Kitchen Garden Magazine

Grow your own fruit and veg with the UK's No. 1 Kitchen Garden magazine

Organic Gardening

Vegan gardener Lonnie Morris enjoys an organic and cruelty-free Christmas and takes over the cooking from husband Richard.

Turkey is off the menu

Be kind to your turkey this Christmas!” says writer and poet, Benjamin Zephaniah. Well you are reading Kitchen Garden, so I’m preaching to the converted when I say that there’s practically nothing you need for your table that doesn’t come out of your plot or from the hedgerows that we can all access for free. Oils, grains, exotic vegetables and tropical fruits I’m working on. The rest is all here!

The most commonly found nuts we gather for a roast are cobnuts (a type of hazelnut common to our countryside) and, occasionally, walnuts. Pulses can also be added to the roast including any beans that you dried from your plants, chickpeas and lentils.

Most of us will have potatoes in store, some will have new potatoes to pull up now, although I could never really see how new potatoes go with a roast. I think it’s just a challenge that gardeners set themselves and convince others they complement a roast dinner. Mine are 'Valor' which I parboil briefly so they keep their integrity. (Yes, I did say “I” for I do the veg for Christmas dinner and Richard does the creative bits.)

Harvesting sprouts

When harvesting Brussels sprouts, you start picking them at the bottom and it’s important to keep picking before they open or blow. Richard makes a delicious sprout curry using a little coconut milk (not home grown!), bubble and squeak is great using sprouts and they’ll be plenty of tight sprouts on the plants to steam for Christmas dinner although my mum puts hers on to boil about now. Sorry mum! The wonderful tops are rarely seen in the shops these days but in poorer days they were all the greens some could afford!

Pulling parsnips

Parsnips are taken directly from the ground. They have sweetened with the frosts and to prevent them freezing into the ground in the coming months, I put some in the clamp and others I snuggle with straw, hedging my bets. Other vegetables for our Christmas table are celeriac, which gets mashed and roasted so it goes crispy on top and some green leafy vegetables. Probably the black kale will be the best at the time. Fellow plotters are currently digging up Jerusalem artichokes, pulling turnips and beetroot and cutting chard and red cabbage for their Christmas table.

Richard makes onion and mushroom gravy. Mushrooms only freeze well when cooked. A splash of home-made wine gives it some oomph! He makes Yorkshire puddings by using potato starch and cornmeal but for convenience you can buy egg replacer. Richard can even make a great quiche purely from ingredients grown at home. Stuffing is great without needing it to actually stuff anything and this can be done with any combination of nuts. Rich uses sweet chestnuts and herbs dried or frozen when they were at their best.

Our hens and sheep will share a bit of the meal; they don’t become it!

Jobs for the break

While I have a few days off work, I’m also pruning the apple trees and the trimmings make great kindling for the fire when still green. It’s also traditional to plant garlic and shallots on the shortest day so I’ll be out there on the 21st if the weather permits. Under cover, I’ll be sowing broad beans, hardy peas, leeks, lettuce and spinach although I don’t take the risk of planting out for a while. In the propagator, I’ll sow some tomatoes to enter as plants in the spring show but I think it’s too early really.

Gifts for Christmas

And so to gifts. I’m a plotter. I love vegetables and fruit. So why do people buy me ornamental plants I will kill instantly through lack of interest and expertise?

Please don’t buy me 'hardworking gardeners’ bath soak'. It’s ten times the price due to the packaging and full of animal products. And as for the hand cream, don’t you know I’m proud of how rough and dry my hands are?

My best presents last year were Bob’s invention and the waterproof radio. Bob, who is a great friend of mine and fellow veg grower, made a structure for placing half drain pipes in for sowing seeds in. It’s ideal for starting peas, beans and chickpeas as the roots don’t get disturbed when the plants are put out. Then, as the season went on, I used the structure to straddle growing-bags over in which I grew strawberries to allow them to trail. And finally I placed netting over it in late summer to dry off my onions and shallots and then to dry my roots and then the haricot beans in late autumn before storing them. Even Bob was surprised and delighted by the structure’s versatility and I’m trying to encourage him to patent it. (No good now as I’ve just told you about it!) Then there was my waterproof radio and my pretty tins. My seeds are stored free from mice and I can sow them listening to Any Questions, Any Answers or Gardeners' Question Time”. What more does a girl want?

When buying gifts for an organic gardener, it’s not as simple as ‘if it’s organic it’s OK’. Gardening organically is one step in the right direction. It might only be a pair of socks or a bar of soap or chocolate, but if you’re giving it to an organic gardener, you’ll need to think it through. We’re all organic for different reasons and we all have our own things that are important to us. It may be organic but does its manufacture involve the destruction or exploitation of habitats and threaten plants, animals, birds or fish with extinction? It may be organic but are any of its ingredients tested on animals or is it a by-product of the slaughter house. It may be organic but is it fair-trade or does it exploit people? And do the people helped by fair-trade exploit animals and use unsustainable practices? It may be organic but is it local or does its carbon footprint come from the other side of the world? How about buying a voucher? But in what company?

Have a happy, yummy, cruelty-free Christmas fellow plotters!

For more see this month's issue, available to buy online!

Copyright information

© Mortons Media Group • | Subscribe | Renew | Buy current issue | Kitchen Garden offers shop