Yummy, yummy - 200 times yummy

I don't usually "do" recipes. But this is a special post. The Balcony Garden reaches 200 posts today, so I thought it was time to do something a bit different.

This winter I discovered Swiss Chard. I can't imagine why I'd never tried it before - I've seen it in the supermarket for years. Perhaps because the heads of chard always looked so big - and as I'm the only person in the family who will eat greens, buying large quantities usually means throwing half the stuff away.

But then I saw it in Germany, while we were there for Christmas. In Germany it's called Mangold. And that reminded me of mandrakes.

Now if you're a Harry Potter fan you'll know that mandrakes are plants which are (in mythology) supposed to shriek when you pull them out of the earth. J K Rowling turns their roots into babies' faces as well. Of course, mandrakes are absolutely not connected to Mangolds except in my mind - which, every time I saw them in the supermarket, kept imagining the root under the base of the plant as a screaming baby.

So in the end I had to try them. And they have quickly zoomed to my number one favourite type of greens. I've not yet got round to planting any, but this article from The Guardian says chard can happily be grown in containers, so they're on my list. Chard likes limey conditions and is tolerant of heat and cold - ideal here. It's also a good container vegetable because you don't have to eat it all in one go. Harvest the outer leaves, and the younger, internal ones will keep on growing to give a second crop, and a third, and a fourth. Again ideal for balcony garden where space is at a premium, and large veg which are only going to provide one meal are sometimes a luxury you can't afford. There are different types of chard - some with red ribs, some with yellow - which I've not yet tried. But the white ribbed version is certainly not to miss.

So - here are a couple of recipes.

First of all, don't worry about having too much. Chard is like spinach. You cook an incredible quantity of raw leaves and they reduce down to a spoonful. And anyway it keeps - it's just as good the next day.

The basic recipe is dead simple. You can eat the whole thing, rib and all, or strip the green leaf from the central white rib. Wash the leaves well, cut them into small bits, and pop them into a saucepan with only a tiny amount of extra water - enough to cover the bottom of the pan but no more. Then add a bit of salt and dribble some good olive oil over the top. Cook over a low heat until the leaves "melt" down.

Like that, they're great as a vegetable to accompany a meat dish or to eat on their own. But for me, the best bit is using up the leftovers the next day as ...

Spaghetti with Gorgonzola and Chard


Gorgonzola Dolce has to be the cheese of the Gods. Don't confuse it with Gorgonzola Piccante, which is the older and much stronger version - similar to other blue cheeses such as Stilton.

Gorgonzola Dolce (dolce means "sweet") is soft and creamy with a mild taste. It's no more than two months old, and when out of the fridge for a while should be soft and runny. I could live on it.


Melted down over a low heat in a pan, then combined with some previously cooked chard, it's a wonderful sauce for spaghetti. (We exaggerated a bit with the cheese in the photo above - don't use half so much.)


And apart from the fact that it tastes wonderful, chard is also good for you. It's high in vitamins K, A and C as well as containing various other vitamins and minerals essential for health (see here for a breakdown).

So - for our 200th anniversary, I haven't baked a cake. But if you want to celebrate with me - try some chard.

Strange stuff, Italian lettuce...

I've been planting my veg. The beans are zooming through, and the zucchini too. The Jerusalem artichokes are doubling in size every day it seems, and the tomatoes are almost ready to be transferred to bigger pots. But it seems I may get more of them than I bargained for. Because I've been planting lettuce too. Here's the seed packet...

And here's the back of the packet - as you can see, it says lattuga - that's Italian for lettuce. And there's a handy cultivation guide. It tells me where and how to sow, whether I should thin out, and so on.



And finally it tells me when I can expect to harvest. And what.

Tomatoes it seems. Strange stuff, Italian lettuce.

Images of Spring

March started grey, cold and wet and hopes of an early spring seemed to disappear. But then it changed. And wow did it change. The temperature shot up, and the sky turned a clear blue. And before long ...

The forsythia came out.

It's rare for Milan to look good but if it happens, it happens in March. As we get very little wind, there's usually a pall of smog hanging over the city. The EU sets limits of pollution (measured by the level of particles in the air) which it considers "acceptable" and allows cities to exceed those limits for no more than 35 days a year before they impose fines. By the end of February, we'd become the first European city to exceed that total.

So thank goodness March brought winds. Warm ones at first, which had the trees budding and cleared the usual grungy colour of the sky ....

And for almost the whole month we've been able to see the mountains - something that usually happens no more than a few times a year.

Soon the cherry blossom started to come out too, but sadly didn't last long. A few hours of very, very strong gusty winds one day destroyed it before we'd had time to enjoy it. Just sad for the ornamental trees, but dangerous for the "real" fruit trees. The greengage tree below the balcony, which feeds the flocks of great tits and the chaffinches which live in the garden in summer, wasn't in flower for more than a couple of days. We shall see later this year.

Luckily I'd been out with my camera the day before the winds came ...

.. and just walking round our block had taken all these photos except for the one of the mountains, which was taken during a walk in a local park. The mimosa tree at the bottom of the road was in full bloom ...

... and the gardens around the appartment blocks were full of magnolias

The good weather and clear air went on for three weeks. Too good to be true of course, and March is going out as it came in - cold, wet and grey. And without the March winds, next month the smog will come back. Ah well. At least we had those three weeks.

Tulips - the second year

The gardening books and internet sites were adamant : tulip bulbs won't do well a second year if they're grown in containers. They'll be too small, they'll be too weak. Throw them away and buy new ones.

It wasn't that I didn't believe them. Quite the opposite. The bulbs did look smaller than when I'd got them, and yes, some of them had split into bulblets. But you see, I have this mean streak, and the idea of throwing them away ...

So I compromised. I did buy new bulbs, but I went for daffodils. And I just stuck all the tulip bulbs higgledy piggledy into one container. And waited to see what happened.

I didn't get excited when the leaves came through. Well, that was what I was expecting, leaves. But then a few days ago I noticed a couple of buds. Oh, that's nice - one or two are going to bloom. Or three, or four, or twenty ...

For the last few days they've been stupendous, closing up tight at night then opening as the spring sunshine hits. Yes, they are a bit smaller than last year. Have a look here and compare for yourself. But so what? This is a balcony, and they're supposed to be a dwarf variety. I like them small.

And the colour and the display are just as good - perhaps better. It goes to show what I've said before. Containers look better if you halve normal planting distances and pile the plants on top of each other.

Will they go on a third year? I don't know. But I know I shall try. And if you want to with yours, here's what to do. As soon as the flowers die down, dead-head them so that the plant doesn't put its energy into creating seeds. You want that energy used to fatten up the bulbs. And carry on watering and fertilising. Bulbs, like people, get fat if they're fed well and lose weight if they're not.

Leave them until the foliage dies down naturally. This can be a drag on a balcony where space is limited, and is a definite discouragement when success is not 100% certain. But it takes those two or three months after flowering for the bulbs to regain the strength they'll need to come back the next year.

And then, once the leaves have yellowed, cut them off and lift the bulbs. Store them in a cool, dry place and wait for autumn to come again.

Who knows? You may be lucky.

Bonfire

Bonfire. For me the word immediately brings back memories of being a child in London on November 5th - in a time before people thought about air pollution, and when safety was seen as a personal rather than a state responsibility. November 5th was bonfire night - Fireworks night, or Guy Fawkes.

It was a day in the year which I longed for, and as the days drew in and the nights got colder, excitement and anxiety mounted. What if it rained? What if we couldn't do it?





The weekend before, Dad would start to build the bonfire. Paper underneath, small twigs on top, then old bits of dry wood and branches which he'd been accumulating and drying all summer. And we'd make the Guy. Mum would dig out some old clothes which we'd stuff with newspaper to make the effigy that would burn on top of the fire.

Yes I know. It's horrific, and now quite politically incorrect to even think of simulating burning someone to death. But we didn't really make the connection. For us, although we knew the historical roots, the guy was no more a real person than the scarecrow you make to protect your raspberries.

And I wonder now whether the real origin of the tradition wasn't quite different. Apparently, the word bonfire is a reduction of bone-fire and refers to the old Celtic tradition of burning animal bones at the festival of Samhain, to ward off evil spirits. Samhain is celebrated on November 1st (it's also the origin of Hallowe'en). And I wonder whether the burning of the Guy was not just an addition to a much older custom.

The day arrived. Goodness knows what the teachers did with us in school that day. I know our minds were only on the evening. And when we got home, time seemed to drag out eternally. Would 6.30 ever come? Would it ever get dark?

But it did, and finally Dad announced we could start. Coats, scarves, mittens, wellington boots and woolly hats were on in a trice, and out we trooped.

First came the worst moment - lighting the fire. Would it take? Had things got too damp in the last few days?

But Dad was a wizard, and sooner or later the bonfire started to blaze. First the paper would flare up. But would the twigs catch? A flicker of flame - please, please don't let it die. And then the wood would start to burn and the Guy too. We were there.

Once the fire was going, it was time to start the fireworks. Roman Candles, rockets launched from milk bottles, and Catherine Wheels nailed onto the poles which a few months earlier had been supporting the runner beans. And sparklers to wave. Sparklers were the only fireworks that we kids were allowed to touch. Only Dad had the matches, and if the kids weren't standing well back, then nothing happened.

And of course, it wasn't just us. there was a bonfire in all the other gardens too, and we'd eke out the fireworks by collaborating with the neighbours. You set one of yours off, then we'll do one of ours. And we'll all see everything.

And while we oohed and ahhed over the fireworks, we cooked our dinner. Sausages were speared on long sticks and held over the flames; potatoes and apples were set to bake in the embers.

Finally, the last firework had been set off, the last sausage eaten, and the fire was dying down. It was time for bed. And oh, how long it seemed until next year.

Why am I telling you all this? Are the photos really of fifty years ago? No, of course they aren't. But I've been tagged by She Who Digs for a meme in which you go into your photo archive, choose the fourth photo in the fourth folder and write about it. And because of the highly idiosyncratic way I label my folders, I ended up at the photos of when we were in Germany this Christmas. While we were there, some friends who live in the country invited us over to a bonfire barbeque. We started in the afternoon, but by six o'clock it was dark and standing round the fire in the freezing cold brought back all the memories. The photo below was the fourth in the folder.

I'm supposed to tag another four people, but I'm not going to. Instead here's an open invitation. Have a look at your photo files. Go to the fourth photo in the fourth folder, and see what it says to you. And if you want to write about it, consider yourself tagged.

Help - my tree is dying

I've blogged several times about my Ficus benjamin tree. I got it about thirteen years ago when the company my husband worked for closed, and we "adopted" a pair of Ficus benjamins that had stood in reception (the only very small silver lining in a very nasty cloud). One died five or six years later, but this one has gone from strength to strength. It was already a well-grown tree then - not less than seven or eight years old, I'd estimate.

The tree has always lived in a corner of the balcony in the summer, and then in the living room in winter. Our flat is horribly dark - the disadvantage of having a building lined by balconies is that they block out the sun - so it's never been entirely happy inside and would frequently lose a few leaves just after it came in. But nothing drastic.

Until this year. It came in at the same time as ever, was placed in the same corner, and treated in every way the same as ever. And then the leaves started to fall. And fall. And fall. And it's now looking very bare and sad.

What went wrong? Did I overwater? Underwater? I don't think so. Is it just old age? I remember once coming across an article on the web which said they only survive in pots for about fifteen years, but I've no idea if that's accurate. It must have been pot bound for years, but it's already in the biggest pot I can manage.

I'm hoping it will hang on for another six weeks, when I'll be able to put it back outside. And perhaps with a bit of pruning and tender loving care, it may revive. I'll take some cuttings from the healthier looking twigs too, just in case. But if you've got any other suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

To click or not to click...

It's an ethical dilemma. There are several sites on the web which I visit daily and which I'm really grateful for. They're sites like Blotanical which let me publicise my own sites, meet people and have fun. I feel I "know" the owners - we've emailed, collaborated on various projects, and as far as you can tell from a web personality, I think they're great.

But their sites aren't there just to provide a service for other people. They're also there to make money. All of them are complex, and involve the owners in a lot of work - and it's the ads on the site which pay for that work.

Because I want to say thank you, I feel I should click occasionally. After all, it's only a second of my time and if I don't, I'm just exploiting the service without giving anything in return.

But ninety nine times out of a hundred, I'm not really interested in the products I see advertised. And even the hundredth time, I know I'm not going to buy. It's just curiousity.

So whatever I do (or don't do) I feel I'm ripping someone off. The site owners if go on using the site without clicking, but the advertisers, who still have to pay for my click, if I click without real intention to buy.

My answer so far has been to look and see if something really catches my eye, and if I'm genuinely interested, even if only for information, to click. After all, who knows? Even if I don't buy now, maybe I will in the future. Or maybe I'll mention it to someone who will. Isn't that how advertising usually works?

There are other ways to "give back" of course, which don't involve clicking on ads. Like promoting the sites on mine, which I'll always willingly do. But I'm still uneasy.

And you? What do you do?

The Balcony Garden Year - February

There are times when I think that anyone in Austin Texas should be forbidden to have a blog. Like today, when I go into the blog for Homewood Heights Community Garden and find that they're all out there gardening in sleeveless T-shirts. (The air turns green with envy.) Milan and Austin are supposed to have the same hardiness zone rating for heavens sake, yet I was out there today in my Norwegian fisherman's sweater and padded boots ...

However, even if temperatures aren't quite in the Austin league, the last two weeks of February do mark the official start of the Balcony Garden year. Most of the work to be done is only preparatory, but there are one or two things that count as real gardening. So here goes with a list. If you're a balcony gardener, what should you be doing in February?

It does depend where you are of course. We're having daytime temperatures of about 11°C now, and the plants are starting to show signs of coming back into growth. if you're not that far on, then you may have to wait a few more weeks before getting on with some of the things here.

1. If you have perennials or biennials or bulbs coming through, remember that higher temperatures will mean you need to start watering more often. Check at least once a week - more often if it's sunny. But don't overwater, and remember that the top layer may have dried out while the soil below is still moist. Check first.

2. Plan. What are you going to grow, what combinations are you going to have, and what will you need to do month by month? If you have such restricted space that you can do little else but buy in plants from the local garden centre, then you may prefer to let this develop month by month as things catch your eye. But if you have a little extra space (I have three balconies, each 10m x1m) and want to grow from seed, now's the time to be thinking about it.

2. Pop out to the nearest garden centre and pick up some primulas. No balcony should be without them at this time of the year. Whether you go for classic yellow, a bi-coloured display or just a riotous mixture of all the colours you can get your hands on, they'll cheer you up and remind you that spring is on the way while you do ...

3. ... the boring stuff. Yes, I know you don't want to, but if you don't give the balcony a good spring clean now, you won't be able to. Wash down the railings before you put the containers back up and have plants trailing all over the place. Sweep and wash down the balcony floor before it's covered in heavy pots. And then empty all the old soil out of the containers and give them a good wash too. With disinfectant, to get rid of any fungus or virus infections left over from last year. When you've done all that, you can give yourself a pat on the back and make a cup of tea. Now the fun stuff starts - you can start thinking about your plants.

4. If you're in a zone where temperatures are high enough that there's no longer any risk of frost on the balcony itself, you should be able to take off the fleece from plants which have overwintered, and maybe even move them away from the walls of the house or the more sheltered parts of the balcony. But be careful - if you're not sure the weather will co-operate, then leave them a bit longer. If you do move them out, check them for damage, cut off any dead bits, and clear the containers of dead leaves. Then scrape away as much of the old soil as you can without disturbing the roots and replace with new.


5. Now is the time to prune certain shrubs, like plumbago, which flower off the new growth of the year. Last year I didn't get round to mine and this, together with the fact that I'd put it in a position where it got only limited sun, meant I got a very poor showing of flowers. This year, I've cut it back hard, pruning each stem of last year's growth back to about two leaf buds from the main branch. And I've moved it back on to the balcony railings, where it gets more sun and has always done well. Don't forget though, that some shrubs - like my philadelphus - flower off the previous years growth. Prune them now and you'll have no flowers at all.

6. A few things can already be sown now - some vegetables and flowers which grow from bulbs, corms or tubers can be planted outdoors, while seeds can be started indoors. I'm trying Jerusalem artichokes up the trellis in front of the bedroom this year, and they went in last week, and so did my garlic. And I continued planting my summer bulbs, putting in some liatris and several sorts of allium. Plus some corms which for now are being referred to as Mysterius Whatthehellaretheseus. I have a clear memory of taking them out of their pots last autumn, putting them away and thinking Oh, I'll remember what those are. Yeah yeah. In the house, I've got a mix of herbs, flowers and veg seeds sitting by the bed and waiting to germinate - if they're not too intimidated by my husband's frequent laments of Do those really have to be there?

And that's about it for this month. But there's only a week to go till March - and then the fun really starts.

Gardeners' Bloom Day - February

I was hoping they'd make it for today. I've been watching them for a month now, at first hardly visible amongst the leaves, then gradually elongating and holding up little swan-like heads. Timidly starting to unfurl.

But we're shy. And then, it's been so cold ...

Too cold. I've lost a lot this winter. Plants which have made it through other winters have blackened and died ...

But it's better now. The sun is shining and we can feel its warmth. Perhaps we will come out and open up ...

There's still a chill wind though, and the nights are cold. Careful.

We will be. But it's been so long ... It's time, it must be time.

And yes, today for the first time it did almost seem as if spring was in the air. The temperature on the balcony at lunchtime was a comfortable 11°C (52°F) even if it did drop considerably as the sun passed over and left us in the shade. But it wasn't so much the temperature as the quality of the light - or was it the smell in the air? I don't know. In any case, it didn't feel like winter any more.

Dangerous words. Most of Italy is still grappling with snow, and there's plenty of time for it to come back here. Am I just imagining the spring? Is it just wishful thinking?

My little cyclamen don't think so, and neither do the tulip and daffodil bulbs which are starting to push through. Or the lily bulbs. Or the agapanthus. Everything is starting to put out shoots, or to look just that bit greener, as if they're slowly coming out of a long, long sleep.

So no, I don't have much to show you for Gardeners' Bloom Day this month. But I will have soon. It's time to get ready ...

Vegetables need love too ...

Don't underestimate them ...

Peas sidle up, wanting to hug ...

Carrots need to cuddle ...


Parsnips get passionate ...

Tomatoes hold hands ...

Fiddlehead fern gets the message across ...


And so do onions, reminding you that love can sometimes make you cry ...

And freeze your heart ...


But sooner or later you'll warm it up again.

Happy Valentines Day!

Acknowledgements

With many, many thanks to the people who made these photos available under Creative Commons Licence on flickr :

wishymom - peas
Chris Campbell - carrots
beatlequeen - parsnips
Zep10 - tomatoes
libraryman - fiddlehead fern
Estherase - onions
waiti - spinach
kramerhawks - celery

And the potato? We ate it last week ....