I like pickled onions even less then plums. But, after pickling our own a couple of weeks ago in time for Christmas, even I could be tempted to try a few. It was something that Nik wanted to have a go at, and as we’d harvested the onions from the garden a few days earlier, a vinegar bath was seemingly almost inevitable for the crop we’d dug up.

Pickling is no ordinary bath, though – it takes two days to prepare, but it is an easy process to get going.

On day one, peel the onions and chop off the tops and tails, so you’re left with a flat-edged vegetable with lots of green-white flesh. Be careful when you’re chopping the roots off that you don’t cut too much into the body of the onion itself, as it’s the base that holds it together.

Cover your freshly-skinned onions with a salt and water mix in a large pan.  In another pan, fully dissolve 250g of salt into two litres of water to make a brine, and pour this over the onions, too. If this doesn’t cover them, then make up some more in the same proportions. When the vegetables are totally covered with the brine mixture, cover them with plates to keep them under the water and leave them for 24 hours to dry out a little.

On day two, remove the onions from the brine and rinse them well and dry thoroughly, in readiness for storing in jars. The glass containers must be sterilised first, so either run them through a hot dishwasher or a 100 degrees Celsius oven. Leave them to cool naturally.

When both the jars and the onions are dry, place the onions into the jars (we used large Kilner-style containers), and cover with malt vinegar. The liquid must come right up to the top of the vegetables and cover them, in order to seal them. It’s recommended that they should be left for a few weeks before eating, so the festive period should be perfect timing. Lovely?

We’ve not had as much of that in the last few weeks as we probably should, but surprisingly, the garden’s starting to give us something back. At last. Yes, the tomatoes are still a long way off being ready, but tonight, Nik harvested a fair-sized crop of all sorts of vegetables, more than filling the enamel bucket.

We’ve already eaten our way through a lettuce (the first two went to seed), made blackcurrant and raspberry liqueur, had plentiful bowlfuls of strawberries, and enjoyed more than a few handfuls of broad beans in our risottos.

Today’s tidy up garnered beans of all kinds (Dwarf French, Runners, Italian Red, and Regular French), and Charlotte, Kestrel and Red Rooster potatoes. We also used our first homegrown onion this week. The carrots and parsnips have been more disappointing, though, with only two carrot shoots showing from three varieties planted, and while the chillies are doing something, it’ll be a while until we start using those, too.

Even the herbs have failed. We’re perplexed as to what’s not quite gone right this year so far, but who knows, maybe the autumn will yield better results. By then, we might possibly have had more of the fabled summer sunshine, a much more important ingredient than maybe we first thought.

We don’t know what we’ve done right this year. The strawberry plot we planted two years ago seemed all but dead. We had a handful last year, but nothing much to speak off, and only a few more the year before. We’ve since read that it can take two years for strawberry plants to get established in the garden, and it appears that fact is right.

Even the cuttings from the runners that are in soil nowhere near the bulk of the plants are bearing lots of red fruits. The first year we used straw under the hanging fruits to cushion them and stop them being eaten by soil-dwelling predators, but this year we’ve forgone the dry yellow stuff, and the fruit has been fine; clean and nibble free.

The only other thing we’ve not done is to weigh what we’ve had. There’s been at least three bowls the size of the containers in the picture above, and already there’s probably the weight of one more sitting outside. We quite literally can’t keep with them. And, as with all our home grown produce, these are much tastier than shop-bought red fruit. Anyone for strawberries?

Herbs are versatile in the fact that not only do they provide tasty seasoning to many cooked dishes and form the basis of herbal remedies, but they are usually incredibly easy to grow. We had a go a couple of years ago, growing basil, coriander and chives on a windowsill. We still have some chopped chives and dried basil leaves in the freezer, but thought we’d have another go, so this time it’s oregano, parsley and thyme.

Why these three? They came in set of chintzy miniature herb ‘urns’, and as they are different from 2007’s crop, we thought we’d start with the largely Italian trio. We are growing them again in a sunny windowsill (essential for indoor germination) in the kitchen, and then will probably plant them out into smaller pots by the back door.

Sowing is pretty much identical for all three. Pop some soil into the pot, drop the seeds in, cover with more soil, water in, and then leave, sprinkling with the wet stuff when dry. All the best guides tell you to sow in the spring, and then harvest in the summer, but that’s all of little bearing when you’re growing herbs indoors; my basil and chives kept cropping more and more each time they were cut, and were finally called time on in the autumn, when the basil flowered.

If these latest indoor horticultural endeavours are successful, then we’ve also got cress, mint, and windowsill chillies (to name but a few) to go in pots, too, to not only season our food and give us natural-tasting tea, but, when hanging from the pan rack in the kitchen, to also bring the outdoors indoors.

We actually noticed the first two on Monday, but nearly all of the plants are now showing signs of having taken, and if they continue at the this rate, it won’t be long before we can transplant them into proper pots and put them in the greenhouse.

Elsewhere, our horticultural fingers have been doing things, too. Nik had a very busy couple of hours in the garden at the weekend, planting ten broad beans, two rows of white onion sets, and a row of early cropping carrots, which we’ll replace with later ones, once these have been harvested in the early summer.  We’ve also started three varieties of potatoes chitting.

As winter seems to (hopefully temporarily) take another cold grip on this week, we wonder if we’ve jumped the gun a bit. But, homemade plastic half-bottle cloches should, we hope, keep them warm and dry. It feels good to be planting once more, and means that with a bit of luck, spring is well and truly just around the corner.

It’s March, and so with spring supposedly just around the corner, we planted the first of the 2009 crop this afternoon. We’re going for the full gamut of vegetables once more (the new for ’09 garlic is already in and shooting and all the other seeds we’ve chosen have arrived), and though planting proper begins in April the Black Russian tomatoes went in today.

Yes, that’s right, a different variety to our usual and successful Golden Sunrise and Moneymakers, the Black Russians are deep reddy-brown in colour, and should be a little more unusual. As last year, we used the paper potter to make degradable newspaper containers in which to plant the seeds, and dug out the mini propagator that will provide warmth and cover while we start them off indoors.

Once we’d popped the seeds into the paper pots, we covered with 1cm of soil, watered just enough to moisten them, and lined them up in the propagator on the patio door ledge in the dining room. We’re starting them off indoors due to the 18-20 degrees C temperature the seedlings need to get started, and once they’re off, they should germinate within 7 to 10 days. Then, when large enough to handle, they can be transplanted into proper pots and kept in the greenhouse.