This year has been full of experiments of the vegetable variety.
Tomatoes, red hot chillis, mild chillis, carrots, beetroot
It’s been the first year with the polycrub and growing in containers rather than beds. I started rather late in our short season, as the polycrub wasn’t built until the end of April. All of which meant that my expectations were set at a pretty low level for success.
And those expectations have largely been fulfilled ..
However, there have been a few pleasant surprises. Today I harvested my first cobs of sweetcorn. They’re small, it’s true, and there are only a few of them. But when I planted the corn seeds in May, followed by our largely sunless non-summer I really didn’t think that anything would come of them.
Sweetcorn – yay!
And yet here we are, eating sweetcorn from the croft with our supper. I’m a bit amazed that I’ve managed to produce something so seemingly exotic out of our cold, wet island.
I know that all growers are convinced that their produce is wonderful, but I’m a critical grower, honestly. Our tomatoes have been prolific but disappointing in taste this year and there are some plants, lovingly tended, that have not thrived or produced a harvest worthy of a repeat next year. However, this corn was absolutely delicious, an hour from plant to plate. Sweet and very succulent.
I stand in awe of the tolerance that some plants have for less than ideal environments. It gives me great hope for next years food production which will be in deep beds, fertilised with our own seaweed and croft compost.
A world apart in terms of taste!
Fifty seven degrees north. Who would have guessed!
July is underway and with it comes the first of the proper harvests from the croft.
The polycrub really has been a game changer and we’ve managed to grow cucumbers and lettuce enough for all of our salads and more to spare for neighbours and friends. This in combination with the produce from the raised beds has meant a wide variety of foods can be grown throughout an extended season.
Lettuce and young onions
The most successful lettuce has been a butterhead, which we’ve been cropping as a cut and come again lettuce. We’re also growing romaine. All the mizunas and rocket grew well initially, but then bolted within weeks and became straggly. I don’t like eating the mustards and mizuna because of the spiky texture of their leaves so I won’t bother with these next year, and will just plant more lettuce.
Butterhead lettuce
The onions were supposed to be red onion varieties, but aren’t more than vaguely pink. They sent up flower shoots so most of them have been lifted before they soften.
They’re small, but sweet. We’re using them in salads and cooking now and I have them drying in bunches ready for use later in the season.
Drying onions
The red kuri squash has a few young fruits on it, which I’m very excited about. Early days, but I’m hopeful that we’ll have a few to harvest in late summer. The French squash hasn’t shown any sign of fruiting yet.
Baby squash hiding behind a tomato leaf
The garlic was a bit of a disappointment. Sown last October I had high hopes for bigger heads this year, but they’re still small. I’ll use them in stews and trays of roasted vegetables, so despite their lack of size they won’t be wasted.
Wimpy garlic
The potatoes are also much slower than last year. We’ve just harvested some Edzell Blue and Casablanca varieties. Great taste, but not hugely prolific. We’ll hold off for a while for the main crop variety.
Edzell Blue potatoes
The kale is growing well after the deer ate all of my perennial kales from the beds last winter. I grew more Uncle Bert’s kale and red Russian kale from seed and it’s coming up nicely. I’ve also sown purple sprouting broccoli into the beds recently, so between them that should give us a reasonable winter crop.
The carrots were grown in large seed lick tubs this year as an experiment. Three varieties, all French heritage types, growing well, albeit slowly. The first of these should be ready in a few weeks time.
Carrots
The cucumbers had a very faltering start due to the cold temperatures of late spring. A number rotted and wilted beyond salvation, but the three plants that did survive are fruiting well and have produced about six cucumbers ready for eating so far. There’s no trace of bitterness to their taste either, which is great.
Baby cucumber
The tomatoes are starting to set fruit, again later than most due to our cold, late start. It will be interesting to see whether we can get them to ripen in time. The big Russian bush varieties are pruned and tall with not much evidence of fruit yet. The dwarf bushy varieties, which don’t get pruned, are happily fruiting away with no fuss.
Dwarf tomato plants doing their thing
The courgettes – I only planted two plants so that we weren’t overrun if they grew – have started fruiting, although the fruit is yellow rather than green, which is a total surprise. We’ve already had a handful of courgettes from them, and looking at the flowers there will be many more to come.
The beans have struggled. The borlotti beans are doing the best out of all the varieties and are starting to flower now, so I’m hopeful for a few fresh beans from them.
The corn is about four feet heigh although no sign of flowers or fruits yet.
The herbs have gone mad – the tubs of parsley and coriander have gone crazy and we’ve been eating them for months, the dill the same and I’ve left some to go to seed for collection. The chives, lemon balm, rosemary, lemon verbena and mint are all growing well.
All in all, I’m happy with our first months of growing with the polycrub so far. It’s hard to believe that it’s only been here since mid April. I’ve learned a lot, and when we set up proper grow beds in there next year I’ll feel confident about what to plant out.
Now to start sowing the winter seeds! The year is turning already.
We have had an incredibly wet couple of months recently, and as I look ahead at the weather forecast for the next week, I see no respite. It really doesn’t feel like summer.
No sun, just back-to-back clouds and rain for the week to come. I’m clutching my mug of coffee and peering out through the rain-smeared caravan windows as I write.
Baby cucumbers at last
Luckily the polycrub remains largely unaffected by the rain. Everything seems to be growing nicely in there, although the lack of warmth and sunshine means that my tomatoes and courgettes are being very slow to set fruit. There are lots of flowers, but only a few tiny fruits so far, despite feeding and shaking to help pollination. More patience is needed as well as more sunshine!
Baby tomatoes
We have youngest stepson staying with us at the moment. I say youngest, he’s 21 😊. Despite being a child of the city, a very definite metro-being, he’s been quite taken by the rituals of watering, pruning, planting and harvesting in the polycrub and has been helping me with this.
Which is a really good thing as it’s a busy time of the year in there and I’m still pretty limited in what I can do since the operation, with no lifting or standing for too long.
Lettuce
He pricked out baby beetroot into pots yesterday and I showed him how to take excess foliage off the tomato plants to redirect energy into the setting fruits. He’s also been building plant stakes to support the trailing plants.
Sitting in there with his music on enjoying the now rather jungle-like environment of climbing greenery, it’s been nice to see him without his nose in his phone or laptop for a bit enjoying the outdoors. Well indoors really, I guess. A polycrub is a sort of halfway house, isn’t it…😊
Who knows, maybe we have another generation of growers in the making…
I’ve been watching the posts of successful gardeners up here with envious eyes as they cropped fistfuls of carrots from their vegetable plots.
Carrots from the croft beds
I have been pulling the odd carrot here and there from my raised bed over the last month to see if there was anything much underneath the profusion of feathery green. I’ve prodded and pulled. To date, all to no avail. Up until this week all I’d found were a few pencil thin offerings.
Checking the beds a few days ago I noticed that some of the carrots were going to seed! Horrors. How could they go to seed on me without delivering as promised?
Armed with my fork I resolved to find edible carrots or else dig them all up and return the space to something more productive.
I’d sown two types from Real Seeds in the spring – the gloriously named Manchester Table carrot and the equally exotic yellow French heritage variety, Jaune D’obtuse. Surely one of them should have produced something by now.
I knew that I hadn’t thinned them very well. When the time came in early summer, something in me just baulked at pulling out young, healthy plants, and much as I understood that it was needed, I also suspected that my half-hearted attempts at thinning hadn’t been nearly rigorous enough. As such I was expecting skinny, weedy specimens at best.
My delight was complete when I delved into the forest of carrot rows and pulled up some good sized carrots.
Croft vegetables ready for roasting
We roasted the first of these today with beets, potatoes, onions and garlic, all grown by us. They were delicious.
It’s just a carrot. But it’s my very first homegrown one, and it tasted all the better for that.
We planted early seed potatoes in March in one of the hugelkultur beds on the croft as part of our “what will grow here” experiment. We’d managed to get the seed potatoes from a fellow crofter, two varieties that he’d recommended called Orla and Nicola, which I promptly mixed up… 🙄
Potatoes in the bed on the right
There were several times that I thought absolutely nothing would come of them.
I watched as the months rolled around and they grew, but very, very slowly. It was a very cold start to the season and I wondered if I’d stunted them completely, never to recover. They didn’t flower, and they didn’t seem to get any bigger.
As we moved into August and we started harvesting lettuces, onions, kale and garlic, the green tops of the potato plants looked no bigger than they had in April, and I started to feel that the experiment had failed.
Husband dug them up on a misty, midgy morning this weekend. I’d decided that we really needed the space for something else to have its chance, and my expectations were low, if zero, to be honest.
When he came in with a couple of bucketfuls of good potatoes I was pleasantly surprised.
It wasn’t a massive haul compared to the harvest that we’d got from the red-skinned potatoes, but it was more than I’d imagined that they’d provide.
Either Orla or Nicola..
I washed them off and checked them over. Very little slug damage, and only a few green ones, and that because I hadn’t earthed them up. It was a decent crop of good, solid unblemished potatoes.
Washed and drying
We will store these in hessian bags in the caravan and eat them over the coming months.
Considering our experience with the reds that we harvested last month and these varieties, I think that potatoes do grow well here, despite the cold springs, so I’m planning to grow a full raised bed of them next year.
They’re such hassle-free plants to grow, and it’s true what they say, that the flavour of home grown potatoes is far superior to shop bought ones.
Lovely little nuggets of potato deliciousness. Nature keeps surprising me.
This is the season for eating from the croft, and the fresh produce is now coming in with abundance, even from the handful of small grow beds that we have. We are enjoying lettuce, kale, new potatoes, purple sprouting broccoli, chard, onions, peas and fresh herbs.
I’m being challenged to find new ways of serving this bounty, as we can’t store or freeze any produce this season.
This is whipped feta with roasted beetroot, toasted almonds, orange zest, chopped mint and parsley.
I was so excited to try our first baby beets from the croft that I made this dish up specifically to try them. It’s adapted from one that I found that uses goats cheese.
Scooped up with oat biscuits, it was a light nibble to eat before a main meal with friends, but would easily make a lunch on its own. This will become a summer staple, I think, and I’ve resolved to definitely grow more beetroots next year!
Young onions from the croft
Tonight, kale and purple sprouting broccoli from the croft were the central vegetables in our meal. They were lightly sautéed with garlic, sesame, spring onions, lime, a bit of leftover chicken, and noodles.
Uncle Bert’s kale
Lots of potatoes… cold potato salad, fried potatoes, garlic potatoes, mash here we come!
It’s all growing well in our raised bed experiment. Except the leeks, which are spindly little pencils so far.
I will be patient.
I’m mainly delighted and surprised by the profusion. It seems to have come all of a sudden. We’re cropping lettuces, potatoes, kale, sorrel, purple sprouting brocolli, chives, parsley, dill, mint, and rocket.
The beets, shallots and onions look nearly ready. The garlic is coming along, and the mammoth red cabbage leaves are starting to turn in. The parsnips are growing, as are the carrots.
It’s the rain, long hours of daylight and mild temperatures. Suddenly everything is leaping up as if wanting to make up for the slow, cold start of our late spring.
First crop of potatoesKale, beetroots, red-veined sorrel, onionsPeasParsnipsEndive and carrotsUncle Bert’s kalePurple sprouting broccoli
The days are long and filled with light. It’s also been a week of warm, hazy weather so we’ve been making the most of it with friends whilst it’s here. We’re never more than a few days away from rain here on the island!
A fellow Instagrammer bought a cottage here on the North of the island for renovation at about the same time that we purchased the croft, and he and his family drove down to meet us yesterday to take a look at the house build and what we were doing with the land.
The car scrambled up the drive to the top of the hill, its doors opened, and out burst five gorgeous kids, the parents and two dogs. It was a complete explosion of sound and energy as we rounded up enough tumblers for drinks, answered questions, watered the dogs and showed them around.
For two people normally unused to groups of people and the sound and motion that accompany them, especially after a quiet and pretty isolated last six months, it was quite exhausting, albeit in the nicest of ways! I am in awe of parents who can cope with such levels of energy. We have become unused to people…
We sat in what was left of the sun with a vegan BBQ (simple chickpea patties, vegan sausages, garlic fried potatoes and grilled red peppers) and watched the clouds gather over the mountains of Knoydart.
Sweetness was added with a vegan strawberry trifle made in the biggest salad bowl I could find. Minty, their daughter, made delicious chocolate cupcakes.
A lovely day. The rain did start towards the end of the afternoon and we had to decamp to the house, but it didn’t ruin anything.
As we waved them off we reflected that since living here we’ve spent time with more people in the last six months, despite all Covid restrictions, than we did in the previous five years in London. For two massive intraverts, that’s astonishing. It’s been a summer of people.
Jonathan is a brilliant photographer and he took these iconic pictures whilst here. You can find more of his images on Instagram @skye.cottage.
One of the things that having no kitchen tools here in the caravan has meant is that we don’t “process” any foods. This simply means that nothing we eat is smooth. Everything is chunky.
For example, when I make a vegetable soup, which I often used to blend to a silky puree with a stick blender or food processor, I now leave it au naturel. I’ve got quite attached to real chunks of vegetables in my soup rather than a blended uniformity.
Hummus
The same is true for hummus. I often make this by hand because it’s cheaper and I think much more delicious than shop bought. I can control exactly what goes into it. I add tahini, lemon zest, garlic, fresh parsley and good olive oil.
However, I’ve been used to zapping it up in the food processor to the usual smooth slurry we’re all used to seeing in the deli counter tubs.
Now I’m having to hand-crush chickpeas with a fork, an undertaking not for the faint hearted or weak of thumb. It creates a rustic, very chunky hummus, which was a bit of a shock to the system to start with, but which I actually now prefer.
So, once we are in the house, with a real kitchen with appliances once again, I shall remember these learnings.
We will keep to our chunky living. Life isn’t all smooth. We may as well enjoy it whilst we still have our own teeth 😊.
The weather here on the island has been very hot over the past week. The caravan has suddenly transformed from fridge to oven..
The temperature gauge inside recorded 26 degrees centigrade yesterday, and that’s uncomfortably warm for us. Especially when opening windows to try and catch a breeze results in swarms of midges coming in off the croft…reminder to self, we must get some midge netting fitted to the windows.
The seedlings however are loving it. Uncle Bert’s Kale is growing madly, the potato plants are all greening up nicely and I have my first bean on my borlotti bean plant!
It was too hot to cook indoors yesterday and we were too tired to summon up a BBQ, so we headed down to Camuscross early to try and get a table for a cold drink and some supper. It’s so good to be able to do that again now that lockdown has eased.
There are worse places to be on a hot June evening… This time last year we were in London… I know where I’d rather be.
Ravencroft Skye 