Autumn means lovely veg....and ordering next year's seeds

Hello everyone, 

Bob and I hope you are all very well and not only escaping Covid but also this year's flu, which is pretty bad.

You are all receiving in your Veg Box and Fruit and Veg Box lots of those winter root vegetables…potatoes, carrots, parsnips, celeriac, kohlrabi and swede. Not very exciting vegetables you may think, but they do make amazingly tasty soups for you to eat and enjoy. I made celeriac soup last weekend and it was yummy. Brassicas, including red cabbage, winter cabbage, kales, cavolonero, sprouts, pointed, savoy and chinese cabbage, are also a great addition to any meal. They are not only fantastic steamed with black pepper and lashings of butter, cabbages (of any variety) are so tasty when sautéed with a little garlic. They can be braised in our apple juice with apples, onion and cinnamon (particularly the red cabbage), roasted cabbage wedges, classic coleslaw (red or green cabbage), rosti, pickled, stir fried or grilled or cabbage and potato soup. Not forgetting the old bubble and squeak for a Monday lunch after that Sunday dinner. These vegetables are more versatile than you may think!

The winter vegetables are also a great source of the vitamins and nutrients needed to help us all get through the winter season. They are all full of that popular vitamin C but also K, B and A. They have lots of iron, fibre and those antioxidants. All the ingredients to help the body function and replenish any lost cells due to illness. This is a pretty basic explanation, but I think you get the picture…good food eaten makes for a healthy body. 

For us here at HexOrg we are about to put our heads together and plan for all the good fruit and vegetables we need to be growing over the coming seasons.

It is seed buying time!

We are increasing the outside growing areas which obviously means that we will be increasing the number of seeds we will be acquiring. It also means we can and will also be increasing our choice and variety of fruit and vegetables. For instance - we are creating a new fruit growing area and once again we will have strawberry plants and fruiting canes all planted for summer and autumn 2022. We also had a test bed this year growing salsify, scorzonera and root parsley. These plants take a very long time to grow, ten months plus!, but we are considering them for next year as they taste sooooo good!

We will have our heads in the organic websites/catalogues deciding on the ‘which and what’ to buy for you our lovely customers. We will also be watching the Masterchef series to get some top tips for future meals and variety of veg. So far the root parsley has made an appearance…we are way ahead of them!

Once the seeds are ordered, then it is the white board and the sowing schedule. Joy, it’s yet another year gone…life, please slow down! 

So going to crack on and read those websites/catalogues.

All take care and enjoy making this homely meals,

Ann👩‍🌾