The garden pantry

It's so exciting to see the winter crops come into full production. While we have been eating Asian Greens, spinach, broccoli and peas for a while we now have the long awaited broad beans making their appearance.

There are loads of pods on the plants, and even though many were damaged in the storms of the last weeks, we will have plenty on our dinner table over the next while.

The last of our beets are big enough to harvest now so we will clear this bed out this week so that I can plant the last spinach of the season which should see us to December. A nice bowl of steam baby beets will go down well with a roast chicken this week. I also use the leaves like spinach, so perhaps a spinach and feta pie will be on the menu?

 The last purple broccoli is waiting to be picked, we still have some of the sprouting variety so these two combined will go into a pasta or broccoli cheese for a meal.

 Peas are nice and fat in their pods and we have mange tout for salads at the moment. I am also harvesting the pea sprouts that we planted in our asparagus  beds for salads.

And then our shy Mary Washington asparagus is arriving. We have about 10 spears in different stages peeping through and will make a lovely hors d'oeuvre one evening. In the book "Animal Vegetable Miracle" they talk about asparagus being the first sign of spring...this may well be but it is still freezing here.

Our herbs of coriander, majorum, celery, origanum, rosemary and thyme have been used heavily this winter. I also have a Bay tree but it is infested with scale....so it is being pulled...it is actually in the wrong place anyway. Today I planted a new Bay in a pot and put Penny Royal and Thyme at the base. I need to rethink all the herbs I do have growing as I use so much of them that I need to allocated more space....time to plan!

What's growing in your garden?