Growing This Plant Can Land You In Trouble

Don't worry, it's not what you think!

Although everyone who comes for a tour round my garden thinks it is and comments on this plant growing quite unsubtly in the back ground. 

You see, apparently, it has certain resemblance to another plant that is quite illegal to grow in this country. But I promise you it's not! One smell will confirm it! 

It's a Peruvian Black Mint, also called "Huacatay", Latin name Tagetes Minuta. Apparently in the climate it grows it can become a weeds (nick named Stinking Roger) but I've yet to have it set seed here so I plant it each time as a annual, an annual that grows up to eight feet high in a season. In fact this year I just planted it in a bed with no compost or recently added manure and it's still eight feet tall!  

So why do I grow it? 

Besides making everyone question what I'm growing, and which side of the law I grow on that is...

It makes an amazing sauce.

Huacatay Sauce (or my take on it)

Take a massive handful of this plant (I tend to pick all the young tips), a clove of garlic, a couple of chillies, a pinch of salt, juice of a lime and enough oil to make a sauce. 

Blend them all together and adjust for taste. 

I think in the original recipe you're meant to add a sprig of mint and use certain chillies but I just use Cayenne's as that's what I've got growing here and I forgot the mint!

I made some up last night to have on top of some homemade Mutton burgers I'd made and froze earlier in the year. Spicy, minty and savoury it's the perfect sauce to have on lamb or mutton or anything really! 

I love it and I think it's certainly worth growing the plant for.

Anyone else here grow it?

Is there a plant you grow just to make one thing that you might only have a few times a year?

More Planting Through Plastic

Down at the bottom of the garden, there's a surprise waiting for you. 

It's called weeds! 

Not quite ground force but we can get a lot done between us! 

The veg garden is looking pretty good at the moment but where the 16 beds ends it turns, rather abruptly, into a jungle of weeds. It's not something I'm proud of and it's certainly on my list of things to do! 

On Sunday the girls and I decided to tackle a very small part of it. We dug out a strip for a new bed. Pulling out all the nettle and reed roots that had taken hold and made a big pile of them. This took some time, and for the girls a complete change of clothes - well it was rather muddy! Fair play to them though they stayed for ages and worked hard, we frequently had to stop and look at worms and bugs, but I didn't mind that!  

Singing was optional! 

I've decided to make these beds narrow than my others. The main garden has beds divided into 4ft strips, the idea being that you can reach the middle from both sides. The trouble with this is you find yourself stretching all the time. Narrowing the bed down to about 30" means I can reach to the other side crouched on one side of the path. 

 I laid the slabs on the bare earth so I now had a new 10ft by 30" bed marked out, with hopefully most of the perennial weeds removed. I then added a couple wheel barrow loads of well rotted sheep muck and mixed it in before covering the whole thing with weed membrane.

A few nights later ( a dry few minutes) I got the blow torch out again (like I did here) and burnt in holes for plant to be planted. 

It's a bit of a mixed bed with some plants I'm experimenting with. 

In it is some Vietnamese  coriander, (which I bough again at Hellens Festival at the weekend as my other didn't make it through winter or go to seed last year), some quillqina (a mexican herb I'm trying to grow), some Peruvian Black mint (another herb I'm experimenting with), a giant Achocha (just to see how it does out of the greenhouse - this will need some support though!) and four chilli pepper plants (just to see how they perform outside as well. 

Hopefully planting them in this way will give me some low effort herbs and flavourings, whilst keeping the weeds at bay and reclaiming some more of the veg garden. 

I've started on another bed below this one last night in which I intend to plant my chickpeas in much the same way. I then think the area below that I will just cover over to suppress the weeds for a few months then sow a green manure for over the winter. 

Anyone else growing though plastic? Anyone else have much luck with growing things that are traditionally greenhouse crops outside in a UK type climate, like chilli's?