Veg patch update - August

A few bugs at the end of this post but it's mainly about the veggies for a change!

Blight came about 3 weeks ago despite having sprayed with Bordeaux Mix as a preventive measure. I removed most of the leaves from the tomatoes and we sprayed again, but it was too late to stop the spread on the potatoes so the haulms had to be removed. I haven't dug up my maincrop Desirees yet so don't know what size they will be, as some were still flowering when the blight hit. However removing most of the tomato leaves has meant they started ripening much quicker (maybe I should do that more often!) so I've been having an amazing harvest from them and have only lost one plant so far, which got blight in the stem. The downside to B. Mix of course is that the fruit gets splashed whilst spraying, so we have to wash them very carefully which is time consuming. But without the Mix it wouldn't be worth my while growing tomatoes at all. Cross fingers they will last a bit longer!

After the blight but just before the rains came.

Far more welcome was rain. Real, substantial, proper, pouring rain. The garden had been so dry and I'd been watering and hosing most of the time since early June. There was so much rain over three days that the stream even started flowing again which filled up the lake by about one and half feet. Hopefully now it won't get too low before the autumn rains come and fill it up completely.

The seasonal stream which fills the lake.

Nothing is stopping the courgettes (does it ever?!) or the cucumbers which are going great guns. I'm growing a variety of cucumber called 'Burpless' which I bought in England. Unfortunately these are long cucumbers so that means each one is twice the size of the ones I usually grow..... and I've got three plants! Next year only two..... and one of the two courgette plants decided to split and grow in two directions so I'm getting the equivalent of having three plants - way too much! Both my fridges and both upright and chest freezers are now full to the brim with produce including the vats of courgette, basil and parmesan soup which I make and there's no room for more - so it's compost time for the excess courgettes from now on. The hens get half a cucumber a day but turn up their noses at courgettes!

I have my first aubergine fruit in more than 10 years - although to be fair this is only the second time I've tried growing them here. The first time I had zero fruit! However since cutting the potato haulms down I keep finding Colorado Beetles on them which have to be killed, so I keep a couple of bashing stones nearby - instant death although I don't like doing it!

I'm harvesting this much every 2-3 days, bar the aubergines.
The green toms are from a plant that had blight in the stem, so it had
to be removed. These are ripening indoors now.

Nasturtiums are taking over and these around the compost bins are the ones that were being eaten by the Ornate Shield Bugs, which seem to have disappeared now, so the plants look bigger and healthier and at last have flowers. I haven't been able to close the gate to the veg patch for ages, but as that doesn't stop the cats getting in there's little point bothering.

Nasturtiums, and on the right a Physalis which is now a bit swamped by them, as well
as Dill growing through this jungle, but Physalis is a bit of a thug itself so it's doing fine!

Can you see what's wrong with this picture? :-)
One potimarron stem had to be rescued from the field next door and
laid down on the bit of grass between my fence and the electric fencing.

I cleared the patch where the leeks were to be transplanted which had had a lot of weeds and self seeded Phacelia growing there.... then the rains came and I should have known this would happen!

Phacelia seedlings galore!

A few views of the veg patch - cucumber frame on the left.

Even my spring onions get rust, and all the lettuce bolted at once.
But it looks pretty (ish) and the hens love to eat it.

In the foreground on the left is a Thai Aubergine called 'Kermit'. :-) I have had one whole fruit
from it. On the right are.... well if you don't know you are very lucky!!!

I love having the space to have tons of annual flowers in here too.
No colour schemes - here anything goes and the brighter the better!

Left and bottom right are from my Pollinator Meadow year 3. I have Mirabilis jalapa (top left)
and a different kind of Knapweed (bottom right) which need to be saved and transplanted
elsewhere for next year. Middle and top right is Orange Cosmos (and a Jersey Tiger Moth).

Funny shaped Sunflowers which I grew from seed!

Here's another one early one morning with a
Jersey Tiger Moth (Euplagia quadripunctaria) on it.
There are loads of Jersey Tigers this summer.

A Woolly Bear on the perimeter fence! This is the caterpillar of the
Garden Tiger Moth (Arctia caja). This was back in July and I saw it the
next day in the weeds I was clearing for the leek patch. They run really fast!

Now what was I saying about not seeing any of 'my' Swallowtails coming back to visit? Obviously some have, as I suddenly noticed there were a number of caterpillars on my Dill in the veg patch, of varying instars. This one though I found on the Bronze Fennel out the front of the house, which has no foliage left and the flowers are going over, hence the reason why it was looking so yellow. As it had nothing left to eat I transferred it to some Dill in the veg patch and it ought to green up in colour due to a change in diet. I am NOT bringing any of these cats indoors though! I've done my bit, now they fend for themselves which is as it should be. But I have my caterpillars to talk to again which makes me happy. :-)

Swallowtail (Papilio machaon) caterpillar.
The top photo is its rear end with the unhappy face.

And then there's the fruit, oh boy is there fruit, but that will have to be another post!

Preserving frenzy and veg patch update

In between swanning about playing with butterflies, I've been spending time in the kitchen dealing with monstrous amounts of fruit and veg. No really, actually this year everything has been pretty well under control; I have managed to keep up with nearly all the veggies, and the fruit that can be frozen for later use has been bunged into my freezers until I had the time to do something with it all.

Raspberry jam. It was supposed to be seedless and I spent ages pushing
all the pulp through my mouli thing to get rid of the seeds!
Never mind, it's an acceptable level of pippiness.

The orchard is brimming with fruit and nuts. It's mostly an autumn type of orchard with pears, apples and walnuts planted, as well as wild hazels and elderberries. My two newish plum trees are about as rubbish as the other ones in the main garden though, but I've found over the years that plums and peaches are dodgy fruit to grow and succumb to disease very easily; that's if they ever get pollinated and produce any fruit in the first place. Apples and soft fruit are much easier! This year is probably the best ever for pears though (also a bit hit and miss) so we've been making the most of it!

Three different kinds of pears ripening at different times, thankfully.
On the left are Conference and the other two are unknowns.

Just to give you an idea of what I've been harvesting on a regular basis as far as veggies and soft fruit go..... this photo was taken at the end of August but the French beans have only recently finished, there's little left in the way of lettuce and the cucumbers are history now, but only yesterday I picked a load more strawberries and tomatoes, the courgettes are still producing and there's tons more beetroot. And we are so sick of raspberries because we've been eating them non-stop since mid June!

Note the two greengages!

Elderberries, different apples and Pear Clafouti,
which is one of my favourite desserts.

The next two photos (this is all rather random and in no particular order, date, fruit or anything else-wise) show me having a blitz on every courgette clogging up the fridge by making two savoury courgette cakes (recipe here from last year), a vat of courgette, basil and parmesan soup, with blackberries dripping through muslin in the background to make bramble jelly. 

The pic below that is yet more courgettes in a sort-of-ratatouille using the tomato sauce which I've already bottled, cooking down loads of frozen tomatoes to make said tomato sauce (method here from ages ago) and a spicy mixed fruit chutney which I usually add damsons to but this year just used tomatoes and apples. The recipe for the chutney is here but this time I used 2kg of tomatoes instead of 1.5kg damsons and 500g tomatoes - it's fairly easy and safe to adapt different kinds of fresh or dried fruits in a chutney recipe, so long as you keep to the same quantities.

I will get through these courgettes if it kills me!

Ditto the tomatoes!!

I have to mention something regarding the photo below of beetroot and apple relish from a recipe never tried before and elderberry syrup. I spent hours picking the elderberries off the stalks and my hands turned black. I duly made the syrup, the recipe for which I'd got from the great Greenside Up blog (later to find I already had that cookery book here!). So, bottled up the relish and left the syrup to cool because I was going to freeze it, then went off to do other things. 

A little while later a very sheepish husband came to find me and said "oops". He'd only gone and thought my syrup was the beetroot boiling water and tipped it all down the sink! And if that wasn't funny enough, I had to remind him that actually, I had boiled the beetroot the day before, and he had already washed up that pan! I guess I should just be grateful that I have a hubby who clears up my mess and regularly washes up my preserving pans..... but oh, I've just remembered, there was also the time he chucked my Tom Yum Goong (Thai hot and sour prawn soup) down the sink because it looked like 'dirty dish water' in the pan.... hmmmm. :-)

Beetroot Relish and Elderberry Syrup.

Back in the veggie patch for a few more pics. There's still plenty to eat and loads of colour from my various strips of flowers for pollinators or butterflies. I'll do a report on my Pollinator Meadow Year 2 at some point, because it's been a huge success both visually and for the bugs.

Various veggies with various flowers in the background.

I found a third, much larger Swallowtail caterpillar which I put on the same plant as the other two. Since then the smallest has disappeared and the middle sized one is the same size as the big one now, and they have chomped through most of a plant and I've moved them to another one. They have a tendency to just sit on a stem which they've eaten all the leaves off. Maybe I should leave them to it but I like to mollycoddle my 'babies'!

Swallowtail caterpillar, tomatoes, a strawberry and a late squash which I don't know if
it'll have time to ripen (I've already picked the two that had turned orange).

Physalis, a fruit I have never grown before. The jury is out really as I've
only eaten a few and I'm not sure this is something I would regularly grow.

I've decided to take out the peach tree that grows in the veg patch. I've kept that one because peaches need so much water that it has to be irrigated with a seep hose, and whilst it's got a bit too big despite pruning, it does provide some much needed shade for lettuce in summer. But two years in a row and no fruit at all due to brown rot setting in (which affects our plums some years too), and all the fruit has scab anyway. I already buy peaches and nectarines all through the summer season and if mine were good, they'd all come at once in a big glut at the end of September and I can't freeze them, and they are no good for bottling due to the scab. And the biggest problem with brown rot is that you don't know you've got it until the fruit is almost ripe.... so you can spend all summer nurturing and watering your fruit, and then the whole crop is lost, just like that. It's just not worth it.

Brown Rot or Monilinia on a peach. Not pretty.
The black freckles are scab.

Not my hairy arm.
This tatty old Peacock really did just land on my OH's arm
whilst we were standing in the veg patch!

You may have to look hard, but you never know
who is sheltering under your cherry tomatoes!

"Holy Cow Bertie, what on earth is THAT?!"

We had a good amount of rain yesterday and the weather forecast shows mostly sunny and still very mild for the next week, and my tomatoes continue to ripen. If only autumn was always like this!

Veg patch update - October

This will be the last one of the season, that's for sure! I took these photos on Sunday when it was already rather soggy, but since then we've had an enormous amount of rain and yesterday morning our seasonal stream had started flowing into our lake and by the evening it was a raging torrent! This morning the lake level had filled to about 4" short of the overflow and very soon we will be hearing the sound of running water again as it flows over and feeds the stream which runs beside my orchard.

An overgrown jungle with plenty of flowers in it!

Possibly the only tidy(ish) area with my PSB and Purple Curly Kale.
The peaches this year were not very good and had a lot of rot, so although
I have picked and eaten some the rest the birds can have, which is why I have left
the non rotten ones in piles for them. They're not interested though!

Gardeners' Delight. These large cherry toms are always so loaded
in very long trusses it is impossible to get through them in a short
season without a greenhouse which would need to be heated both
early on and late in the season - which I don't have
and woudn't do anyway - toms are cheaper to buy than electricity!

My chillies are loaded and I've been picking and drying red Cayennes
for a month now. Not quite sure what is happening with the
Piment d'Espelette as I seem to have all shapes of chillies on those plants.
I feel I was sold a duff packet of seeds, and that cost me over €10
so I'm not entirely pleased. They also need to be red/ripe or they are no use.

Chinese Cabbage.
Full of slug holes but hopefully
the hearted bits when ready will be OK!

I do have other veg such as leeks, which are a bit small and pathetic this year and I hope they will swell up now that the soil is moist. There are still beetroot for harvesting, lots of spring onions, a few radishes and loads of rocket. I even have a few small cucumbers left even though the plants are finished. As for the courgettes, I had the grand total of 9 from 2 plants (should be more like 50!). The last two that were forming I waited about 5 days until they were big enough to pick because I wanted to make a last savoury cake, but when I went to harvest them they had pitted marks of rot all over them. Even waiting 5 days for a courgette to get big enough to pick as a smallish courgette is quite ridiculous.

My Sunflowers are a bit of a mess now but the Calendula is
still looking good and colourful, so long as I keep on deadheading!

By one of my gates. There were actually once some veg here -
now it's just a lovely flowering jungle of Nasturtiums (new ones as
the older ones have gone over) and self seeded Verbena b. and Dill.

There are still a few strawberries to harvest -
when I can be bothered!

Still tons of raspberries

I don't really like these orange ones as they lack flavour;
in fact I wasn't aware that I had transplanted one of these plants to my new raspberry bed.
However raspberries spread like crazy so there is no guarantee that what you dig up
will be the plant you thought it was!

Yesterday in the pouring rain I harvested all the remaining tomatoes; the cherry toms are now spread out on my living room floor and the big tomatoes spread out here in my cellar-come-mud room. This also is the sum total of my pumpkin harvest - 3 potimarrons from 2 plants! I shall be making green tomato chutney with some of the big green toms and the cherries should ripen up slowly indoors.

What's left of the tomatoes

Here's a recipe which I first made about 10 years ago and is incredibly tasty. As we've only really got rocket left as a salad green I remembered this recipe of 'Grilled Spanish onion salad with parmesan and rocket' from Delia Smith, who is a very well known English TV cook and cookery book writer. Ignore the salt, she's always heavy handed with it and there is absolutely no need with parmesan which is quite a salty cheese. I also use a frying pan or griddle rather than the grill in the oven.

Rocket, griddled onions and parmesan - delicious!

Sweet vegetable cakes

After pickling a fair bit of this year's beetroot harvest I had a sudden realisation that I could in fact be preserving my beetroot in another manner which can then be frozen for later consumption during winter. Cake form!

Beetroot Muffins

I came across this recipe last year and it sounded too good to be true. In fact, it is every bit as delicious, sticky and gorgeous as it sounds. Whilst I've given you the link (unfortunately only in metric and I don't see any way to change to even imperial measurements on the site), I do want to add some of my own notes to it.

Where it says 'Prep Time: 15 mins'. Ignore this. It's only 15 mins IF you have a minion who does all the prep for you. Just getting sticky golden syrup and treacle out of their respective tins, with a spoon, then needing another spoon to scrape the sticky stuff off, which then gets stuck on the 2nd spoon, and by this time all over your fingers, all the while you are actually trying to weigh out a particular weight of this sticky stuff, is 15 mins alone!

Do not bother with the liquidising the beetroot and ginger after you have gone to all the trouble of grating beetroot and chopping up the ginger! What on earth for? If you really want to have extra washing up of your food processor you may as well have liquidised the beetroot before grating. And the lumps of chopped ginger (I use crystalised) add an extra bit of zing.

The recipe says 'Makes: 12'. Now as far as I know, this is a UK site, not an American site. I know American sizings are huge, and I know the UK is rapidly catching on (after drinking a French cup of coffee (two sips) and then visiting the UK where you get about a gallon in a cup these days, I can see where the UK is heading...), but I used standard UK paper muffin cases and I made 22 of them out of this mixture!

There is absolutely no need to ice these muffins. That would be total overkill.

If you are reading this and have no idea what Golden Syrup is, I believe in the US the nearest equivalent is corn syrup, but according to an American foodie who I used to know in Brittany, it's not the same thing. Black treacle made by the same company is similar to molasses and that link takes you to Amazon who I didn't know were selling British food goodies to the US market. Oh well apparently you can buy it in the States after all though I feel that molasses would do equally well and is probably a lot cheaper! 

Beetroot Muffins

Chocolate Beetroot Brownies

Now this recipe comes from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of River Cottage TV fame (in the UK), and whilst I like these brownies, I don't think they are as good as the real thing. The real thing being without beetroot. However, it's fun to make once in a while but I did find these brownies were a bit on the crumbly cakey side and not as crispy outside, squidgy chewy inside as a proper brownie should be. Or it could just be me!

My annotations in italics.

"You can either grate or purée the cooked beetroot before adding to the mix - the latter gives a slightly more velvety texture. They work just as well with or without walnuts. Some people think that a brownie isn’t a brownie without walnuts, while others can’t stand them; it really depends on your personal preference. Makes 15 squares.

250g unsalted butter, cut into cubes, plus a little more for greasing
250g plain chocolate (about 70% cocoa solids), broken into squares
250g caster sugar
3 eggs
150g self-raising flour (we use wholemeal self-raising) (I don't)
100g broken walnuts (optional)
250g cooked and peeled beetroot, grated or puréed (I grate)

Preheat the oven to 170C/325F/ gas mark 3. Lightly grease a baking tin that’s roughly 20cm x 30cm in size and at least 2cm deep. Line the bottom with greaseproof paper and butter the paper, too.

Put the cubed butter and chocolate into a heatproof bowl. Place this on an oven tray lined with a baking sheet, and put in oven to warm up. After a few minutes, remove, stir, then return to the oven to melt completely. (Alternatively, melt the chocolate and butter in the conventional manner, in a bowl held over a pan of barely simmering water.) (Or even do it in a bain marie!)

In another bowl, whisk the sugar with the eggs until smooth and creamy. Stir in the chocolate mixture until well combined. Sift in the flour, stir, fold in the walnuts (if using) and beetroot. Pour into the prepared tin.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a knife or skewer comes out with a few moist crumbs clinging to it - be careful not to overcook the brownies. Remove from the oven, then stand the tray on a wire rack until cool enough to cut into squares."

Chocolate Beetroot Brownies

I now have half the brownies and muffins in the freezer after scoffing the rest. Obviously it isn't the ideal way to preserve your veggie harvest, as they won't really last that long in the freezer!


Courgette Cake

I love this cake because it is has interesting green flecks in it. I made it for some French friends who still talk about my green cake. The recipe was posted on a forum many years ago but I think whoever posted it got their quantities wrong, as half the amount they suggested makes one huge cake, therefore I had to halve the amount.

90g sultanas (golden raisins)
375g courgettes
3 large eggs
187 ml vegetable oil
225g caster sugar
337g self-raising flour or plain flour plus 6 teaspoons of baking powder
0.38 tsp bicarbonate of soda (I’m not sure why this is necessary and the strange amount comes from halving 3/4 tsp)

Wipe courgettes and grate without peeling. Sieve to remove excess water.

Cream oil and sugar and add eggs one at a time.

Add flour, bicarbonate, baking powder (if using plain flour) and mix well.

Stir in the courgette & sultanas.

Pour the mixture into a round cake tin and bake Gas mark 4, C180°, F350° for about one hour. 


I feel this cake is better iced, but I make a simple icing with just icing sugar and lime or lemon juice. This one didn't go in the freezer so we are working our way through it. It's not hard! (By the way, I had run out of sunflower oil so had to use olive oil, and it hasn't made any noticeable difference - I thought it may have been too heavy but it seems fine!).

'Green Cake' - Courgette Cake with lime icing

Finally, and I can't believe I'm doing this, but someone remarked how tidy my kitchen was in my last post about cooking and I would like to dispel this myth. I'm an 'every pan in the house' type of cook (just ask my OH) and have to use every work surface including the table. So here are some shots of what it normally looks like when I am baking:-)

Perhaps this view doesn't look too bad

That's cos half the mess is here!

Veg patch update - September

Some weeks ago my OH discovered a chrysalis on one of our watering cans, so of course I was straight out there with my camera. There must be tons of chrysalises about, somewhere, given the amount of butterflies we have here, but they are well hidden. His passing shot was "I bet it's a Cabbage White".

Large White (Pieris brassicae) chrysalis

I marvelled at the beauty and the two little 'feet' still sticking out, but as soon as I'd looked close up at the photos the first thing I googled was... yes you've guessed it. Sigh! It's the chrysalis of the Large White (Pieris brassicae), the one whose caterpillars look like this. Anyone who grows veg in Europe will recognise these!

Large White (Pieris brassicae) caterpillars on Nasturtium leaves

I have tons of nasturtiums self seeded that I am happy for them to eat, but I've only just planted out my winter brassicas (purple curly kale and PSB), and I've only been able to sow radishes and rocket (also brassicas) since August, due to flea beetle making it completely impossible earlier in the year. So now the battle commences - especially as the Large White lays a whole lot of eggs in a cluster like this:

Large White eggs, AND whitefly!

It's not just the Large White which is a problem, there is also the Small White (Pieris rapae), both species being known under the general term of 'Cabbage Whites', but at least they lay their eggs singly, so it is a bit easier to control and squidge single caterpillars as they hatch out.

A single very small caterpillar of the Small White (Pieris rapae).

In case those of you in Europe wonder why I'm harping on about Cabbage Whites and their eggs and caterpillars when you are all so well acquainted with them, it's because I have some readers from North America, who are 'lucky' enough to only have the Small White to deal with (thanks to us Europeans releasing them upon the unlucky North Americans somehow or other in the dim and distant past. Oh well, they got their revenge giving us the Colorado Beetle!).

So, onto other veg. The spuds were all harvested and despite having to cut back the haulms last month due to the spreading blight we got a good harvest of decent sized red Desiree maincrops. This is just a small amount of them! Still have some of the 'new' potatoes, Belle de Fontenay left as well.

My Potimarrons in the background. Unfortuntely I have precisely three fruit from two plants :-(

Fast forward several weeks and the purple curly kale and PSB have been planted out.

Normally there are tons of Potimarrons and I train them
through and up the fence wire.

The patch where my peas and beans were now has just French beans left, plus newly planted Chinese leaves/cabbage in a nice straight row at the front of the bed, but some are just collapsing and dying for no apparent reason (not through lack of watering or mulots - burrowing mice in French). I've also got radishes, rocket, coriander and yet more lettuce and beetroot in the background, but somehow the lettuce and beetroot seedlings keep being eaten by slugs. How I've no idea, as this soil is really dry and I only water where the actual plants are. So rocket salad it will be instead of lettuce (unless they get infested with caterpillars!).

Can you see the flowering Dill and Verbena bonariensis that just self seeds?
By this stage I'm happy for them to come up wherever they like.

Leeks have been transplanted into the back of this bed and the spring onions are doing
really well. I haven't bothered planting anything in the gaps as I have more space than I need,
and green manures would only mean yet more watering, which is chore enough right now!
Much of the space is being colonised by Dill, Verbena bonariensis and Nasturtiums
which just do their own colourful thing, so I'm happy with that.

Cucumbers - hmmm well we did get some, but the plants never really grew much.

Normally 3 plants would have swamped this wire support,
but even the bigger plant only had the one stem.

Now it's too late. Every year they succumb to this disease,
whatever it may be. Doesn't matter which variety I grow,
it always happens, and in fact the plants don't last very long.

Courgettes/Zucchini probably aren't a lot bigger than a month back,
but are producing slowly but steadily. Quite nice not to have a glut!

Harvest time. In fact that lettuce was
so riddled with little slugs all the way through
that the chickens ended up having it!

Tomatoes are doing well and the blight seems to have almost gone. I still pick off the occasional leaf with signs of blight but haven't had to spray with any more Bordeaux Mix, which is a pain to have to wash off the tomatoes.

Finally one of the Gardeners' Delight toms which I sowed myself
and was very tardy to do anything, actually growing like it should!

I have rude tomatoes too. I do miss growing rude carrots
but I don't miss carrot root fly.

Mixed tomato varieties after washing off the residual splashes of Bordeaux Mix.
I wanted better light so I put the bowl outside on the concrete,
only for nosy parker to get in my photo!

The tomato varieties I tried this year have been quite disappointing. The two heirloom varieties, Rose de Berne and Andine Cornue (long pointy tom at back, above) are quite dry with little in the way of seeds or juice inside, with Rose de Berne being rather small (front row, right and possibly behind my cat's face!). St Pierre toms are tiny and pathetic, tasteless and barely worth bothering to pick (front row, middle tom). The Roma plant got blight on the main stem so only a few tomatoes were left after chopping most of the plant off, which we've eaten cooked with a fry up and they were delicious. That leaves Fournaise (middle row above) which are a good size, juicy and just like a tomato should be - this is the third year I've grown them and I'm kicking myself for not having more of them but I do like to try different kinds. The cherry toms are all fabulous, of course, so for salads all is well.

Chillis are doing reasonably well, with the Cayennes
(above) doing excellently and ripening up fast.

Tomatoes, chillies and sunflowers
I'm deadheading the sunflowers because the weight of the seedheads
is causing branches to break off. Birds are enjoying the seeds.

Even the Marigolds (Mr Majestic) are liked by hoverflies
and I love their cheery colour, the fact they need little water and are just so easy!

I have to end on a butterfly note. At long last I got some decent shots of
the Small Heath (Coenonympha pamphilus) who stopped flitting for a few minutes
and posed for me on a beetroot leaf! These are one of the tiniest butterflies that I see.
Their larvae feed on various grasses, so absolutely not a problem in the veg patch!

Oh, and the earlier beetroot that did survive being eaten by slugs has done well and I have tons already pickled for winter. I had totally forgotten, until yesterday, about Chocolate Beetroot Brownies, so will be making them next time I cook up some beets - which will be soon, and I'll share the recipe, don't worry!