Well, the Winter flew by, and here we are again at the start of this year’s Croft Shares. This year I’m doing three sizes, Small, Medium and Large. Small is available now until the end of the season. I’ll be starting Medium and Large in June, possibly July for the Large size.
Small contains 5, occasionally 6 different crops. This week’s Share has six items – purple sprouting broccoli, asparagus kale, a big bag of mixed salad leaves, spinach, chives and green garlic.
Asparagus kale is not asparagus, it’s a type of kale that’s been bred to produce broccoli type spears in the Spring. Use much as you would purple sprouting broccoli, e.g. stir fry, boil, steam, put on a pizza, smother in cheese sauce etc… This kale also has nice tasty leaves so I’ll include some of those too.
The salad bags are a peppery/lemony mix of mustards, rocket, lambs lettuce, and sorrel.
I grew the spinach as an experiment over Winter in the greenhouse. Of course I’m now kicking myself that I didn’t plant more. It looked truly pathetic all Winter long, then two weeks ago started producing beautiful, big, glossy leaves. The spinach season is very short, the plants will bolt, probably next week, so this is possibly a tasty, one off harvest. My favourite use for spinach is in a curry, the smaller leaves could be added to a salad.
Green garlic is an immature garlic plant. It looks like a spring onion and can be used as such, giving a garlicky kick to salads or a sandwich. It can be used like garlic in soups, stews and sauces. The leaves are edible as well as the white bit.
The next few weeks will include lots more broccoli, asparagus kale and salad leaves. I’ve got pea shoots coming up, lots of colourful chard and Spring greens. I always grow onions and spring onions over Winter in the greenhouse. This year they suffered from sustained slug attack, a problem I’ve not encountered before. A decent portion made it through though and there will be plenty to go around.
I’ll be planting more Spring onions outside soon and they are usually ready in mid June.
The Polycrub is shaping up to be a brilliant growing space, it’s really warm and not at all rattly. If it’s windy I don’t feel like it’s all about to come crashing down on my head. I’m planting broad beans, sugar snap peas and lettuce in there for June, as well as some dwarf French beans which may crop earlier than the climbing variety. The tomatoes are also going in this space, I know all my customers love tomatoes. Nothing really beats the flavour of a croft grown, Isle of Skye tomato.
This weekend I’ll be starting planting potatoes and onions, more on that next week.