Little Gem lettuce through the winter months. I'm traditionally rubbish at brassicas. They should really be planted in concrete like soil and you don't get concrete like soil in raised beds because it doesn't get trodden on. Although I suppose there's nothing to stop me climbing up and stomping around once they've been planted.

The strawberries have shot out lots of runners and I've pushed some of these down into pots with a view to having some nice strawberry plants to sell cheaply at the Sunday sales (see pic right).

Next week I'll sow some more spinach and swiss chard which should appear in early August and be ready to harvest around three weeks later.

An exciting development is that we have started supplying the Lola Roja restaurant with produce. Today we provided a huge bag of french beans, wild garlic, wild rocket, tomatoes & onions. Co-owner Cristina is a mum at Belleville and all proceeds will go to the PTA. In mid August we will start the Sunday sales, as we should have enough produce to supply the restaurant and parents. If you haven't tried Lola Roja you should, it's amazing. And now they've reduced their carbon footprint. Couldn't get much more locally sourced veg!