Guest Blog from Paolo Arrigo

This is a guest blog from Paolo Arrigo who together with his wife Alessandra runs ‘Seeds of Italy’, the treasure trove of seeds from all the regions of Italy.   Every year I make sure I have a few packets on my list of things new things to try (Zucchini da Fiori – Flowering courgette my star of the show this year), but with such a wide selection it’s difficult to know what to chose. I made the big mistake of asking Paolo which 10 packets he would take to a desert island… He sent me this charming list by e-mail.

1)    Stella Alpina (Eidelweiss)
– My Italy is mountains, cheese, lakes and goats! Not sand, sea and sun! My Italy is Vin Caldo and polenta and not ice cream and prosecco. My parents are from the Alps and temperatures reach -18c in the winter, though in my wife’s region (Friuli which borders Yugoslavia and Austria) in the extremes it can go in excess of -30c! I love deep red wines you find in these areas, game, hearty peasant food, salumi and hams, cheeses to die for, rich alpine butter and milk, chocolate, hazelnuts (the best ones come from Piemonte and have an ‘IGP’, blueberries which grow wild all over Piemonte and mushroom picking.
2)    Tomato Cuor di Bue
– Toms are personal and this is my favourite. Pure meat, not a sack of seeds or water inside. Like cutting a steak, the lowest acidity of all the Italian tomatoes. It comes from Liguria but is also a national variety of France (couer de boeuff spelt wrong no doubt) as borders stop people, not plants.
3)    Basil Foglia di lattuga
– Lettuce leaf basil. Leaves bigger than your hand. Wrap up mozzarella balls and drizzle in olive oil. Say no more.
4)    Bean Meraviglia di Venezia
marvel of Venice are yellow beans. Boil 8 mins, strain, dry and dress with a vinaigrette whilst still warm for the best bean salad. Stringless, they are like eating butter.
5)    Courgette Romanesco
– nutty, creamy, produces loads of flowers. These are the little courgettes finger sized you see in Italy with the flowers still on. We pick our courgettes medium sized in the UK.
6)    Scorzanera – black salsify
– Plant it spring and summer and harvest autumn/winter. Tastes like prawns and carrots. Peel and put into water with lemon juice, boil and serve with a really, really good olive oil or use in stews etc where they will melt into it. Cool vegetable which was grown everywhere from Victorian times to WWII then went out of fashion.
7)    Tomato Red Pear Franchi
– Large, meaty, really meaty but different to the cuor di bue. Super flavour, scalloped, can have lovely green shoulders. Just an amazing tomato and really high quality.
8)    Cavolo Nero Kale
– as with all brassicas, sow with heat and harvest with cold. Pan fry in olive oil with pancetta and garlic and serve. Use to make the national dish of Florence, Ribollita Toscana which is made the day before and re-boiled (ribollita) so it has extra flavour.
9)    Borlotto bean Lamon
– This is the variety that should be used to make the famous dish ‘Pasta e Fagioli’ and it is simply the best quality borlotto bean you can find. Meaty without being meat, a hearty bean used for winter dishes likes stews, casseroles, soups, minestrone, risotto etc. They freeze brilliantly shelled and frozen straight and cook 40 mins from frozen and 30 from fresh.
10)    Pumpkin da Marmellata
– Jam pumpkins. In Piemonte we do 60% pumpkin and 40% sugar and loads of lemon rind but in the Veneto region they also add Vanilla. It is not a set preserve and the low sugar content is because this pumpkin is just so sweet, the downside being that it is thick but runny and needs to be refrigerated once opened and eaten fairly quickly.
Enjoy…..

Paolo’s book ‘From Plot to Plate’ is published by Simon and Schuster.

In The Greenhouse with Lila Das Gupta

In addition to sharp eyes, a keen sense of smell is vital in the greenhouse.  A couple of weeks back I started to notice a damp smell not totally dissimilar to that of a bathroom that isn’t properly ventilated.  In addition the soil on top of the pots had taken on a green hue from the growth of algae, so I realised it was time to take immediate action before serious problems started to develop.

Don't let condensation persist in a greenhouse | Open doors and ventilate, ventilate, ventilate

One’s first instinct might be to heat the greenhouse even further, but in fact the best thing to do is to ventilate, ventilate, ventilate.  Damp conditions come about when there is insufficient airflow, so, the solution is to open vents and windows to let in air from outside that will circulate and neutralise over-humid conditions.  Since there is still a spring chill in the air and to avoid harmful draughts, start with opening windows and vents just a centimetre or two each day (closing up at night) but open more if the smell persists.  It’s also important to watch how you water: remember that if the air is humid inside the greenhouse, it takes longer for the soil to drain off which can lead to problems later on.  From my observation so far, it seems better to leave a plant a little on the dry side than to have a soggy sponge waiting to rot your roots.

Given the importance of ventilation, I do wonder why all greenhouse manufacturers offer Louvre windows and other openings as ‘optional extras’ – it’s a bit like selling someone a house with front door and windows as ‘add-ons’.
So, if you’re reading this and you’re yet to buy your greenhouse: make sure you order at least 4 openings in your greenhouse or you will be storing up problems later on. If you can’t afford the vents and extras, then don’t buy the greenhouse!   Greenhouses are not cheap. They are a long term investment for those whose passion is gardening.   Like an expensive pair of shoes or a beautifully cut jacket that you wear again and again, if you spread the cost over a ten or twenty year period, the outlay seems far less painful.

Christmas may seem like a long way away but I’m already wondering how many vegetables I can grow for our family lunch.  The parsnips have now been planted out in the allotment, but now is the time to buy some ‘First Early’ seed potatoes and put them at the bottom of your fridge in a paper bag (Do not forget to mark them ‘Do Not Eat!!!’ lest a helpful partner turns them into Dauphinoise.)   In late July take them out of the fridge and plant them into pots, bringing the pots into the greenhouse as the weather turns cold at the end of the summer (potato plants are not frost hardy).  Give them a fortnightly feed with a weak liquid seaweed feed.  If all goes to plan, you should get a harvest for December. Some companies advertise ‘Christmas potatoes’ in their catalogues, so keep an eye out if you don’t get round to buying any ‘first earlies’ now.

As is fitting for Easter I am potting on to the sound of ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’  released in 1970 by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. I can remember being taken to the stage play as a child.  Everything comes full circle in the end: my daughter has just been in a performance of the play for her school Passiontide.
Now both of us can’t get the tunes out of our head: a truly modern classic.