Landshare update & Grilled Mediterranean Salad

A Landshare update

Back in January, I posted about Landshare, and how I had decided to offer part of my garden to be turned into an 'allotment' for someone to grow vegetables. I thought I would give you an update on how the process has been going!

Once the snow had melted away and the ground was less frozen, the couple who have adopted part of my garden, J and K, came over and dug out the patch, de-turfing, de-stoning and generally putting in a LOT of hard work in not particularly nice weather. I felt a little guilty that I couldn't do much more than provide lots of cups of tea! Once they'd edged the patch and dug over the soil, they still had to wait a little while for the weather to warm a bit, but then finally they were able to put in some potatoes, then a week later some carrots.

And then I waited. And for ages nothing happened except a few weeds and bits of grass sprung up which J&K came occasionally to remove (more tea-making and cheerleading on my part). The last few weeks though, we've had some very warm days, alternating with wet weather, and the plants have just started to spring up.

Last Sunday J&K came over and added some onion plants to the patch and a polytunnel which I believe is for leeks. I thought I'd share a couple of pictures to show off their hard work!

This is the potato end of the patch, a couple of larger, more obvious plants here, but also lots of smaller ones to be spotted if you look hard!

Onions are next to the polytunnel - three kinds, spring onions, red and white, and then next to them is the carrots. Doesn't look like much is happening there but the small grass-like growth in this section is actually baby carrots =)

Tree overhead could do with some cutting back, but on the whole the plot gets good rain and sunshine and is quite sheltered from the wind.

Close up of the potato plants. Quite exciting!

Now that they've shown me what the plants look like and what the weeds look like, I'll be able to help them out by pulling out weeds when I see them come up. I haven't forgotten about the herb garden idea, but surprise surprise haven't done anything yet.

I do have some lovely bluebells in the wilder parts of the garden though:

Grilled Mediterranean Vegetables and Goats Cheese Salad

I had a roasted Mediterranean vegetable salad at Pizza Express a month or so ago and as I had aubergine, peppers and tomatos, I decided to give it a try myself. No pictures, sadly, as I forgot to take any before I wolfed the whole lot down!!

Serves 2 (though I ate it all myself *blush*)

1/2 large aubergine sliced into 1cm / 1/2inch slices
1 sweet red pepper (I used ramiro) cut into sections
1 large field mushroom cut into sections
3 medium sized tomatoes cut into halves.
1 small goats cheese
mix of salad leaves (I had rocket and spinach)
olive oil for brushing

vinaigrette:
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
dried mint
dried oregano
garlic powder
fresh ground pepper
fresh ground salt

I mixed the dressing up first in a small bowl and left aside so the flavours could absorb.
Sliced all the veg, brushed lightly with olive oil and then grilled.
I was in two minds whether to warm the cheese or not, and in the end I did put it under the grill for just a tiny amount, but I'm not sure that it needed this as I could have just mixed it with the hot veg and warmed it that way.
I arranged the salad on a plate, added some veg and cheese and then some dressing and had with some crusty bread.
It was so, so tasty. I ended up having the second helping too. Ah well, it's mostly good, healthy stuff! =D

-Hannah