Quinta das Abelhas

We went to Tábua market on Sunday, and bought a selection of seedlings to put into the garden now as winter crops. Some different varieties of lettuce, hearting cabbages, tall cabbage trees (x100), brussels sprouts, beetroot and leeks. Most of them were 20 for a euro, but the brussels were 15 for a euro.

Although we like to grow lots of heirloom varieties, seedlings from the market stalls are cheap and ready to go. We don’t have to wait some weeks for them to come up and get established, simply add to the compost and horse manure in the raised beds, dig a small hole with a trowel and in they go.

Here are some cabbages popped into Sophie’s garden.

And heres some in my garden, under an olive tree and between broccoli and cauliflower plants in put in earlier in the summer.

Leeks are slightly different. You take a stick, push it into the ground and wiggle it around to make a hole, maybe 10cm deep. Drop your leek seedling into the hole and leave. Do not fill in the hole. This works, and Sophie’s garden almost always has healthy fat leek plants, that we pull out as an when we want to cook with them.

Oh, and don’t forget to water the seedlings in well when you are done. They will wilt a bit for the first couple of days, and then they should perk up and start growing. I put the tall cabbages that we call cabbage trees along the edges of my beds. They grow pretty tall, marking out the edges of the beds and not actually taking up any bed room.

Here’s some lettuces that went in, and you can see a few skinny cabbage trees, wilted near the edges.

Out of 50 or so Monkey Puzzle seeds, 6 or 7 germinated, and I gave most of them away to friends. I have two left, and they are coming along nicely. They are over an inch tall now, and I am starting to think about protecting them over the winter. I will probably move them in their pots onto the balcony, along with other plants that might be damaged by our rare frosts (Camelia Sinensis, tea plant, for instance, and our various young palm trees).

I am very pleased with the development of the monkey puzzles. They are well known for growing very very very slowly, and I didn’t expect them to grow even this fast. This one will be poking out over the rim of the pot soon.

The pot behind it contains some kind of frost tolerant date palm tree, that I am also going to protect for a few winters in pots, and then plant out somewhere sheltered from the worst of the morning frostiness. This autumn I want to build a small polytunnel structure, to keep all these not-hardy plants, and also to have a go at keeping peppers going through the winter and start summer veg off very early - it would be great to have tomatoes and peppers fresh at christmas!

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Most of the bean plants have finished producing now, but the metre long beans have only just started really. Dome of the bean pods are almost a metre long, as the name suggests, but most are about 50cm. Heres a couple of photos:

So, plenty are now going into our dinners, and then i’ll let loads dry out for seed for next year and perhaps we be able to eat them as dried beans, in stews and soups, through the winter.

Garden Orache was being eaten by us in salads for most of the early part of the summer. Now the plants have seeded and are drying nicely to give us a huge quantity of seed for next year.

Anyone want some seeds? Just drop us a line, and we can sort something out, perhaps a swap or if you dont have any seeds to swap, we’ll be happy as long as you cover the postage.

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This years unusual weather has meant that our tomatoes are very late giving us ripe tomatoes. Although the late cold weather wiped out 3 different plantings, we still have quite a few tomato plants in fruit now, and lots more coming on.

Most of the developed plants are ones that we bought from market in Tabua, thank goodness for markets, or we wouldnt have many tomatoes at all, despite my investment in seeds from the likes of tomatofest.

We are only a week into august, and the nights are getting chilly, with a definite hint of autumn in the air. I really hope we get enough sunshine to ripen some of these tomatoes, sundry some, and bottle plenty for our winter stores. We have plenty of green beans, peppers, and courgettes in the freezer, but we usually manage to bottle up lots of ratatouille, plum tomatoes and basil, and tomato passata type stuff, which makes cooking in winter often a very easy practise.

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We are awash with beans. Small bushes, big bushes, climbing beans, trail of tears, lazy housewife, metre long beans, yellow ones, purple ones, green ones, spotted ones. Almost every meal has a load of sliced green beans (or purple or yellow) in it, and quite a lot are going into the freezer for the winter.

Next month I will stop picking them, and let them grow to full size & dry out. Then we’ll store them for winter, and stop buying those jars of precooked beans (so convenient, and we get the jars for storing stuff). It will certainly be reassuring to have lots of dried beans stored away, which when mixed with some grain, rice or seeds makes a full protein source.

Heres a photo I took that conveys the ‘jungle’ that is my garden. I love it, and wouldn’t be as happy in a garden full of straight beds, orderly crops etc. Watering, weeding and harvesting involves clambering through the undergrowth, barefoot. The closest thing to a hunter gathering lifestyle?

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We never seem to do very well with cucumbers. Normally only a few plants survive the spring and the heat of early summer, and only one or two plants go on to develop very well. But we do normally get quite a few cucumbers from those few plants.

This year we only have one very good plant, a few that may get some fruit late in the year, and half a dozen strugglers. The best plant, in Sophies garden, is buried in beans and seems to like the shade. Its produced one cucumber so far, but plenty of tiny ones on the plant.

There are also some very well developed aubergine plants in Sophie’s garden, plus quite a few strugglers in mine. The first aubergine is growing. The need the heat to do very well, and this year has been cooler than normal.

We’ve been eating trail of tear beans for some time now, and also have a few bags of chopped up beans in the freezer. All the books say to blanch veg before freezing, but we never do, and they seem fine. Anything that cuts down on work is good. Heres a pic of some of the beans. They are very prolific and even the dried beans taste fantastic.

The rhubarb we brought back from the UK seems very happy, under a tree in Sophie’s garden. We recently we offered Rui Barbo at Vale dos Amores Restaurant. ‘What’s that?’ we asked. ‘Its a vegetable’ was the reply. We scratched our heads, and ordered to see what it was. Rui Barbo, someone’s name? Their special dish? N0. It’s rhubarb! Duh!

We love rhubarb crumble!

In amongst our courgettes and pumpkins, there are a few rather strange plants. They are the shape of a courgette plant, but the fruit looks more like a gourd or squash. I bought so many different things in the spring and so much that i planted got cut down by late frosts, that I simply dont know what this is. I dont want to cut them as courgettes, and they dont cook all that well. So I will wait and see what happens to them over time. If the plants stop producing I will cut them to encourage more.

Our seeding wild leeks and leeks and onions are being visited by these big scary looking bees. I’ve not seen them before, but we have loads of them buzzing around the allium flowers. They are about an inch long. I wonder if they have stings (but dont really want to find out).

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