Aztec broccoli & The Gloucestershire Echo

We had a visitor during our last session at the Annecy Garden, Mikel a photographer from The Gloucestershire Echo, the Cheltenham newspaper. He asked us about the Annecy Gardens & took lots of photos ~ look out for them, they're bound to be better than any I'd take.

Mikel, the Gloucestershire Echo photographer interviews Annecy Gardener, Lorraine.

Taking note, while Anne weeds the Zea mays 'Quadricolor'

We're still getting a lot of flowers on the allotment. One interesting plant is Allium hookeri 'Zorami', a primitive onion grown in remote areas of the Himalayas. It comes into flower late in the season & like may Allium species is very attractive to pollinating insects:

Allium hookeri 'Zorami', now flowering at the Annecy Garden

The beans climbing on the wigwams are doing well, they particularly seem to benefit from our watering them heavily each Monday evening.

Borlotto bean, pretty lavender flowers & interestingly coloured pods

Tagetes 'Paprika', this is pretty but rather small & has only just come into flower, six weeks after Tagetes 'Linnaeus', an altogether larger & more striking plant

Another interesting crop is just coming into production now. This is huauzontle also known as Aztec broccoli, or botanically as Chenopodium berlandieri.

Chenopodium berlandieri, also known as huauzontle or Aztec broccoli

The plant is in the spinach family, but in this case it is the immature flower spikes (pictured above) that one eats. It's a pleasant tasting vegetable with an interesting texture, in fact, I've just enjoyed some of this lightly sauteed with oil & a little chopped tomato & seasoned with salt & freshly ground black pepper ~ made a nice vegetable accompaniment to supper this evening.

August luxuriance

The warm weather combined with a reasonable amount of rain means that the Annecy Garden is filled with luxuriant plant growth.

In the new beds by the park gates, squashes, sunflowers & tomatoes have been growing particularly vigorously.

Sunflowers & calendulas in the background, fronted by potatoes, 'Red Leaf Deer Tongue' lettuce & Tagetes 'Linnaeus', with courgette leaves bottom right

The tomatoes have been growing very well, particularly productive are the 'Jaune Flamme':

Tomato 'Jaune Flamme', very productive. I'd like to've shown the ripe fruit which are orange in colour, but there are some very assiduous tomato harvesters. Which is good.

The self sown seedlings of Tomato 'Yellow Currant' are doing very well:

We've also been harvesting the 'Anya' potatoes. This is a lovely variety, a cross between 'Desiree' & 'Pink Fir Apple'. The tubers are pink & are very tasty boiled or incorporated in a potato salad.

'Anya' potatoes

Lorraine digging the 'Anya' potatoes; in the foreground are 'Yellow Currant' tomatoes & yacon.

In order to prolong their flowering we have been deadheading the calendulas:

In spaces where we have cleared crops or flowers that have gone over, we have sown some quick growing crops such as lettuce:

Lettuce seedlings, the feathery leaves on the lower right are of Phacelia tanacetifolia seedlings

We are still getting plenty of flowers:

Crepis rubra, an annual from Greece; a pink dandelion

Salvia blepharophylla 'Painted Lady', the wild species is pollinated by hummingbirds in Mexico. They've yet to make the journey to the Annecy Gardens.

Allium tuberosum, garlic chives is widely used in oriental cookery; the flowers are very attractive to pollinators, especially hoverflies

Madia elegans, the seeds of this were used for food in precolonial California. Their small size & the effort required to extract them makes one think it wasn't all fun being a native American in the Pacific States in past eras.