Newsletter: Thursday, 14th May

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Even though the School is temporarily closed, our whole team in the farm and gardens are sowing and planting so we have beautiful produce to supply the Farm Shop and our local community and the cookery school when it eventually reopens.

This week we transplanted the sweetcorn seedlings into the vegetable field underneath the huge Grow Food mural painted by Subset in Dublinin 2015 - www.subset.ie

The Hungry Gap is almost over and the Summer vegetables are just coming, lots of beets, green onions, asparagus and new potatoes. We also had the first globe artichokes last week. I’ve been selling organic nettles, Cut and Come kale and Beet greens in the Farm Shop too.

We have been harvesting beautiful bunches of beetroot for the past few weeks, the spring onions are also ready to eat the new seasons onions are swelling to the size of a golf ball.  They are so sweet and delicious we use every single scrap of both the bulb and the green leaves. Check out the Melted Onion with Thyme Leaf recipe in the vegetable section.

The beets too are a vegetable that keeps on giving – three vegetables in one, we use the beets, the stalks and the leaves in different recipes, all super delicious – such a valuable vegetable. At our Ballymaloe Cookery School Farm in Shanagarry, we sell beet greens for people to experiment with – the reactionhas been unanimously positive – customers are thrilled with what for many is anew discovery.

Dotry the beets hot, rather than just pickled, they are delicious. There are still lots and lots of rhubarb, we’re using it in a myriad of ways and making lots of jam and chutney. Here a recipe for Rhubarb and rosewater jam as well as the more familiar Rhubarb and ginger jam.

The asparagus is still cropping vibrantly and we had the very first Globe artichokes this week. 

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