Hugh's War on Waste

Justamum

GreyQueen wrote: »

That's not a technique I've tried, MTSTM, but it's certainly interesting.

I have about 160 leeks on the allotment, all grown from a single pkt of seed, so am picking on them in size order. I discard about a foot of the length of the outside leaves and trim off the roots, the rest I eat. Lovely stuff.

That sounds like quite a decent success rate - presumably every seed grew? I like leeks so I might give them a go next year.

I managed to chop and cook about 30 of our Bramleys today but you couldn't tell from looking at the pile! I'm going to do some more tomorrow probably then I'm hopefully taking the rest to the apple orphanage. There'll be no room in our freezer for all of them.

Lance_De_Boils

Gigervamp wrote: »

That reminds me. Someone I know, chopped the leaves off a Little Gem lettuce, then put the stalk in water and got a new crop of leaves.

Have a look on google for foods that can be regrown. From memory celery, spring onions, lemon grass. There are more but I can't remember.

moneyistooshorttomention

Spring onions certainly do re-grow from root section. I've planted out root bits in the garden before now and they've grown on into rather big onions (yep - I did eat the green outer bits too - as part of a stir fry). The thing is something (I assume its birds?) will sometimes take them - so my next go at doing this will be protected by mini-cloches from cut-down milk "bottles".

Currently - I've got some supermarket spring onions placed in a glass of water as I eat my way through them. This being to keep them fresh - but I've noticed they are growing in the process.

GreyQueen

I don't think they all grew, Justamum, because there were a few gaps in the seed drills. But I average about 160-190 plants from one seed packet.

I have had success by treating a number of veg, shop-bought and home-grown, as if they were cut flowers. I trim their bases and sit them in bowls or jugs of water, changing it daily. This works for all lettuces and celery and I have the top off one of my ruby chards parked in a bowl in the kitchen atm, where I am harvesting it daily - I am 1.25 miles from my allotment so not as easy to get the stuff as a back garden.

You do need to trim the base of the veg as the pores which take up the water seal quickly (as they do for flower stems). Even rather sad and floppy celery will perk up surprisingly quickly with this technique.

If you have onions which start to grow in the kitchen, you can snip off the green shoots and treat them as a cut-and-come-again substitute for spring onion tops. Can be repeated many times with the same onion before it exhausts the energy in the bulb and stops growing. I often add such snippings to things like omelettes.

Have just decanted the crushed egg-shells into the re-purposed plastic milk bottle which I use to sprinkle them on the allotment soil. I try to regard things as a resource rather than as waste materials and I figure a bit of extra calcium won't go amiss. My allotment soil is already a very different creature to the degraded mess I took on 8 years ago, and the quantity and quality of the crops are reflecting that favourably.

jackieblack

MatthewAinsworth wrote: »

If we eat more ugly vegetables, more good looking ones will go to waste instead, he needs to get us to actually eat more, or get farmers to sell to developers or set up solar farms instead

No, if we eat more ugly veg farmers won't need to grow as much to start with. A far greater percentage of what they grow will be eaten and there will be far less waste.
That's the point.

moneyistooshorttomention

So your "degraded mess" soil turned to bountiful in 8 years - courtesy of a lot of effort GreyQueen.

I'm in process of trying to "up the level" of mine with my "chop and drop" AND I've got some 6x to put on it AND I've got some rockdust to put on it. Not sure if I'm right to do so - but I belt clods of it to bits when I can too physically (ie because some of its clay soil).

So - any further tips on improving the soil welcome obviously...:)

greenbee

Clay soil - dig in sharp sand. Mulch with bark (or other organic matter) and dig in every time you replant. It all helps. My last house had clay soil and initially I cleared each bed and dug over several times adding sand, compost and manure to improve the soil before planting up. By the last time I was able to dig to approx 2 spade depths. Hard work, and messy, but it paid off.

[Deleted User]

I think the only pre-wrapped veg I buy is a cucumber.It makes me so cross that I cannot buy locally a cucumber that hasn't got plastic wrapping sealing it.A couple of weeks ago my local greengrocer sadly had to close because of Mr T being close by.So I lost the great little shop where I could buy almost everything unwrapped and without the horrible clingfilm stuff.I could buy spud unwashed and huge great cabbages that he would bless him cut in half for pensioners to share.His apples were delicious and came from a local orchard.He has gone now sadly and unless I trundle out to a farm shop I have to use the supermarket to buy my fruit and veg.I do try to go at least once a month to a farm shop,but this week I had to get my cucumber from Mr T. Uniformly same size of each one and I had some in a salad last night .totally tasteless I'm afraid.No idea where it was grown or how far it had to travel to my plate It will be the last one I buy from there thats for sure I'd rather make the journey to a 'proper g'grocers' or farm shop I think than eat from the supermarket again.
When I moved here in 1995 there used to be an open market once a week, but that too has gone which was a shame as it brought lots of people and customers into the area.It seems the supermarkets want their customers to be obedient little sheep and eat what their told to..
Today I am going to venture out this morning to Rochester as a friend told me there is an open market there run by the WI .Ok its 6 miles away but if I can buy unwrapped food that has some taste then its worth the diesel

Pollycat

I too like buying veg from either a local greengrocer (luckily we have one in our village) or a local market.

From the market, I bought a big savoy cabbage for 59p - used maybe one-eigth in a dinner and will use the rest in various ways and freeze any that I can't use.
I also bought a massive romanesco for 80p. He offered me 2 for £1 but I knew that I'd just not got enough room. As it was, we used some in the dinner & I've frozen 3 big bags. Some really good quality florets that I've marked for Christmas Day & Boxing Day dinner, the others are fine for dinners or I might make some romanesco & stilton soup.
From the same stall I bought a bag of garlic bulbs. £1 for 8 bulbs. :eek:

missbiggles1

honeythewitch wrote: »

But you would describe them as "off" if they were black? Presumably the apples Justamum was describing were wizened, rather than just "stored"?

I wouldn't buy them but that was the way my dad loved bananas.

Equally, someone might not choose to buy wizened apples themselves but they should be perfectly edible and certainly not "gone off". That was the point I was making, not questioning someone's preferences.