Frugal Bytes - Garlic and Baby Beetroot

In the Frugaldom Winter Garden

With all the rain and wind we've had over the past couple of months, I'm amazed that anything is surviving in the garden but, as nature would have it, there's always something to see.

 

 

 

Last year's beetroot seed sowings are still surviving, so I'm going to thin these out and pickle the baby beets. I love beetroot, so I'm hoping that I might just about be able to stretch this lot throughout the year, if they don't mind being pickled in malt vinegar. I have two large tubs' worth of them.

 

 

 

My first lot of garlic cloves were planted a few weeks ago and these have been growing quite quickly, I hope not too quickly! They are from whole garlic meant for cooking - no need to buy specific cultivating varieties when you have your own in the kitchen.

 

 

 

I split mine up - half were planted outdoors into the small raised bed and the other half popped into a sealed polythene bag and kept in the fridge. (Garlic likes the cold to start it off, for some reason.) The above are the ones from the fridge, now about ready to be planted out into containers on the patio. If you cook with garlic, growing your own is great fun and very frugal (assuming you have a garden, trough or bucket in which to grow your own. One single garlic bulb can split into about 8 cloves and each of these cloves can produce a new bulb.

 

I'll update again after I've thinned out the beetroot. Looking forward to having a few leafy greens at mealtimes - don't forget the leaves are edible! I'm sure Septimus and Octavius, the new Frugaldom bunnies, will enjoy their share of this crop, too. Meanwhile, the wormery has been topped up with some peelings, brown cardboard and egg shells so the hundreds of baby worms have sufficient food to turn into lovely worm-juice as liquid fertiliser for this year's crops.

 

NYK, Frugaldom