More watering . . . and passion fruit?

One of Gabian's fountains

Gabian is lucky in having a spring, La Resclauze, at the top of the hill above the gardens. For centuries this has been used for watering the gardens and, of course, that is why the gardens are where they are. The stream which runs down from the spring also powered mills which ground corn and wheat for flour and olives for oil. These are all in ruins now, unfortunately, although the Mairie and the municipal council talk of a restoration project. A couple of hundred years ago there were rules about when gardeners could take water from the stream,and each gardener could take water only on certain days. Nowadays there is a reservoir at the top of the hill, which provides water for the village and its three remaining fountains. The overflow from it is regulated. For the past couple of years of drought there hasn't been any overflow and the stream has been dry throughout the year. This year, after the unusually wet spring, there has been water in the stream again.

collecting water from the stream

Today we installed a pipeline from the stream down to our garden to fill our water butts and to water the plants. It needs some more work on it to feed it into the irrigation system which we put in last month, but for the moment we're pleased with our primitive system which involves only a plastic bottle, 50 metres of cheap hosepipe and a couple of connectors. The water is free, unlike the metered supply to the garden, and hasn't had chemicals added to it.

We have a climbing passion flower growing on the shelter over the terrace where we eat and this year, its third, it has really taken off. We've had lots of flowers and now there are fruit, mostly green at the moment, but one is ripe and a lovely apricot colour. As this is an ornamental plant I'm not sure whether we can eat them - they certainly look edible. Does anyone know?

Passiflora

and a ripe fruit

In the rest of the garden, the tomatoes are ripening

and today we made this salad

tomato, cucumber, green pepper, garlic, basil leaves and oregano flowers all straight from the garden

Terracotta pot watering system

About a week ago we installed the terracotta pot watering system, as suggested by Kate at Hills and Plains seedsavers, but a less sophisticated system than hers. We've started with four pots and plugged the holes in the bases with corks. We dug holes for them and filled in the space around them with a mix of soil and compost. We've used old floor tiles as lids and unlike Kate have not connected them to a hose for filling up. We may do this next year, but this time we're just going to fill them up with a watering can or a hose by hand.

Once the row of pots were in, I sowed haricot verts (French beans) around the pots. I watered the soil where the seeds were, around the pots, until they germinated. Now that they have germinated we're watering straight into the pots and it seems to be working well. The soil around the pots seems to be damp all the time. And, an added bonus, the snails have left the seedlings alone. I think this is because the surface of the soil isn't damp. In the past we've lost whole rows of haricots to the snails and had to use snail pellets to protect them.

And an update on the prickly pear cuttings:

The four cuttings have grown quite an extensive root system in only three weeks. This surprised me as the information I could find suggested that they would take some months to root.

Two of the plants have now been transplanted to the garden. I'm hoping to grow the other two in pots outside the house.

Courgette / zucchini flowers - male or female?

These pictures are especially for Sue at the Balcony garden in Milan who is growing courgettes on her balcony.

The first flowers on the plants are usually male and grow on the end of a stem:

The female flowers have tiny courgettes / zucchini behind them which grow bigger once the flower is fertilised:


I took the photos in the evening when the flowers are closed, so that it's easier to see the difference.

By the time the flowers are out, there should be enough insects around to pollinate them, but they may need some help. Good luck, Sue!

Food and environmental crisis

Two shocking environmental items, which I want others to be aware of, have struck me today:

A headline in the Guardian: 'Biofuels caused food crisis'. Governments who hope to avoid frightening their voters by telling the truth, it seems, are suppressing reports which are critical of biofuels. The rush to grow fuel from plants has led to huge rises in food prices, which of course affect the poorest people in the world who don't drive cars anyway.

Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt.

You can read the full article here.

It seems to me that we should accept that we must all reduce our dependence on oil rather than trying to find alternatives, which may seem soft options for developed countries, but are hard ones for millions of others.

And then there was Kate's shocking post on Hills and Plains Seedsavers, recording her horror at what is happening near to her in Australia - the ECOLOGICAL COLLAPSE of an entire river and lake system. Read it - NOW!

This kind of disaster could happen in many parts of the world, near any of us.

Courgettes . . . . and more courgettes

One of the nice problems we face at this time of the year is what to do with all the courgettes. Our simplest recipe is just to cut them from the plant, slice them lengthways, brush them with olive oil and barbecue them in the garden to eat within a few metres and about 10 minutes of the plant.

Lo Jardinièr makes delicious fritters with the courgettes themselves and the flowers, and the other day he made a courgette soufflé following a recipe described to us by our neighbour over the garden fence.

We don't use very exact quantities in cooking - we use what we've got usually and often guess weights and amounts. These recipes serve 2 people as a main dish, or 4 as a tapas dish (approximately, although appetites vary).

Courgette fritters

Courgettes with their flowers still attached

for the batter:

1 cup of half milk, half water

salt and pepper

3 or 4 dessertspoonfuls flour

Mix the milk and water mixture with enough flour to make a thin batter.

Slice the courgette flowers in half lengthways, wash and dry.

Slice the courgettes thinly lengthways

Dip flowers and slices into batter and fry in a mixture of half olive oil and half sunflower oil until brown and crisp. Eat straight away.

Courgette soufflé

3 medium courgettes (about 300 gm)

1 small fresh goats' cheese (about 100 gm)

2 eggs

salt and pepper

grated cheese - gruyere or Cantal or other hard cheese

Cut courgettes in chunks and steam until tender. Blend in the food processor or put through a mouli légumes and allow to cool. Mix the blended courgette with the goats' cheese, seasoning and beaten eggs. Pour into a greased oven-proof dish, sprinkle with grated cheese and bake at 180 degrees C for about 25-30 minutes until the cheese has browned. Eat it hot or cold.

And a couple of recipes of mine:

Courgette omelette or tortilla

Grate 2 or 3 medium courgettes and sauté gently for 8 - 10 minutes in olive oil in an omelette or frying pan. Don't let them brown. You can add some chopped onion at this stage too. Beat 4 eggs with salt and pepper and add them to the pan. Cook the egg mixture. You can add grated cheese and finish it under the grill if you like.

Courgettes gratinées

Slice 3 or 4 courgettes fairly thinly and fry in olive oil. Remove from the oil and drain on kitchen paper. Layer them in a flan dish. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and grated Parmesan or other hard cheese and then with piment d'Espelette or paprika. Put under the grill until the cheese melts and browns. You can make a more substantial dish by putting this into a pastry flan case.

Sorry I haven't taken any pictures when we made these dishes - I'll have to take some next time!

Saturday in Pézenas, Sunday in the garden

Pézenas is our nearest town and our nearest big market, held each Saturday. We don't go very often - we can get almost everything we need most weeks in Gabian and especially around holiday times and in the summer Pézenas market gets very crowded with tourists and visitors. But we wanted to buy some plants from the garden stall there. Just like last year, we've left it a bit late to sow our own chard and leek plants - it's hard to think about winter vegetables in May. Last year we almost left buying the plants too late as well, so we thought we'd better get some soon.

fruit stall in Occitan colours

It's always fun going to this market which stretches for several hundred metres along one of the main streets of the town, from one fountain to another, with stalls selling everything from clothes, bedding, pottery, hats and shoes to vegetables, fish, olives, oysters and cheese. We bought our plants early and asked the stallholder if we could leave them with him while we toured the rest of the market, buying olives, goats' and sheep's cheeses and some delicious walnut bread from the Aveyron.

plants and flowers

much better garlic than ours in the garden

Baskets

and soap

olives and pickles, and goats' cheese from Roujan, the next village to Gabian

Back in the garden, we planted out the leek plants and watered everything.

The afternoon temperatures are reaching 36 or 37 degrees now, so plants are growing really quickly so long as they get enough water. I love this time of the year! One nice surprise is that our first tomato is almost ripe. Last year we picked tomatoes in the last week of June This year after the long cold wet spring I thought they would be much later. But we'll pick this one tomorrow, on the last day of June.

Our grapes are growing

though it's still difficult to imagine them being black and sweet as they should be by the end of August.

Mediterranean summer

What is it that symbolises the Mediterranean for me? The olive tree, of course. It grows all around the Mediterranean, as well as in other parts of the world, and this kind of climate is the only one it thrives in. People in the Midi, as in other Mediterranean countries, have a special attachment to it. It's such an important tree that it deserves a post all to itself - and I'll do this one day soon. For now I'll just say that I think it is the most beautiful of all trees and I can't imagine now living anywhere where it doesn't grow.

Then there's the smell of thyme as I crush its leaves when I walk through scrubby garrigue, the flowers at the side of the road in springtime, the taste of it in cooking, leaves sprinkled on tomatoes, on goats' cheese. We grew it in Wales, too, but without the heat of the Mediterranean sun it was never the same.

Summer begins properly for me when we hear the cicadas - they've just started here in the last week. Their chattering begins when the temperature reaches 26 degrees C, and as the sun rises in the mornings and reaches higher up a hillside you can hear each tree being 'switched on' as the cicadas sense its heat.

And oleanders. Their flowers in different shades of white, pink, red, are all coming out now, lining the road at the entrance to villages, in gardens and parks. They're all beautiful (although poisonous), but for me it's the pink ones which are the real oleanders - the ones we had in the garden when I was a child in Libya.

oleander

And the Mediterranean sea itself: