London Road Station Partnership Blog

We’ve just celebrated the end of our third growing season with our annual harvest supper: this year, the menu was onion soup, three leaf-four cheese lasagne, herby cassoulet, spinach-leaf salad, apple and pear crumble, and Irish cheeses complemented by figs, Ditchling Rise grapes and the last Tinsley Quince apple from this year’s harvest.

The harvest had actually come much earlier this year so our tomatoes, beans and courgettes were finished in early September, our lettuces had bolted and the cabbage whites had got to several of our cavalo nero plants. Raspberries were harvested mid-September and made into Angie’s rich chocolate and raspberry brownies for Big Dig Day. Our onions and garlic were lifted back in June to make way for other crops, but they have been stored ready for our onion soup.

Our harvest supper basket 2013

In the LRSP ‘extension garden’, we still had cavalo nero and chard. The challenge, though, was to create something really palatable: some of our number are not completely convinced by these leafy but fibrous vegetables. They are already wary, given my predeliction for bitter frisee lettuces and tough leaves.

Madeleine and I therefore set out to create a really appetising autumn leaf lasagne, along the classic Italian ‘spinach and ricotta’ model, with help from Delia and the BBC and Mad’s sister, who made a flawless béchamel.

Delia reckons the secret to this veggie recipie is the four Italian cheeses: ricotta, mozzarella, gorgonzola and parmesan. We reckon the star ingredient in our version was our carefully steamed mix of cavalo nero, chard and rocket, together with onion, chopped chard stalks, raisins and walnut pieces tossed in olive oil, and enhanced by some freshly grated nutmeg … It worked.

We also really enjoyed Diane’s red onion soup (red wine and red onions), Mark’s hearty pig n’beans cassoulet, featuring LRSP oregano, onions and garlic (OK – a key ingredient was really the deliciously spicy chorizo, but it was definitely complemented by the local herbs) and Sue’s crumble made from our Tinsley Quince and Mannington’s Pearmain apples and a Beurre Hardy pear. The fruit was perfumed, rather than sharp – a lovely English autumn smell/taste. Then tasty Irish cheeses (hard, soft and blue) and local bread, complemented by the rather tart grapes from my garden and our last apple. Oh yes, and some red wine.

We toasted our unexpected successes this year: a good RHS inspection score, the Southern Tsars and Stars (try saying that after a glass or two of red) ‘Best Community Station’ award, and the Ed Furey Community Spirit cup. Maire told us a bit more about Ed Furey – who had been a Labour councillor and very active in promoting community activities in Kemptown, including Kemptown in Bloom. We drank to his memory.

It was dull and oddly humid last Saturday, but a number of very interested visitors and helpers came to see our edible growing garden as part of Big Dig Day. Our total tally was probably only about 20, as compared with 50 on some previous occasions.

We didn’t publicise widely, and our usual procedures of putting up laminated A4 posters around the area and leaving lots of leaflets for people to pick up at the plot as they leave the station, were undermined this year by the heavy rains and winds during the preceding week. But we particularly enjoyed welcoming young children to the garden. We were also able to have some long conversations with some visitors, and with each other, and we got some gardening work done. The climbing beans are cleared; we’ve propagated rosemary and pinks.

We picked some of our apples (Tinsley Quince and Mannington’s Pearmain) for the occasion and set up samples of these varieties to taste, along with Emily’s Dad’s orchard apples from Horsted Keynes and Elspeth’s cocktail Discovery apples. Rather surprisingly, the Discovery apples (‘cocktail’ because they are very small from my minaret tree) seemed to be the most popular, perhaps because they were sweetest.

Although our Sussex apples are dessert apples, we have picked a few early, so they may be a bit (refreshingly?) tart. What is certain is that they are very large but also very crisp – a lovely combination. And intriguingly different in taste: several of us described the pleasant ‘quincey’ after-taste of the Tinsley Quince as rather like a chardonnay wine. We still have quite a few ripening for our Harvest supper (crumble?) in mid-October.

Our other attraction on Saturday was the raspberries. Harvest’s canes have established themselves very happily, so much so that we have had to spend time trying to keep them in order. Our crop has been so productive that each of us thought we must be the only person picking. We still had raspberries on Saturday for visitors to pick. Perhaps the biggest attraction of all to sample, AFTER the tart apples: Angie’s raspberry and chocolate brownies, for which our squashy autumn raspberries were perfect (recipe to follow).

The raspberry cane growing in a large pot with the base cut out seems to be doing particularly well, and – true to Harvest’s original aim for these canes – it is growing out to the ‘public’ side of the fencing so that passers-by can pick raspberries. Given that our space is at a premium, we thought it might be a good idea to move all the canes from the back raised bed into containers (with base cut out), which could be placed along the fencing. Canes could then grow out along the fencing – and we could use the raised bed for more delicate planting such as spinach and rhubarb (not happy in competition with the raspberries) which will tolerate a little shade in the afternoon.

I think this may have been be our last official Big Dig Open Day. It’s been great being part of the project, giving us motivation to focus on opening up the garden and thinking about how to share it with our neighbours and visitors. I’m sure we will continue with open events: seed sowing in the spring, clearing and produce-tasting in the autumn.