The Winter Larder. Episode 6.
Alys Fowler attempts to avoid shop-bought fruit and vegetables and live off her own, home-grown produce. As well as providing fruit and vegetables to eat in season, an edible garden needs to provide for the leaner months. That means growing crops that guarantee a plentiful harvest, enough to enjoy right away and enough to store. Alongside courgettes, squashes and kale, Alys grows Jerusalem artichokes to harvest when the rest of the garden sleeps.
This episode was a little disappointing due to all the flashbacks to previous episodes and therefore not so much new content. What I liked – the nettle tonic. You can also use comfrey for this and I believe it smells even worse than the nettles. Protective clothing, mask etc may be required lol I also liked the preserving segment, nothing really new but good to watch and very useful reminder for me. I liked the “instant” pickle recipe too, I like pickles. In Japanese and macrobiotic cooking they use a lot of pickles and a lot of freshly made pickles too. Very good for you. The chickens were so cute when she moved their house and they were investigating the compost heap lol. Never tried growing veg in the winter but I am going to try this year so long as I can get the garden in order. It would be so nice to have fresh greens in winter instead of the air-miled variety available in the supermarket. Don’t the jerusalem artichokes look gorgeous! I’m so excited about mine. *memo to self* must by winter savory to avoid fartichoke problems over winter lol.
Overall I loved this series and I hope she does another one. I don’t think half an hour is long enough but I might be in the minority there, I would just like to see more details about the things she did, but that might be a detail too far for most people. Great show Alys!
