Vegetables in May

Since La Tierra Verde is a small scale market garden, I grow seasonal crops. Although some vegetables are available all year round, most vegetables have their own growing season. Because of the climate in the Extremadura the crops are mainly grown in open ground. A few plastic tunnels protect some vegetables from the cold weather in spring. When the sun starts to get stronger, the plastic is removed from the tunnels, and if necessary replaced by shade cloth. The plastic and shade cloth tunnels are mainly used for seedlings. As is mentioned elsewhere, vegetables are now also grown in a tunnel greenhouse. This tunnel covers an area of only 60m² and is more like an extra to the garden.

The list below is a prediction of what will be available in May. Due to weather conditions it is hard to guarantee when a crop is ready, or if it is available at all.

Vegetables in May

v  Snow peas (mange tout)

v  Peas

v  Broad beans

v  Lettuce

v  Spring onions

v  Leek

v  Spinach

v  Swiss chard

v  Radish

v  Turnip tops

v  Rucola

Like last year in Spring, I have a range of different types of lettuce in the garden. This year these are:

·         Oreja de mula, the Roman type lettuce that is also used for Caesar Salad

·         Little gems (Gogollo), also a Roman type lettuce, but more sweet and delicate than the Oreja de Mula.

·         Iceberg, a fresh and crisp lettuce type that goes very well with a dressing of Greek yogurt and fried bacon bits. It keeps well in the fridge for several days.

·         Batavia, a sub variety if the Iceberg lettuce. Batavia however is delicate and the leaves are a bit crinkled.

·         Oak leaf (Hoja de Roble), an open type lettuce with a beautiful colouring from dark red on the outside, to fresh green to the inside. A lettuce type of many uses.

·         Red Salad Ball, often also referred to as Hoja de Roble, because of the similarity in colouring but it is a different type. Salad Ball forms a head and the leaves are a bit stronger than the oak leaf.

·         Butterhead (Reina de Mayo) is a very tasteful soft and old-fashioned type of lettuce.

·         Maravilla de verano is growing very well at the moment, due to the higher temperatures. It is a strong open type of lettuce with a nice colouring of green and soft red.

Except for an abundance of lettuces, there is at the moment also an abundance of broad beans. The time to eat fresh broad beans is only during spring time. To enjoy broad beans the rest of the year, you can easily freeze them. Just take the beans out of the pods and freeze them raw in a single layer upon trays. If you have a good freezer, it takes only 2 or 3 hours to freeze them. Keep them in plastic bags or large containers.

A great and nutritious meal is the following (I call it Haba con chili):

Ingredients:

1 ts olive oil

1 onion, chopped finely

2-3 cloves of garlic, chopped finely

250g minced beef

1 ts hot paprika powder, or more if you like it hot

1 ts dried oregano

1 can diced tomato

½ cup tomato frito

1 bay leaf

250g broad beans (podded)

Salt and pepper to taste

Parsley and/or coriander leaves, chopped

1.      Heat the oil in a pan. Fry the onion and garlic until soft. Add the minced beef and stir fry until the meet begins to brown. Add paprika and oregano.

2.      Add the diced tomato, the tomato frito, bay leaf and beans to the meat and stir well. Stew for 10-15 minutes. Taste the chili and season to taste. Remove the bay leaf and add the parsley and/or coriander.

3.      Serve with fresh bread or rice.

Broad beans and peas can be used in many dishes, like risottos, paellas, soups, stews, fried rice, salads, and pastas or as accompaniment with meet and (new) potatoes.

Some people have problems with fresh peas and broad beans due to intestinal gas. This is not only a nuisance, but can be embarrassing as well. To reduce the gas forming and also possible cramps you can try the following:

1.      Remove the skins of the beans, this is called double-podding. After normal podding, cook the beans for a few minutes in boiling water until just tender. Rinse under cold water and remove the light green skin from the beans. This reduces bowel irritation in general.

2.      After the meal is completely prepared, sprinkle a little bit of ground cumin over it. This reduces the gas to form.

                                        I wish you all a beautiful and warm spring 2014.

La Tierra Verde Comeback,

It’s been a while since the last entry. But ist is never too late to update again. In the few months a lot of things have changed and there are a few improvements as well. I will not bore you with all the details. It is sufficient to say that La Tierra Verde changed its entity from SLu to autonoma. As from the beginning of 2014 La Tierra Verde is the name of the finca and not the name of the enterprise.

 The vegetable garden has increased considerable. In October 2013 the area under vegetables was approx. 800m². This has increased to approx. 1700m² at this moment, more than twice as big. Additionally I have places a tunnel greenhouse of a size 4x15m. This tunnel should be producing the whole year through, in summertime providing shade to crops like tomato, melons and peppers, in wintertime protecting the crops from the low temperatures. At this moment I am still experimenting by planting and sowing different crops and see how there produce in the greenhouse.

The vegetable garden will this year be irrigated by a drip irrigation system, which has been improved by placing a number of structures with water tanks on top. The water pressure is hereby increased, giving a better and evenly distributed irrigation throughout the whole garden.

Due to the early warm weather this year, the spring crops have been doing great. The peas and mange tout are about ready to harvest and the broad beans are heavy with pods. Also crops like lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard and other leafy crops are growing very well in this warm weather. Due to the occasional rains, there is still enough water in the soil, although with the rising temperatures at the moment, the start of the irrigation season is not far off. 

Cabbages

The Latin name of the cabbage family is Brassicaceae (or brassica). This plant family include most of the cabbage types that we know: broccoli, cauliflower, red cabbage, Brussels´sprouts, white cabbage and savoy cabbage. These are all closely related under the species Brassica oleracea. They are annual grown vegetables with dense leaved heads or flower heads. There is also a group that is more loose leaved and are commonly known as spring greens. The last is a group of cultivars that are closer to the wild cabbage than the others and include among others Kale and Collard greens. However, spring greens also refer to young plants of Brussels´sprouts, green cabbage, rape and turnip.



The other group of cabbages is the Chinese cabbages, Brassica rapa. In this group we´ll find the Chinese cabbage, Pak choi, Bok choy, Choi sum, Am choy, mustard cale, but also the turnip, radish, rapeseed, rucola (formerly Rocket) and many more.




All above mentioned cabbage types and varieties are winter and spring vegetables in the Extremadura. The cabbages from Brassica oleracea are especially adapted to cold weather and some off them, like the Brussels´sprouts, have a better flavour after a touch of frost. For all the varieties of this family group the temperature is important to produce the heads. If the temperature is too high during development of the plant, the heads will be small, or no heads will be formed at all.

The vegetables of the Brassica rapa are more favored to spring. They grow in winter, but they produce better and have better flavour in spring time. Turnip greens are a vegetable that can be grown very early in the year, producing nice tender shoots that can be used as salad leaf or cooked, stir fried, steamed or in soup. In former times this vegetable was often the first fresh green vegetable the people in Northern Europe could get after winter.

The gardens of La Tierra Verde are also full of cabbages. I try to grow a wide selection of cabbage types, as long as the planting material is available. At the moment there is a lot off broccoli. You can also expect romanesco, cauliflower, red cabbage, white cabbage, savoy cabbage, chinese cabbage, turnip greens, rucola and maybe some Brussels´sprouts.

Open Day 23 November 2013

It was a long time wish from me to organize an Open Day on the farm. And finally I came around to it last Saturday. For this first of I hope many such days, I invited the regular customers to come to the gardens of La Tierra Verde and have a look at what I am doing.

When going to the field in the morning, for the final preparations, it was still freezing a few degrees. The garden looked like a winter landscape from the Netherlands instead of an olive grove in Spain! It was beautiful, but very cold.

At 10:30am the first guests started to arrive. To warm up a bit there was coffee and tea.








When more people had arrived I gave a tour around the plots and the chickens, ending with some information on organic farming and the inputs that I am using.

After the information there was a drink and a snack. By now the temperature had risen and it was quite nice to be outside. Before the people left they could harvest the vegetables they wanted straight from the field. There was quite a selection to choose from: Broccoli, savoy cabbage, red cabbage, lettuce, spring onion, beans, spinach and fresh herbs.

Changes in La Tierra Verde

The last months there were some changes in La Tierra Verde.

First of all, the chickens finally moved to their chicken house in Malvecino. Since there were some problems with half wild dogs, the accommodation had to be improved and enforced. Luckily the chickens could stay for a while with Vivien and Edward in Martin Laguna. Thanks a million for this. Although the chickens were quite happy in Martin Laguna, now they are able to run around free during daytime in a large chicken coop, totally secured against dogs and foxes. At night they stay inside the chicken house.

In the first week of October I rented a small excavator which cleaned up the rubbish heaps that were still in the field from last year when we cleared the field from bramble bushes. With a bigger excavator I had the charco enlarged and made deeper. The water had just finished but when the digging was finished the water bubbled back up. 

When a second charco was dug, on the other side of the field, no water came up. The soil was moist, but that was all. Luckily, after the rains of 19-23 October, the second charco filled up partly with rain water. It is possible to harvest the rainwater in this way and keep it in containers for the summertime.

The third important change is that the garden in Martin Laguna will have to be abandoned. The owners have sold the terrain and before December I have to clear it. Although I had just cleared the tomatoes and paprika plants, there are still a lot of cabbage plants growing and even a small plot of potato. I hope I will have the chance to harvest those crops, before December! On the bright side, soon I have no obligations anymore in Martin Laguna, leaving me more time to concentrate on the garden in Malvecino.

What is growing in autumn

The rains started of in time this year. Already in September we received quite some water from heaven. The temperature remained high and all of a sudden nature came back to life. It looked like a second spring, with flowers everywhere and a green haze over the hills and mountains. Regretfully, after those first promising rains, there followed a dry spell. In fact I had to go back to irrigation once more. But luckily October brought us more rain. Since then the autumn has really started, although some plants are still a bit confused, like my pear tree, which is flowering as if it was spring!

The summer crops have been cleared away by now. In their place now grows garlic, beans, peas, broccoli, lettuce and other winter crops. In the months of November and December you can expect the following vegetables on offer:

Lettuce, different types like Hoja de Roble, Oreja de Mula and Batavia
French beans
Runner beans
Spinach
Swiss chard

Radish
Leek
Spring onion
Broccoli
Red cabbage
Savoy cabbage
White cabbage

The fresh herbs are at their end, except the parsley. The flat Italian type and the curly type parsley will be growing for a while longer, until the temperature is getting too low at the end of December. The Mediterranean herbs, Rosemary, Thyme, Lemon thyme, Sage, Oregano and Marjoram, will loose their flavour until spring. Also the chives will die back shortly, however, at the moment it is still growing. The Mediterranean herbs I have dried during late spring and early summer when they are at their best. I have them on stock in small amounts.

August

August, middle of summer. The weather is dry, sunny and hot. Just as you will expect August in the Extremadura to be. In the vegetable garden the plants are looking on the point of wilting. Top leaves are showing burnmarks, so are the fruits of the paprika and peppers. The sun is beating down relentlessly and it is still many hours to sun set.

Beef Tomato

What happened in the gardens of La Tierra Verde the last few weeks?

First of all, the summer vegetables are finally producing well. The fruits of tomato and paprika are still a bit small, but this is due to the low fertility of the soil. Luckily I found excellent ecological fertilizer, one made from humus and the other from algae. This will improve the growth of the plants and give bigger and healtier fruits.

After a flush of courgettes, the plants are now producing small quantities. This is mainly due to the lack of bees this year. The cold and wet winter seems to have diminished the bee populations. At the moment I´m looking into  beekeeping. By keeping bees myself I could raise the production of fruit vegetables by as much as 50%. And of course there is the honey. However, I have no experience at all with beekeeping, so it will be a very challenging project.

Lettuce under shade cloth

Although this is just my third summer in Alcuéscar, all three were very different. The first was very hot, the second very dry, and this one seems very bright. What I remember of the last two summers is that there were often clouds in the sky. It seemed that whenever I went to the swimming pool for some sun bathing, the clouds appeared out of nowhere. This year I hardly see any clouds. Some days are a bit hazy, or sometimes some clouds appear on the horizon, but the overall picture is very bright and sunny. The plants in the gardens do not like this. The fruit vegetables like paprika, tomato and courgette show a lot of burn marks. The leaves of french beans dry out too quickly and crumble up. Many plants just die or stop growing. Therefore a part of the garden in Malvecino is now under a shade roof. Under the shade the plants are growing wonderful. The establishment is much better and even the lettuce is growing happily. Because I wanted to experiment first, only a small part is provided with shadow. Next summer, however, most of the garden will be under shade in the months of July and August.

What is coming up in the garden?

Planting for autumn and winter has already begun. Broccoli, cauliflower, savoya and Brussel´s sprouts are already growing in the garden. They will take their time, however. For the coming 6 weeks I expect the following vegetables:

Italian pepper

Tomatoes, Roma and beef tomatoes
Paprika
Italian pepper
Padrón pepper
Egg plant
Courgette
Cucumber
French beans
Runner beans
Leek
Iceberg lettuce
Lettuce Hoja de Roble

Occacionally I will have Canary melon or Piel de Sapo.

Juan Canary Melon