budaveg – vegetarian Hungary your vegetarian home in Hungary

Here is the follow up to my gardening story. When you have a tiny garden you start going vertical and use all the available space- so you need pergolas and containers.

Pots and containers are pretty common everywhere for flowers but we experimented with growing edible stuff- and hey they are pretty too! Our tomatoes did really well in the simple flower pots, we really only needed to keep them safe from the dog, but otherwise were easy plants. This year we planted some in the garden and they did amazingly well, we had yellow tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes as well, my favourites are the yellow ones, fantastic taste, really sweet!

I planted strawberries too, but they didn’t give a lot of fruit at all- we had like 20 berries from 10 plants- a plain waste of money…

James built a fantastic pergola to have some shade in the hot summer days, and also to have a place for the kid’s swings. I planted pink roses on one side and kiwis on the other at the posts, and runner beans in between. I planted normal runner beans and these special long green beans I discovered at the local market a year ago. The runner beans did really well, and I picked enough beans for 3 soups in the middle of the summer. Then just before the second harvest hundreds of shield bugs appeared on the beans, but they didn’t seem to harm them. I consulted Aron again and he said that they would suck the beans dry- and he was right, we lost the second harvest. Luckily there was a third batch right in October because we had an amazingly warm and sunny autumn. Look at these beans, I am in love with the colours!

I also planted these long green beans called “Turkish beans”. They like to run up to four meters and weren’t too happy with the mere two meters I provided them, still we had a few beans, enough to steam as a side dish.

Finally a trick I learnt from Aron; before the frost came I had to pick all our tomatoes and I was so upset about the green ones, but he advised me to put them on a tray with a few apples, put a tea towel on the top and they would ripen. And they did! They taste like store tomatoes, so not as good as the sun ripened ones, but at least they are organic.

Honestly I don’t think we saved any money on growing our own food, plants and potting mix are not cheap-but quality local veg is. However it was fun, very satisfying to pick warm sun kissed food and I think it is good to show your children, after all they learn by example.

A few weeks ago on a sunny Saturday morning we were again driving up north to the “Biokert” organic farm where we get our vegetables from in a CSA scheme. We had enjoyed the harvest festival so much we were really looking forward to be back on the farm where our kids and dog can roam free and we can meet and greet the other members.

We were invited to help with the spice paprika harvest- which we did for 10 minutes before we realized that our kids and bouncy dog were more trouble than they were worth and retreated from the paprika field. We walked around to see how the vegetables were doing in the poly tunnels, and collected sunflower seeds from the drying flower heads for the bird feeder. Oliver was delighted when Dora, farmer Áron’s golden retriever mix, joined him and they happily romped around and made a mess.

Everybody bought cakes and snacks and it was hard to leave the picnic table with all those delights. A friendly couple made a delicious vegan curry on the open fire.

But the real treat -at least for the kids- came when we all piled on the trailer of the tractor and Áron drove us over to a neighbouring pony farm! The trip was the bumpiest ever which meant that all those little kids were screaming with delight. They all could go horse riding on the ponies  including our 1,5 year old girl who hasn’t been near a horse before. Since than she keeps saying “horsie horsie” non stop. There was a flock of sheep and a very friendly pussycat as well to entertain the kids while they were waiting for their ride. There was also a real double decker tram from a bygone era.

Then we jumped on the tractor and bumped back to the farm for lunch- but unfortunately our kids were absolutely knackered by then (they get up at 6 am), so we had to say goodbye and pile them into the car. We were heartbroken to miss the vegan curry but Renáta filled our Tupperware box to take away. Yum!

The CSA season is almost over and we are looking forward to next year. It was brilliant to get all those lovely organic veg, fruit, flour, paprika spice and sun-dried tomatoes from the farm. It definitely reformed our eating habits, as we had to use the veg we were given- and started eating beetroot, mangold, turnips -and learnt a handful of new recipes. Meeting like minded people from our quarters was an added bonus, and it seems many other families will join next year.
Do you live around Szentendre? You might want to join too!

We got a tiny garden- even by British standards but I try to squeeze in everything we need: a play area for the kids and the dog, flowers and a vegetable garden. I was a bit reluctant at first, since there was a septic tank at the bottom of the garden for a good 30 years and I was afraid that the soil might be contaminated so for the first few years we were living here I only grew flowers and herbs.

One day browsing the net I came across a brilliant way of container gardening called an “earthbox”  and found a great tutorial on how to build your own and James kindly built a couple for us.

I was very excited about starting to produce our own food and got a lot of potting soil- but made the first mistake of buying “general flower potting soil” (általános virágföld in magyar) which is really not suitable for growing vegetables and can be toxic as I learnt later from Áron the organic farmer. I also bought far too many plants at the market- got carried away- and planted cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers and courgettes. I covered the top with the black plastic bag of the potting compost and filled up the containers with water- and checked the plants every day!

And gosh they grew! The peppers were doing really well even though they were a bit crammed, one cucumber went mental and grew all over the lawn and the tomatoes looked very promising too.

The courgette/ zuccini plants looked great and had a couple of baby fruits, then started rotting one day, still don’t know why- and it happened this year too.

The cucumber produced plenty of delicious fruit and we found it extremely exciting and satisfying to pick a fresh cucumber when were making sandwiches. The tomatoes soon had bright red fruit which caught the attention of our naughty dog, and he kept picking the tomatoes- and destroying the plants with his gentle 35 kg body. Why on earth did we raise him vegetarian? So not many tomatoes for us. James built an impressive fence around the plants but soon Oli demolished that too and gulped down the rest. Ah well, at least the peppers did well.

A year later when we were back in England I was flipping through a gardening catalogue and the “upside down tomatoes” caught my eyes. I was a bit sceptical but willing to try; if it worked we’d have tomatoes growing out of the dog’s range! If you google it you will find plenty of video tutorials  on how to make your own. I just got a couple of builder’s buckets, James drilled a hole in the bottom and voila. I put in the tomato plant and planted flowers on the top. To be honest the flowers did a lot better than the tomatoes, the did produce some fruit but none of them did great. I experimented with strawberries and cucumbers this year and the strawberry did ok, the cucumber did really well, till we forgot to water it once- which ruined the plant. The moral of the story is that cucumbers should go in Earthboxes, they need so much water (and they are safe from the dog). For more images click the photos or the flickr button in the side bar.


Next time I'll write about container gardening and pergolas.
Are you also growing vegetables at home?

Few month ago we joined a community supported agricultural scheme and since then we got our vegetables from Farmer Áron Pető from Szigetmonostor. We have been delighted with the deal, the vegetables are lovely, fresh and there is always too much! Apart from the vegetables we  have also received wholemeal flour, white flour, paprika spice, and water and honeydew melons.

Last weekend they invited all the members for a harvest celebration and we all had a lovely time. I was pretty curious to see the farm and the production methods, especially since a week earlier I visited a non-organic tomato farm and was appalled by the amount of fertilizer and the techniques they used. Look at the white bags, all fertilizer, the tomato plants are roughly 15 meters high, they are not in the soil but in tiny grow bags, as they grow they lower the plant and the non producing stem is lying down. The tomatoes are picked in the “growing area”, red and green ones as well, and they “ripen” on the shelves of the supermarket. Yuck.

factory farming: look at all those bags of fertilizer!

Organic tomatoes are a totally different kettle of fish; the plant is in the soil and there is not an ounce of artificial fertilizer in sight, the tomatoes are picked when they are ripe and we get them fresh and warm straight off the stem. If you never had the good fortune to eat warm ripened tomatoes off the plant than rush to Hungary, they are so tasty and sweet!

We ran around the farm, our dog and children were delighted, Oli made friends with the farmer’s dog and a stray puppy who is not so stray any more, and our kids ran in the poly tunnels, chased the puppy and stuffed their faces at the picnic table. The pumpkin soup was delicious and surprisingly all treats were vegetarian!

The members ate and chatted and some helped the farmer take the seeds out of these pumpkins; and now we can look forward to pumpkin seed oil which has an impressive list of benefits.