Bumper crops can be overwhelming
I’m in transition to perennial vegetables but whatever the crop, it is easy to be overwhelmed by vegetables!
First off, here’s my simple, pot-bound, bung-it-in-together tomato purée recipe. TL;DR don’t fret, chuck it in a pot.
I’ve been thinking about perennial vegetables a great deal, and I am finally getting round to creating some perennial veg beds in the orchard part of the forest garden. Trouble is, I never really grew many annual vegetables before creating a forest garden, and it’s actually really involved and time-consuming, particularly if you don’t know where to start.
My rather loose sketches of the perennial veg bed to be!
Harvest time, paradoxically, can be the most overwhelming time. Rather than being gloriously thankful for bumper crops, you’re thinking “what the heck am I going to do with all this produce?”. That is when the veg anxiety kicks in.
My way of dealing with this has been to concentrate on one vegetable at a time. Tomatoes are good now, and this year has been the year of the aubergine for me (a good compost mulch plus regular watering is my tip).
On the harvest front, I have been simplifying my recipes and bunging stuff in a pot! In our first year here, I was roasting tomatoes before puréeing them. They tasted glorious but took an age. Now, I put everything in a pot (see my tomato purée recipe).
Tomato experiment in progress
Today, I thought, why not green tomato purée? So, this is where I’m going. Fingers crossed & no big worry if it doesn’t work, as no experiment fails 🙂