I was in the vegetable garden this morning digging a few veggies. Parsnip, carrot, leek, celeriac, lettuce, cress, rocket and chicory. Whilst I was cleaning them I was thinking it’s a real shame that carrots out of the garden don’t come as clean as they do from the supermarket.

This probably had something to do with the fact that I had drawn a bucket of water from our garden rainwater tank and it was f…….. freezing. The air temperature is only 6.0o C with a wind chill reading of 4.0o C and while I’m in the middle of scrubbing vegetables , the big feller upstairs decides this is a good time to make it rain. I don’t think so!

Seriously I’m glad I get the opportunity to wash my own produce in pure rainwater, I’ve been reading some horror stories lately about the treatment of salad greens before they are all packed in plastic bags. They don’t actually grow like that you know.

We grow Chantenay carrots as we have fairly shallow heavy soil, these give a good size thick carrot about 6 – 8 inches in length. Hollow Crown Parsnips are my seed of choice and these can be anything from 12” to nearly 20” in size. The Leek for my garden is a type called Musselburgh. They stay sweet and tender all winter, at the moment the are probably not much more than an inch across but they will continue to develop in size to about as thick as a persons wrist without any loss of flavour.

Upland Cress is my choice of watercress and it has been growing all summer. About three weeks ago I took to it with the hedge clippers and fed it heavily with liquid manure fertiliser, it’s re-sprouted and producing as well as ever.

Chicory at this time of year, well that’s a treat for our Budgie.

I don’t really mind scrubbing the veggies.