I have always thought of the autumn as the beginning of the gardening year. A time to take stock whilst everything is still standing and memories are fresh from the growing season. A gentle pause before winter works and plans can be put into action.
This autumn is special, because I am taking a three-month sabbatical. I have worked consistently hard since starting my working life, taking very little time for myself in pursuit of the next step. Increasingly, and as the garden here grows and gently demands my attention, it has become a useful reminder that my energy should not always be directed outward. A garden needs time, not only in the tending, but also in the quiet of reflection. Which is the right way to steer one’s energy to shape future outcomes and, if you take the time to listen, which path is the right path, the one that reciprocates for the choices being meaningful?
The first serious frosts are forecast this weekend, so we have been busy these last few days. Bringing in the last of the tender perennials and putting trays of young plants grown from seed into the polytunnel to protect from winter wet. The frames are full to bursting with spring bulbs and all the things that need cossetting. Just this morning the gunnera were cut down and covered before the freeze withers their foliage. This last job of the season is a pleasure, crafting their winter hats, upturning their huge leaves, one overlapping the next, to protect the primordial crowns from whatever winter brings.
With the turn in the weather, the last of the autumn colour is being driven from the woods and hedgerows and, in the garden, we see the very last flowers. The final asters, speckled now and dimmed, a few brave kniphofias challenging the season and nerines holding still in their month-long reign of colour. But really this is it. The turning point from one season to the next.
With much excitement my order of Mediterranean plants arrived from southern France last week. It is no longer easy to import plants from Europe and the hoops through which we now have to jump are numerous. We once took such choice for granted and, as with so many other issues, we now find ourselves unprepared for such a radical change. British nurseries were not prepared for this severance from Europe and need time to gear up to start producing here. So we have to plan further ahead, go without or propagate ourselves if we are to negotiate the choices we might need to make for a changing climate.
The idea behind my sand garden has been to familiarise myself with a palette of plants that can cope with the extremes we seem to be experiencing in terms of winter wet and drier periods in the growing season. The ‘final’ round of planting for the sand garden this year are plants from the great Olivier Filippi and his Jardin Sec and nursery. His list of available stock was published in late summer and I secured my plants immediately to avoid the “feeding frenzy” that Peter Clay warned me about. Peter, the buyer for Crocus and holder of the requisite import licence, was my go-between for this order. First for certification in Europe, followed by quarantine in his nursery and finally on to here. All in all, my new plants feel precious.
A perfectly ripe fig, picked fresh from the tree. Heat in the fruit and the energy of a long, hot summer caught in sweet, juicy flesh. I can think back to specific trees that marked a moment in time. On our daily walk to the beach in Andalucia, in a baking courtyard in Seville, a dusty, walled garden in California or standing alone in the boulder-strewn landscape of Greece. Surviving against the odds, but producing such succulent fruit despite the stark contrast of their surroundings.
The equivalent fruit in our moist, forgiving climate might be the pear. At its moment of perfection, they are the most delectable of cool climate fruits. You can taste that they love the land like figs love the sun. However, our quest as gardeners is to always push the boundaries and have what we know might be out of reach. So we experiment, in order to capture a memory, or outmanoeuvre the limitations of our site.
Over the years of being at Hillside we’ve worked out that there is a breathing point in the season at the end of September. The apples will stay on the trees, we can delay autumn by heading south and when we return it will be the optimum time to get planting again. So, earlier in the month, we put down our responsibilities and took three weeks in Greece.
To cover for the break we made the usual flurry before leaving to bring in and store the last of the harvest and left instructions with the house sitters to water this and not that and to pick the pears and keep an eye on the seedlings in the cold frames. We also worked hard to ensure the design team in the studio had everything they needed to progress without us while we were away. Busy time. Heads in the future. Heads down to clear the time.
You were due an article by Dan today, but he has been taken ill on our return from holiday and so it falls to me to fill the gap.
We have taken our summer holiday in mid-September for as long as I can remember. In Peckham it was always too difficult to leave the summer garden at its peak and since we’ve been at Hillside there is far too much to sow, plant and harvest in August to think about straying too far. And, of course, the crowds have gone, the temperatures are more amenable and there is something particularly appealing about the feeling of places at the end of the holiday season. We are creatures of habit and have been going to the same island in Greece for the last twelve years. Before that it was twelve years on the Cabo de Gata on the east coast of Spain.
I visited Hillside in February this year as winter was turning towards spring. The dried stems of last year’s blooms scratched into the sky. Down beneath many forms of snowdrops were being inspected by Dan and near neighbour, Mary Keen.
It was now six months later and in early September I was back photographing a story about food. It was meant to be done a month or so earlier, but a disappointingly wet and cold August had set things back in the vegetable garden.
We’ve been clearing the beds in the vegetable garden over the past few weekends, with the aim of getting as many of them manured this side of Christmas as possible. The withered climbing beans have been slipped from their hazel supports, the last dried beans in their parchment pods saved for sowing next year. The spiny skeletons of courgettes pulled from the ground with gloved hands, their almost non-existent root systems making me wonder how on earth they get so huge and produce such an endless succession of water-swollen fruits. And the ghostly grove of rustling sweetcorn, which was left standing for as long as possible, because its coarse whisper brought such a strong Halloween atmosphere to the fading kitchen garden, was finally felled. All were thrown onto the compost heap to complete their life cycles. No longer providing food for us, but now offering shelter and sustenance to a slew of other creatures, both visible and invisible. In the coming year the resulting compost will be spread on the beds to improve and feed the soil producing next season’s harvest and so it will feed us once more in another chain of the cycle.
Along with the spent crops there have also been roots to lift and store. Primarily beetroots and carrots, although most years we also have turnips. We lift these now and store them in the barn in paper sacks alongside the potatoes. If left in the ground we have found that the beets are damaged by slugs which then invites rot, while the carrots are prey to wireworm, which renders them inedible.
This time last week the garden was at its autumn peak and it coincided with the gentle best of October. The Dahlia australis reaching tall, but now on borrowed time with clear bright nights and a chill in the air. Asters at their most floriferous and still buoyant in a garden flush with colouring foliage and yet to be dashed by rain. The zenith of brilliant nerine and bright but autumn-soft sunlight shimmering in the miscanthus.
A run of clear mornings kept us spellbound at breakfast time when the light broke over The Tump. One ray grazing the dome of brilliant green where the meadow has replenished itself and then subsequent fingers reaching their way into the garden. The first threw a bolt into a gap in the hedge that passed in a direct line through the silvery seed heads of the tabletop asters to fall full-stop upon the last of the Kniphofia thompsonii var. thompsonii. It was as if the pokers were waiting for the light and for a full three minutes they flared like candles. When it was over we looked up to find the garden awash, the ultramarine of the Salvia patens and the burning seed heads of the switch grass suddenly illuminated. And then the moment had passed. It was simply morning.
Almost without fail, every meal I cook begins with an onion. Despite the fact that I use so many and that they are both cheap and plentiful at the greengrocer, every year we grow our own. They are a straightforward crop, needing very little attention after planting, apart from weeding, and they always produce in bulk and without pests or problems. Given the frequency with which I use them, every meal time provides a sense of satisfaction and proof of a successful growing season.
We grow a number of onion and shallot varieties, and have settled on our favourites over the years; ‘Sturon’, a large white onion for everyday cooking, which has an RHS Award of Garden Merit due to its reliability and storage quality, ‘Red Baron’, a red onion, also with an RHS AGM, which is another good keeper and with a stronger flavour than most red onions and ‘Keravel Pink’, also known as ‘Rose de Roscoff’, a pretty pale pink onion with coppery skin, which is said to have the best flavour of all, sweet enough to eat raw and deliciously fruity when cooked. An old variety from Brittany this is the variety that my mother remembered beret-wearing Frenchmen – Onion Johnnies – selling from their bicycles on the streets when she was a child in Wales.
Over the years we have learned that onions do best in the sunniest beds of the kitchen garden, unshaded by other crops, do not like growing in beds that have been recently manured, benefit from heavy watering as they approach maturity and that, contrary to traditional growing advice to bend the tops over when the bulbs are fully grown and before lifting, that this is not good practice in reality, since it damages the base of the leaf shaft, which results in the bulbs being more susceptible to rot.
We grew only one variety of shallot this year, ‘Longor’, a large, yellow banana type shallot, which produces reliably high yields. We usually also grow ‘Red Sun’, but these had sold out last year before we could place our orders. All of our onions and shallots come from The Organic Gardening Catalogue as sets – small onions ready to be planted out in spring for a midsummer harvest – but I am tempted this year to try growing some from seed, as this is a lot cheaper and reportedly very easy. Unlike onions shallot sets can b e planted in autumn to produce an earlier crop, and I have recently received an order of ‘Échalote Grise’, an old variety, the gourmet French shallot also known as the ‘true shallot’, which I will plant before teh end of November. Every year we harvest around 100 mature, large onions and 10kg of shallots which, after they have been left out in the sun to ripen and dry out, are plaited together by Dan who is a dab hand, having done it for many years as a child with his mother.
Although the majority of our onions end up invisibly in soups, stews, casseroles, dhals and curries, sometimes you really want to taste the flavour of a home-grown onion, and this recipe makes them the focus of a meal. Many stuffed onion recipes have a lot of ingredients which compete with the subtle sweetness of the vegetable itself. Here onions’ well-known partner, sage, and just a little bread, nut and cheese ensure that the onion is what you really taste.
From left to right: Shallot ‘Longor’, Onion ‘Sturon’ and Onion ‘Red Baron’
INGREDIENTS
4 medium onions – around 250g each
1 stalk of celery– about 50g
40g butter
50g walnuts
40g white breadcrumbs
50g cheddar cheese, finely grated, plus extra for garnish
12 tender, young sage leaves, finely chopped
Nutmeg, freshly grated
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Serves 4
Onion ‘Keravel Pink’
METHOD
Set the oven to 180°C and bring a large pan of water to the boil.
Remove any loose papery skins from the onions, retaining one complete layer of dried skin. Remove the root with a sharp knife being careful not to cut through the skin, then cut through the top of the onion to remove about 1cm, so that you all of the layers are visible.
Simmer the onions in the pan of hot water with a lid on for about 30 minutes until soft to the point of a knife. Remove with a slotted spoon and allow to drain and cool in a colander.
When cool enough to handle carefully remove the centre of each onion with a teaspoon, leaving a shell 2 to 3 layers thick. Put the onion shells into a buttered ovenproof dish.
Toast the walnuts in the oven for about 3 minutes until lightly coloured and fragrant. Chop finely.
Finely chop the celery and garlic and the centres from the onions. Melt the butter in a small pan over a high heat until foaming and smelling toasty. Turn the heat down and sauté the celery and garlic for about 3 minutes until translucent. Then add the onion and cook over a low heat for 10 minutes until the flavours have combined.
Remove from the heat and add the chopped walnuts, sage, the grated cheddar cheese and breadcrumbs. Season generously with salt, black pepper and grated nutmeg. Stir well and then spoon the mixture into the onion shells. Press the stuffing down well so that there are no air pockets and mound it up on the top so as to use all of the mixture.
Grate a little more cheese over the top of each onion and then put into the oven for 30-40 minutes until brown and bubbling.
Serve as a main course with a green salad and boiled potatoes or as a side vegetable with other dishes.
These can be made in advance and then, before roasting, kept covered in the fridge for up to three days until needed or wrapped in foil and frozen. Once defrosted you should add 10 to 15 minutes to the cooking time from cold.
Recipe & photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 16 October 2021
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