Glut Cook

  Glut the fourth - Garlic       Love a little garlic as it does the one thing in the green house (in partnership with the lemon grass and basil) I really like. Every year a few corms in between plants, a trough of lemon grass and a pot of basil seems to deter the little green and white flies that bug me and my vegetable wards in the greenhouse. Doesn’t stop all of them but some bugs are definitely thinking twice. Garlic is great in food but a gardener’s friend in more ways than one. It can also make a useful little spray – if you want to try it see the recipe card. I do like the smelly trinity though – seems effective. Garlic is also so easy to grow and will keep coming up but this year not so much.   Although I plant through the year but early planting sometimes fails but it’s something to do with any we end up buying that have little corms not worth cooking with. Those that did grow well this year came from the troughs I’d moved outside and left after they ...

  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...