What do you do when you have enough pickled beetroot?

There’s only so much beetroot that you can use in pickles and chutneys so at the moment I’m trying out recipes that make more use of beetroot as a vegetable or as a cookery ingredient.

I’m not too keen on the earthy taste of beetroot - it can be a bit boring so I didn’t just want to bake the roots. I wanted to try something that would make the flavour more interesting.

Looking through some recipes on the Internet it seemed that beetroot was often cooked with apples and onions.  As we have plenty of both I decided to try create something that used these three ingredients and also stole some ingredients that I usually use in a recipe for braised red cabbage. The final recipe can be found here on my website - we liked it and will certainly cook it again.

Just a small step in the right direction

If you pop by my blog on a regular basis you will know that our back garden in going through a major upheaval and that at the moment there is very little happening on the creative side. The balance is unevenly tipped towards the digging up, chopping down  and generally destructive side of things.

The border that initially was just going to have the addition of a focal feature was just about completely cleared - just a couple of bamboos survived and only after me pleading their case. I last updated on how this area was progressing here.

The crab apple which casts shade over this border has had branches removed - and is set to have even more taken out but other than the border is now ready to be replanted.

We had already planted an acer and some clematis and now a start has been made by permanently siting the bird bath and planting around its base.

I thought that the black leaved ophiopogon would provide a contrast to the white of the bird bath and so I have planted them at the front around the base. In front of them is planted laminum White Nancy which works well with the ophiopogon. I’ve taken a few cuttings so I can plant a carpet around the front of the bird bath as at the moment it is more to just one side. This was where it was originally planted and I didn’t want to disturb it.

Nearer the back of the bird bath I have planted a couple of aspleniums which should love the damp conditions caused by splashing birds. 

In amongst the ophiopogon I intend to plant some miniature irises - Kathleen Hodgkins.

The heucherella that can be seen on the left will be moved.

The border still is rather bare with just one or two plants in temporary positions. Hopefully some of the plants will grow enough so that I can split them next year as I want more than one of each in the border to avoid it ending up looking dotty.

Anyway at least I think I’ve made a start and one casualty of the big chop - a choisya is now sprouting really healthy new leaves - I wonder whether the camellia - just visible at the far end - will do the same?

Plants for free

After having found out rather belatedly that my newly planted salvias may not over winter I decided to take some cuttings.

For the cuttings I used a mix of half grit and half multipurpose compost. Unlike many cuttings that are taken below a leaf joint, salvia cuttings root best when you cut between two leaf joints; they are called internodal cuttings.

As seems to be the currently preferred technique I placed the cuttings around the edge of the pot and then popped them under a propagator lid just to stop them drying out too quickly until they rooted.

In no time at all, the Amistad salvia cuttings rooted  and the roots quickly began to push through the holes in the bottom of the plant pot. These cuttings have now been potted up and the tops nipped out to encourage them to become bushy. They are growing away so now I just have to decide where to keep them overwinter. 

I’m not sure if the other salvias have rooted yet. There are no roots visible at the bottom of the pot and I don’t want to tip out the pot to see if any roots are beginning to form. I’ll just have to wait patiently and hope. These are a different type of salvia so I suppose they may take longer to form roots.

Taking the salvia cuttings made me wonder what else I could try. I wanted more lavender to complete the edging around some of our fruit beds. I’ve successfully taken lavender cuttings in the past and so these were added to my list of cutting material.

I’m also trying a few Michalemas daisy cuttings and some perennial nemesia which, if they are successful, along with some of the salvias will be used to fill in some gaps in one of our flower beds.

I was going to take some rudbeckia cuttings but noticed a few young plants growing around the base of our established clump and so have potted these instead.

I’d like a sambucus nigra in the garden but don’t want it to grow as large as the ones on the plot so I decided to grow one in a tub and have taken some cuttings from the plants on the plot. I’ve been successful taking cuttings from this plant in the past - in fact our existing plants started life as cuttings. I’ve given away quite a few young plants so here’s hoping all goes well again. No doubt I’ll either end up with no rooted plants or too many!

Another plant that I want to increase is Laminum - White Nancy. This didn’t look as though it would respond to the same method so instead I have pinned down some of the long stems to see it they will root in the ground so I can then detach them and pot them up.

My last lot of plants for free are the potted runners taken from our new strawberry plants. I’ve taken 15 from each variety which is more than I bought originally. I intended to cut off all the runners produced in case they weakened the plants in their first year of growth. The plants, however had other ideas and I couldn’t keep up with the runner production. Some runners managed the start to root in spite of my best efforts and so it seemed a shame not to pot them on. At least I’ll have some young plants to replace any winter casualties  and if the main plants make it through winter? Well you can’t have too many strawberries can you? It will just be a case of finding somewhere to plant them!