It is always the simple pleasures in life that mean the most,and now added to that list is eating home grown vegetables. It was a few weeks ago that Fiona http://www.cottagesmallholder.com/ said to us that we should be eating the spinach as it was ready.
The way to pick the spinach is work your way down the row and take one or two outer leaves from each plant, by the time you have finished, you will have gathered quite a large bunch of glossy green spinach leaves, I work on the basis that you should have 8oz 225g per person.
If you pick spinach this way the plant won't suffer and will continue to grow, with fresh new leaves appearing from the centre.
We have been eating the spinach for a while now, which is no hardship for me as I love it, I cook the larger leaves and use the younger smaller leaves in a mixed green salad.
The Borecole is a different matter as I had never tried it before, so again when Fiona cast her expert eye over our allotment, she mentioned the the borecole was ready to pick, I explained my reluctance to do so, as stupid as it sounds the plant looks so lovely that I don't want to spoil it by harvesting the leaves.
It has to be done though and you treat the borecole like you would spinach and just cut the outer leaves leaving the inner leaves to keep producing, Fiona said that the flavour improves once there has been a frost, but with the gorgeous weather we've been having the last few days, that seems a long way off.
The good news is, I love borecole it was delicious, which is a relief as we have plenty of it, but the greatest pleasure is still, watching it grow.
I had never heard of borecole, although it is a very pretty 'green' - both colour and classification. Welcome to the world of bloggers. Sharon. p.s. I LOVE the shed.
ReplyDeleteOh dear - I sound like a bit of a bossy bags!
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that borecole is a fancy name for kale. We're growing it too but our plants are way behind yours.
I agree with Sharon - love your shed!
Cottage Smallholer.
ReplyDeleteI prefer using the word Borecole, usually with a slight Italian accent, as is sounds more exotic than Curly Kale(dwarf variety).
Bossy bags! never. Always gracious and full of friendly advice, hence me bombarding you with questions.
being Dutch and living there too I am always astonished when reading picking of leaves of spinach, because over here a spinach leaf is called too large and the spinach rejected when it is longer then your ringfinger! We only eat babyleaves and the spinachfield is mowed like a grasfield commercially and clipped with scissors or a knife on a gardenplot. I guess we are spoiled. Translated borecole just means farmerscabbage. Maybe post WWII eating it more then once a week it was called bored-cole.
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