The picture in this post was taken around 6 years ago when I had a full allotment plot rather than just a greenhouse on my friend’s allotment as I have now.
I remember the joy, and hard work, of growing a variety of veg including spinach, mustard greens and other salads. Root veg such as potatoes, beetroot and, as seen in the photograph, some strange varieties of carrots.
The other dubious joy of keeping an allotment is the constant battle with pests such as raiding birds, rats (yup in the city allotment rats are some of the most healthy rodents in the northern hemisphere) and the bane of all vegetable growers the world over... the slug 😉
Every autumn, a wonderful thing happens called a vegetable glut.
At this time you have so many vegetables you couldn’t possibly eat them all yourself, which is great if you have a large family, as visits to the supermarket for pesticide-ridden vegetables and preservative-sprayed salads are a thing of the past.
But for most, it is a time of pickling, preserving and eating as seasonally as possible.
The vegetables in the picture above were from one of the last glut harvests of the season in a very mild October.
As I still had some heirloom purple carrots in the ground ready to be picked, and Halloween was just around the corner I gave the bunch of purple carrots in this picture to a friend of mine with a gaggle of unruly kids that hate eating their veg.
I visited my friend that Halloween with a batch of beetroot soup, which looked uncannily like blood 🤣 and as they had used my carrots in a lasagna, we got the kids to eat more vegetables than they had in the last week at one meal.
The purple colouring in the carrots had died the lasagna a ghoulish purple colour throughout, and I jokingly called it zombie lasagna, and with many squeals of horror, they happily devoured their vampire blood soup followed by zombie lasagna.
This just goes to show, creativity is the key to encouraging your child to eat a healthy veg-filled diet.
Thanks for reading 🌿
All photos and media design used in this post are my own.
Camera: Samsung S7 Smart Phone.
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