Food from our own garden

My dream of growing our own vegetables has almost rained away. There has just not been enough sunlight for the vegetables to grow properly. In addition, there has been so much rain that some plants have simply drowned. It was actually so bad that green algae grew in the little puddles that formed around the vegetable beds, since it was never dry enough for the soil to absorb all the water. Because of all the moisture, the peas as well as several other plants have developed some sort of fungal disease.

The only things thriving in this weather are slugs, which have feasted on my fragile flowers and vegetables. Can you imagine, they ate up all my radishes, except for one. The string bean plants that were large and lovely when I planted them out, were quickly reduced to unsightly stems some of which only produced a single bean.

It is easy to give up in such miserable conditions, but I was nonetheless determined that all the hard work should result in at least a couple of dinners. So today I went out between the rain showers, and harvested a small selection of vegetables as an accompaniment for the meatballs.

Well, this isn’t exactly the bountiful vegetable basket I had planned for, but it will suffice as dinner for two. Here we have potatoes in various sizes, carrots in more or less obscene shapes, a few string beans, some pea pods, a small onion, two tiny leeks, some sugar snaps, and a single cherry tomato. None of the other tomatoes have ripened yet, and I doubt whether they ever will, now that we are struggling with a growth defeating combination of low night temperatures as well as a lack of sun. However, I have not completely given up. I have brought the smaller tomato plants inside and placed them in the bay window, hoping the fruits will ripen there.

Here we have the result: Meatballs in onion sauce, potatoes, carrots, peas and green beans. Aside from the meatballs, everything comes from the garden, as does the blackcurrant juice, by the way.

Home grown produce harvested from the garden less than an hour previously tasted wonderful! I just wish there was more of it….