Glut Cook

  Glut Cook Three – Onions. You need to know your onions to get that successful succession going. I keep aiming to end up with plump wonderful onions in the shed- suspended and dry. They are easy to store and keep. In addition I’ve got my food waste spring onions and the everlasting onion bed.   All you need is a bed or two and they just keep growing and going – until the winter. That’s when my onions are not so good, I do overwinter onions thanks to a greenhouse (or windowsill). I have a few other food waste tricks to keep the glut going but there is never enough – but they do help keep the need to buy a little lower. Then there is a catch as the winter cold, very cold, and more than freezing temperatures we seem to get in our little frost hollow. The result was as my optimistic onion crop started developing it failed. Also my trials and tribulations with trying to establish tree onions has led to squelchy failures. Other people seem to have great success mine simply star...

  Glut the Second Perpetual Spinach. Perpetual spinach is a revelation these beets just keep on giving. A heritage variety can keep you going for ages. Okay winter less so but you have so much to freeze it should not be a problem keeping yourself stocked with some spinach. Also if the seeds fall in autumn you end up with the stuff growing like weeds – suppressing other weeds at the same time. Our perpetual spinach seed spills, so we get surprising sports mixed across plots and plots in the garden – it nice to have as a weed that makes a great curry. We also collect the seed heads and share the seed via the foodbank. The only issue in keeping this a perpetual crop has been the extremes of heat and cold. Too cold and the little leaves don’t make it, but some of the massive roots seem to survive. After the travails and terrors of cold winters there is the heat and hardship of the summer. This upright plant becomes flaccid and droopy. So they need watering, but the mature roots see...

 The Glut Cook is not just the cooking but the making of little gluts through the year. a sort of behind the time almanac as we look at what we can do with the plentiful crops we can create for ourselves and our community. It is based on experience of creating a Living foodbank – providing food and seeds for local food banks. This blog comes from a simple idea of growing and saving seeds that conserve old varieties, provide food and a means for everyone to grow a little. After trying out a few staples and the rigours of our temperamental and changing climate we have found a few ways to help. It’s a journey in food security, resilience, and good old-fashioned community. Help a friend, help yourself, make a bit of food and share it. Or just find a tree and begin thinking under it. The Glut Cook is a bit of botany what a smidge of practicality to help provide food, support conservation, biodiversity and spread the products to help friends, family, and those in our community. So, we ha...

Glut the first – Rhubarb Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb everywhere and all we do is crumble. Before go any further it’s a veg because we eat the stalk. It also has a large bulbous bottom underground that needs to be fed. It is also often the first of the Glut cook additions –. Its bulbous bottom is critical to its survival and needs to be fed by the large but poisonous (if you eat them) leaves. Having said that it’s not so simple to overwinter -we had a problem with a rat burrowing into the bed and eating the roots. Rhubarb is resilient – we let it grow, harvested less, added a little compost and it’s still going strong. Getting your glut going It’s also surprisingly easy to grow from seed. A present of heritage seeds (a cut price advent calendar) has led to a small (ish) container of rhubarb slowly developing. So the glut starts by growing:          Try seeds if you are short of cash and contacts – I planted in March in a warm cupboard and waited as the weathe...