I must admit to never having seen the great British bake off, but I might get hooked on the big allotment challenge. The contestants seem like a thoroughly nice bunch, but I’d be surprised if there’s not a battle of the beans as we get more into it. The challengers had only had their allotments for 13 weeks and they were allowed to bring their own soil improvers. The large range of crops they grew was impressive.
The contestants had three challenges:-
1. Grow three uniform radishes – Well I’m glad I’m not the only person who’s ever had problems growing a radish. I won’t spoil the surprise for those who want to catch it later, but there were tears !
2. The next challenge was to provide 7 perfect long stemmed sweet peas and to make a hand tied bouquet using even more sweet peas. I’ve never been a huge flower fan, but I’m keen to set aside a little patch for cut flowers.
3. The final challenge was to make a jam and a curd, using their home grown produce. There were some surprising combinations. Someone tried to make tomato jam, which wasn’t a great success and the use of cornflower to thicken the curd was a definite no no. The rhubarb and custard curd looked yummy and apparently a few crushed coriander seeds will really bring out the taste of blueberries.
As with all these shows someone had to go, and I was a little sad, as I rather liked them. They were obviously gutted to be leaving, and there were more tears on the way !