Produce from the garden

Stuff in the potager is growing well, although due to the earlier cold weather and the slugs eating a lot of stuff it is behind where it should be. Quite a lot of things really aren't an impressive size.

We have had some to eat, but not much. If we were relying on it for all our veg we would be starving! 

We have had mange toute, peas, suger snap peas, broad beans, courgette flowers, onions, onion flowers, shallots and courgettes - but only a couple of each. We have had more new potatoes and should eat more soon as they are getting a bit big.

I had not eaten courgette flowers before, they are very tasty raw or cooked. We are learning lots of things about gardening. For example I didn't know courgettes have male and female flowers. You can see the tiny courgette to be on the bottom of the female flowers - the flower opens and the courgette will grow (in some cases it has to be fertilised)

These courgettes are going to be yellow - the flower hasn't opened yet

The male flowers look the same but don't have the tiny courgette

Someone told us that the male flowers could just be removed (and eaten) but I decided to look that up on the internet as it seemed a bit funny that the plant has them but doesn't need them. Apparently a lot of variety (often - or perhaps always I am not sure - F1 hybrids) don't need fertilising but some still do. 

As far as I can tell these ones in the picture need the male flowers (they are Buckingham) but the other ones we have (Early Gem F1) don't. But I can't claim to understand everything about it!

F1 Hybrids are interesting to read about too. We have bought a number of seeds F1 seeds without really knowing what they are - it seems that in some cases they can be a good thing, but not always worth it.

Most of our onions have gone to seed too, so I consulted with the internet again. Last year we planted the onions from little onion seedlings and they did well, this year we used sets (which are partially grown but dormant onion bulbs) and they went to seed. Apparently it more common for sets to go to seed than onion seedlings because onions seed in their second year and the sets are made by growing the onions late in one year then letting them go dormant over the winter then starting them growing the next. We should have chopped the flowers off as soon as they formed, but we did not. The flowers are quite tasty fried in batter.

I am sure we have learnt lots of other riveting things too!