Basil (said in her best Sybil voice)

So I bought some of this fine plant Sweet Basil (Ocimum basilicum) 'Italian Large Leaf' to plant for munching and making pesto. Its a large leaved beast and if split up properly will adequately fill this pot and give us basil for the whole summer. The pots were £1.40 each, whilst I normally grow my own, landing in your own garden in June didn't really mean I could bring a billion baby seed trays with me. (I know I'm lazy......) Compared with fresh packets, this will save us a fortune in both spends and petrol to retrieve it from the shops. It will get regular haircuts and I'll freeze what we don't eat immediately.  A bit like the windowsill allotment of old, the tub will live on the windowsill of the conservatory. 

We're also partial to making basil pesto although we're in Fife now, so it will be Fife Pesto, I'm sure it will taste same. I'd love to make it with my own walnuts but lets face it, the poor wee fella is a bit peedie (small) yet but he survived the move 'sooth' well so maybe sometime in the future eh? So time to get this lot planted up and let it enjoy the sunshine on the windowsill, perfect way to grow stuff especially if you've no garden or limited space. I hear this area we've moved to is the sunniest in the UK, here's hoping that bits true eh?

And, no word on seeing the wellies, OK, I'm not allowed in the house with them on, so you saw nothing, right?

A great site about finding out about edible plants is Plant for a Future and here's what they have to say about Basil. Did you know its a perennial that we grow as an annual........

Problem with Basil is that I can never say it normally. I always have to use my 'Sybil' voice. More about Sybil and Basil here, a genius UK TV show from the 1970's. And for some classic Basil, not that I'm advocating that you beat you car with a shrub but........

Enjoy your basil, however you serve it.

The accidental tomato

I am quite chuffed with myself, having been away galavanting in the glorious autumn colour over the weekend, on my return, I found the accidently sun-dried tomato. There is the evidence, one peedie perfectly formed sun-dried tomato, what a clever little chap, saving me the job of preserving it. I know, happily grown and sun-dried on a windowsill in Orkney, who would have believed it to be true.  Indoor tomatoes are possible, if you don't have a greenhouse and can't grow them, like me, out there in the frozen north of Orkney. We've had not a bad harvest of tomatoes this year from the windowsills.

The accidental part of the tale is that it happenned on a windowsill, unknown to me, sun-dried itself nicely on the sill behind the windowbox it was growing in quite happily, whilst watching a grand view of Graemsay, Hoy and Scapa flow, clever peedie tomato. I guess must have basked in sufficient Orkney sunshine to get itself all lovely a dried. The rest of the tomatoes I managed to harvest before they went and dried themselves whilst I wasn't looking.

I have to say, without being too blaggy, the indoor allotment this year has been quite successful, a plentiful supply of herbs and tomatoes. Take that you pesky wind, growing tomatoes and basil in Orkney with no greenhouse nor tunnel covered yet would appear to be quite easy on a windowsill, in a windowbox indoors.

We've also had basil growing a plentiful from late spring until now. The basil has been a real eyeopener, one supermarket pot of Basil, (you know the kind, in the salad aisle, herb concentration camps I think of them as, so I took one home and set them free) I bought in May, gently teased into a windowbox, still going strong, into November and has had oodles of picking from it. I'd say almost 1kg of basil - which is only the quantity I've frozen, can't account for the random pickings at other times for Orkney pesto and when we've needed it for cooking. Well worth the 75p we paid for it. OK I could have easily grown it from seed, but for me that way was easier, supermarket pots have upto 50 seedlings in a pot - thats value for money, and if you don't have a green house, or are a bit daunted by raising seed or you simply don't have the time to raise seedlings, these pots are ace to get you started.

Ok, its beginning to get a bit straggly, but its done so well, we're letting it flower now, its worked so very hard! By the way how pretty are basil flowers? I love them so much, although I often stop the plant flowering for a while, but how bonnie is that?

We've had tomatoes a plenty since late June, harvested them hard, scoffed them as Orkney bruschetta, pasta sauces and frozen whole into canon balls for using later. I'm a bit sad as the last of them for this year are sitting ready to be harvested in the upstairs living room.  Then I'll empty the pots and put them away until the springtime, the end of the summer I guess. The last truss...........I'm quite touched, (and not in my normal in the head way).......

I've taken down all the other windowboxes but somehow I can't bear to just take the final tomatoes out. I guess that means summer will really have come to an end. Well, I guess not really, we're lucky, the freezer is bulging with home grown canon balls for making sauces later in the winter.  They get lobbed randomly into tubs and bags in the big chest freezer, no skinning, blanching, no anything, just lobbed and frozen. I may be proud of my little frozen friends, I have alot of photos of them. Folks, I clearly have a problem!

 OK, well bulging is perhaps an overstatement but there are kilos of tomatoes in the freezer happily snoozing away until they are turned into sauce for the pasta guzzling cellist.

 There are also an array of tubs and containers, bags and the odd tub which are full of an array of home made pasta sauce in the freezer, for quick food when we need it after work, or lazy food when we need it over the weekend. A fraction of the cost of even the swankiest pasta sauce, home made ingredients means I know whats in it too. 

Tomatoes freeze wonderfully, cooked or otherwise. I lob mine in whole and deal with them at a later date. Or I chop them up and make sauces and freeze them from fresh tomatoes if I've the time. There is no rhyme or reason to this, my life is very random, but it works for us. At the end of the day, if you can find a way to make it work for you - whatever you grow or cook, we all get a gold star as far as I'm concerned!

Chopped, if I have time.....

Pasta sauce a bubbling, if I've got time........

Pasta sauce a frozen ready for eating, if we've time otherwise we freeze them whole for when we do have time!

There you have it, can you grow quite nice food on a windowsill in the frozen north? It would appear you can. The plants were raised in windowboxes, indoors on the sill. I'm lucky, I've got a lot of deep windowsills in my life.

How did we do it, by growing from seed, small plants and shop bought bigger plants, just did what suited at the time, putting one to three tomato plants in a windowbox, depending on the size of the box. Watered and fed well all summer.

Some of the tomatoes were raised from seed I was given, like tomato 'Latah' (bush, but sprawls)which does indeed insanely sprawl, just like Little Black Fox told me it would. Some were old seed given to see if I could do something with them, 'Lilliput' (bush), thank you Robyn, all germinated, although they were slow, they provided the 'second' flourish of the crop which we are eating now.

Some were grown from home sown seed, which is merely labelled 'good bush tomato, prolific, might be one of the artic ones, no idea' in my very own hand, they also did well. These are now known as the 'no idea tomatoes' I've really not a clue what they were, but I've saved more seed this year as they really were a prolific tomato.

Some were grown from bought seed with proper labelling (I know, I'm in shock, given my panchant for not labelling plants, I was surprised to find a properly labelled plant in my ownership). The proper labelled grown from seed types were 'Tom thumb' (bush), 'Red alert' (bush), Marmande, Andes and Lemondrop (diva, or indeterminate tomatoes). The taller one didn't fare well with me, took too much room and drove me crazy, but, then again, I'm not renowned for my patience.

And finally, some were bought as baby plants online (big companies and smaller suppliers, in shops or in the lcoal supermarket), all were generally bush tomatoes (varieties the same as above) as I'm a lazy grower and a bush (don't do anything with me but water me tomato), is my favourite. I guess the moral of the story is it doesn't matter how you try and grow them or where you get them from, but have a go.

Come on, if I can grow tomatoes in Orkney, on a windowsill and enjoy fresh tomatoes and a stash of home made pasta and pizza sauces, bruschetta, gaspacho and even the odd fresh tomato with a cooked breakfast, anyone can.

All you need is a windowsill, you've got one of them, right?

Orkney pesto - a windowsill allotment sucess story!

Orkney basil pesto.

Well, inspired by the 'Orkney diet' regime I'm trying to get into, I've been freezing my own basil from the windowsill allotment all summer long (well from late April-now let me not pretend its been summer!) and its still going strong. I picked another goodly lot at the weekend and I've been thinking about pesto and making pesto...............I'll tell you why, I've kept glass jar recycling for a year, for the jars, not cos I'm lazy of course, no, no, because its good for recycling at home and of course its 'research' into our lives, research I tell you! However, rather unexpectedly during this *cough* 'research' its also allowed me to see from first hand what we've been eating over the year since we moved here, as a family and where its come from.  Among the various jars are a goodly amount of pesto jars, the cellist being a pasta guzzling fiend who we do eat alot of  both pasta sauces and pesto. Now the tomatos are grown to make sauces for her, big tick there, however the pesto jar infestation in the jar recycling box in the kitchen, got me thinking - to reduce what we buy, can I make pesto? I already freeze the basil for using in sauces - but 'Orkney pesto' - oh there's a thought toward more local food.

Pesto has basil, oil, nuts and cheese in it, how local can I be? Now I can grow basil here and happily I have lots of it, however I can't grow pine nuts here nor does anyone local do a hard cheese like parmesan - which are the other main ingredients, but I can get a hold of scottish (sorry not Orkney) cold pressed rape seed oil (to substitute the olive oil for). Perfect - a whizz and a blend and a bit of OK that looks right, later - here we go home made 'Orkney' (ish) pesto, in a recycled jar - all nice and pretty - it will freeze but we'll use the first batch fresh and build on making it. I've heard using walnuts works well, I'll see what local nuts (scotland or UK) I can get and build on my 'local' recipe that way.

Now, time for the obligitory in the garden, looks like its down, on the beach stones close up - its a bit brr ish out there but we've got Orkney pesto for our pasta - I'm so unbeliveably excited about discovering through random rummaging through our recycling box, um, I mean, well thought out *research*, a key thing we eat 'bought in' from 'sooth' which came here on a ferry and how we can tackle reducing our spends, food miles and our basil mountain! One more for the local food list for me, Orkney pesto. Brilliant.

And the best thing, the cellist approved, it got through the taste test. Phew!

The recycling box came in really handy for the idea. I've yet to figure out home made peanut butter ('ve looked I can grow the ground nuts next year) and chocolate spread (found a recipe for this) and the likes, other things in our recycling box for the past year.

I can wrack it up now with a few other thing like Orkney Bruschetta, Elderflower cordial and I'm only just getting started on my 'Orkney diet' inspired life - yippee.

Windowsill allotment rewards - Orkney bruschetta

Orkney bruschetta, amazing what you can grow on the inside of a windowsill even up here.

Yummy Orkney Bruschetta, with home grown food from my windowsill, now that was tasty! But first, before I lose myself in the delight of tomatoes, I want to document that the 6th of August at the weekend, was a 'nice day' with absolutely NO WIND. Its definitely one of the TEN days of the year that there is no wind in Orkney, I know, I've counted weather data for the past four years and the literature is right, its only totally still and calm here for approximately 10 days a year. We've had 3 this year so far, cool eh, we might even get more windless days, please?

With the giddiness that followed discovering a windless morning, we decided to amble out and eat our breakfast in the garden. How very novel in the summer time, dining outside without your dinner taking off in a force 7 gale, bliss. And, as you can see from the 'arty' shot - I had bruschetta for breakfast, not probably a normal breakfast food, but the windowsill allotment has been producing oodles of tomatoes and basil, so I thought I'd indulge. Very yummy it was too and most excellent use of home grown tomatoes and basil. In fact the only NON Orkney ingredient in this delightful morsel was the tiny bit of black pepper, totsy bit of sea salf (why doesn't Orkney produce sea salt, I wonder) and the olive oil (1/2 teaspoon) I used on the tomatoes. Mr Flowers, more sensible than me, had cornflakes, not of course local. Then again, I don't think I actually offered him the option of bruschetta, whoops it even made it to the bench and looked gorgeous!

Orkney bruschetta, or as my grannie would say 'mattees on toast', doesn't have the same ring does it?

A relative local feast grown on a windowsill in Orkney, brilliant. Its got me thinking more and more about 'The Orkney Diet' and the feasibility of realistically feeding a typical (ish, well we're not very typical except in size maybe) family on a diet of predominantly local food, and growing my own in the 'challenging climate' whilst being on quite a tight budget (we spend about £200-250 a month on household food for our family, but I'm always looking to reduce that but keep good quality eating). And, I say predominantly as I know we can't get everything locally to sustain our needs, Orkney does not have coffee plantations and chocolate groves, not yet! But, I'm curious to know how much local produce can we realistically incorporate into our diet, without breaking the bank....... I feel a local food eating challenge coming on and I do like a challenge and, um, eating. There are quite a few local food project out there, throughout the globe so there's lots to be learnt from these experiences and plenty of enthusiasm to do it.

Oh and today, um, 11 degree, 50 km/h winds, serious sideways rain (is there any other kind?), despite the elders still being in bloom, the willow hedge has a number of the plants blown over. I think Orkney has gone through a space/time/continuim worm hole and has landed in November. Really, I do. And if we have, I'll be quite cross. I'd like an indian summer please, if no one minds.

Window sill allotment - Bountiful Bargain Basil

How much Basil? A lot! This is the 3rd harvest this year and not even mid May (132g fresh basil leaves).

I can't grow anything, I'd don't have a garden. Well thats what I thought. And. I truly sympathise with folk like me, for whatever reason, they don't have space outside to grow things in. My restriction is our climate, I can grow out there but not without shelter, and so far, I don't have any! Many folk don't have the space, or not much time. Anyway there is a bit of a simple solution. Introducing my windowsill allotment! If I can grow stuff up here in the frozen north on a window sill, I'm sure anyone can have a go!

But, I've been experimenting with windowsill growing. And, so far so good its working well. Meet my Basil - don't think he has a name, isn't that bad of me? The poor brute was captive in Lild, but he's come home to live with us and is thriving. Anyway Bargain Basement Basil cost 75p in Lidls on March 9th this year. I've cropped it 3 times. Once when he arrived - then I split (well gently teased him) him into four chunks and planted him into a windowbox. But, a bigger pot would have done. The first time I cut all the largest leaves off, making sure to leave the stem alone, I put a large tub in the freezer and popped the leaves in straight away. Basil freezes beautifully - once frozen it keeps forever and you can use it straight from the freezer or cooking. There it is frozen - doesn't look very different does it? I just use a handful when needed.

They do still have their two for one herbs - I bought this basil for the house and a pot of chives to keep it company. After planting up its had a hair cut (50g leaves) and  one in between (120g leaves) and finally last week - I decided it needed another hair cut! Look at it - it couldn't apply for a job in the army with that floppy mopp!

It doesn't look like it minds growing on a windowsill does it? Its very happy - planted in a bit of an old grow bag from last year - its not too hungry a plant - happy thriving away. Maybe its thappy with he view over to Hoy? Or oggling the cushions which match a bit of the rug! Either way it grows brilliantly on a windowsill.

Time for your cut sir, going anywhere nice on your holidays? Do you want the usual, short, back and sides? I'll just trim off the biggest leaves and take the flowers off to keep it focussed on growing, rather than sex - let an annual herb have flowers, set seed (after a bit of rumpy pumpy) its not going to be interested in the slightest in your plans for pesto. It will want a long nice snooze! Keep the flowers off it and it will keep trying to grow for you. More action with less sex!

Is that to sirs liking? Nice and short, airy and good to let the plant grow more leaves for me, hopefully again and again. It happily filled the tray, which is a normal tea tray size. Infact it was a bit much for the tray. Kept spilling over!

You can't really get an idea of scale - but these are large kitchen scissors and a proper tea tray - the basil stack was enormous! Well 132g to be absolutely precise. I have weighed each harvest to see how much my 75p pot of basil will get for me and work out how much I've saved over its life. Its 100g basil for 79p bag of fresh leaves in Tesco. Therefore already I've got over 300g basil from my little pot (75p) savings so far ((79px3)-75p)=£1.62, its actually saved quite a bit and I've got a free plant into the bargain if I think about it like that. Not too bad if we don't charge him any rent eh? Window sill growing does seem to be worth the effort. And fresh basil, inbetween haircuts is amazing!

I've only pinched out the largest leaves and left all the little ones to grow more on each stalk. OK, its a  bit skinny mini looking after its hair but - but he's got form for being great a growing quickly!!! Happy back with his view out there. The evidence in the good life lab - 132g basil from one hair cut.

And, now sir time for your winter accomodation in the freezer time to get into a big freezer box - and just popped straight in. I let them freeze in a large tub and either keep it in there until I've no room and then pop it into a bag. When frozen, and popped into a bag - they will crush up easily (if wanted) or left in the box I can grab a handful whole.

Well thats my allotment basil for you - means I get early basil, its made its own money and more - I'll sow some soon - but for those of us with NO greenhouse and NO shelter - until the weather warms up - the windowsill allotment will have to provide. I've got lettuce (1 window box), spring onions (5), tomatoes (20), cucumber (10) and chives (1) on my windowsill. I'm an allotmenteer of sorts. Just more of an arm chair one at the moment!

Once the thesis is ready then I can crack on with getting a bit of my 'outdoor' garden going for food production! One day at a time eh?