Spiced pumpkin soup with bacon

 

Pumpkin and bacon soup in open pumpkin

Spiced pumpkin soup with bacon

Avatar photoRebecca Tute
If you're growing your own pumpkins this year and want to use them for more than just a spooky Halloween decoration, this delicious soup is perfect!
Rebecca from the T&M team says: "This is a really warming soup, perfect for a chilly day. We often add a tablespoon of grated fresh ginger for an added kick. For vegetarians, simply leave out the bacon and use vegetable stock. And for something a bit special, why not use the pumpkins themselves as the bowls? Just remove the tops and scoop out the flesh."
Course Main Course, Soup
Servings 4

Equipment

  • A pestle and mortar
  • Food processor or blender

Ingredients
  

  • 1 medium onion
  • 2 large garlic cloves
  • 50 g butter
  • 900 g pumpkin
  • 1 tbsp coriander seeds
  • 2 tsp cumin seeds
  • 2 small dried chillies (to taste)
  • 1 L stock (either vegetable or chicken)
  • 4 rashers smoked bacon (optional)
  • 100 ml single cream or Quark

Instructions
 

  • Start by peeling and roughly chopping the onion and slicing the garlic. Gently cook in the melted butter until soft.
  • Peel and chop the pumpkin, but keep the seeds to toast later as a healthy snack.
  • Add the pumpkin flesh to the onion and garlic. Cook until the pumpkin browns at the edges.
  • In a separate frying pan, toast the coriander and cumin seeds over a very low heat for about two minutes.
  • Grind the aromatic spices with a pestle and mortar. Keep the pan for later.
  • Add the spices and chopped chillies to the onion, garlic and pumpkin mix. Cook together for a minute and then add the stock.
  • Simmer for 20 minutes, or until the pumpkin is soft.
  • In the meantime, fry the bacon in the spice pan until it’s really crispy, then chop into small pieces and set aside.
  • Pour the soup into a food processor or use a hand blender to blitz until smooth.
  • Return the soup to a pan to warm through, stir through the cream, and add salt and pepper.
  • Ladle into large bowls (or the pre-prepared pumpkins), sprinkle over the crispy bacon, and serve with lightly toasted sourdough bread.

Notes

Find out how to grow your own pumpkins from seed through to harvest at our pumpkin and squash hub page.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

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For the best spring blooms, plant your daffodil bulbs in autumn. That way they have plenty of time to settle in and grow strong root systems to support healthy foliage and brilliant, vibrant displays. Here we take a look at how to plant daffodils for maximum wow factor, and present some of our favourite varieties to try.

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Give new perennial bedding plants a try

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Bedding plants – a revival

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Begonia ‘Frivola Pink’ looks great in beds, borders, or in patio containers
Image: Thompson & Morgan

If you enjoyed watching ‘The Great British Garden Revival’ then you’ll be aware of Christine Walkden’s passionate campaign to bring back ornamental bedding plants. The magnificent displays often seen at grand country houses like Waddesdon Manor and seaside towns like Eastbourne are still incredibly popular.

Descended from the Victorians’ love of the art of ornamental bedding, these “eye-catching displays were the gardening ‘bling’ of yesteryear,” explained Christine. Here’s how to stage your own mini-revival, using the latest cutting-edge bedding plants bred for size, colour, disease-resistance and longevity.

The evolution of bedding plants

Gardening news - Great British Garden Revival

Michael Perry and Christine Walkden talk ornamental bedding in T&M’s trial grounds

As part of Christine’s Revival of Ornamental Bedding, she visited Thompson & Morgan’s trial grounds to meet with product development manager, Michael Perry. T&M’s trial grounds are home to over 500 new types of plants. This is where the company tests whether new plants are true to type, and where new varieties are grown and compared to existing ones to track and monitor improvements.

Despite new varieties becoming available each year, T&M finds that traditional plants continue to be most popular. Michael says that “people recognise the names and know that they’ll work in their gardens, but we’d really like people to move towards newer varieties that perhaps perform better, or have better disease resistance.”

Michael explains that Marigold ‘Jesters Mixed’ is a great example of this: “It’s so much bigger than the traditional one – you get much more plant for your money. It stops the weeds coming through, so it’s a natural weed suppressant. It also mulches the ground, so you’ll need to water a lot less as you’re covering the ground naturally and won’t have so much bare soil that needs to be maintained.

Breeding disease-resistant bedding plants

Busy Lizzie ‘Divine Mixed’ from T&M

Busy Lizzie ‘Divine’ quickly covers beds and borders
Image: Busy Lizzie ‘Divine Mixed’ from Thompson & Morgan

A few years ago, the UK’s best selling annual bedding plant, the Busy Lizzie, was struck down and destroyed by an epidemic. The disease was ‘downy mildew’, an airborne disease that most of the common Walleriana Busy Lizzies were susceptible to. It was so bad that this former stalwart of British bedding that sold almost 35m plants a year was removed from garden centres nationwide. Michael Perry said, “the plants literally melted and were unrecoverable, so the only solution was to grow resistant varieties.

In answer to the problem, T&M developed Busy Lizzie ‘Divine’ which has completely different genetics to traditional Busy Lizzies. It was bred to produce bigger and better flowers, and to be more resilient to all sorts of weather conditions – hot, dry, wet or cold. “It really is a ‘super Busy Lizzie’. The traditional varieties prefer shade, but ‘Divine’ loves both sun and shade, making it even more versatile,” according to Michael.

Bedding plants bred for performance

Begonia semperflorens 'Lotto Mixed' from Thompson & Morgan

New and improved begonias like ‘Lotto Mixed’ flower right through until October
Image: Begonia semperflorens ‘Lotto Mixed’ from Thompson & Morgan

If you want to revive the ornamental bedding display in your garden, T&M is continually cultivating new varieties that are cheaper and easier to grow. Here are Michael’s top tips for new and improved versions of popular plants suitable for any sized garden…

Begonias

The traditional bedding begonia semperflorens ‘Organdy’ has blooms that never fully open, stunted growth, and it isn’t really weatherproof. However, begonia ‘Lotto’ (image above) delivers much bigger plants, spreads into landscape-style growth, has large clear flowers and leaves like water lily pads, and is happy in any weather.

Antirrhinum vs Penstemon

Annual antirrhinums die down to the ground every year. The traditional snapdragons are lovely and pretty, but they don’t flower for long. A good alternative is a perennial hardy penstemon, such as ‘Wedding Bells’, which flowers for a staggering 5-6 months. This variety is also really tough and resilient in the garden.

Alstroemeria

Alstroemeria ‘Indian Summer’, also known as Peruvian lily, flowers for 5-6 months and hosts lovely bronze foliage. The plants are compact with an upright habit, yet still produce stems which are a good length for cutting.

Gerberas

Gerberas are very exciting, and brand new breeding brings us gerbera ‘Sweet Collection’. Growing gerberas outside was unthinkable 10 years ago, yet modern breeding has enabled varieties like this to be grown in the border all year round. This variety is hardy down to -10C and the plants will come back every year with lovely big, florist quality, daisy-like blooms, which are twice the size of other hardy gerbera flowers.

A revival really is taking place, bedding is changing and your choices are much wider than they used to be. There’s no limit to what you can do with ornamental bedding. Visit our begonias hub page for begonia growing and care information. For more bedding recommendations and tips to create a fantastic display, head over to our bedding plant hub.

World’s first electricity-generating sunflower!

Thompson & Morgan’s horticultural innovators who won the Plant of the Year at the Chelsea Flower Show 2012 and introduced the amazing TomTato® have done it again!

They have now developed a brand new strain of sunflower which generates its own electricity from the central stem.

The PowerFlower can charge mobile phones and tablets or can be used for lighting. Plants are supplied 12 inches high, and in bud. Customers can buy a “SunCharge” model, which features a unique waterproof USB port, pre-installed into the stem, for charging a range of devices with USB connections. Alternatively, the “SunLight” model is available, where the main flower head has a light bulb socket pre-installed, meaning the plant can be used for lighting in the home.

World’s first electricity-generating sunflower!

This dwarf, potted PowerFlower is the first step in a whole new world of electricity. A strong charge is created due to friction built up in the fibrous tissue of the plant stem. However, the exact technology of the patented “S-Stem” is being kept a closely guarded secret for the moment; however it’s guaranteed that the PowerFlower will change the face of gardening and energy sources across the globe.

With the release of the taller versions (estimated as 2016), gardens could be dedicated to just growing this variety and powering people’s homes, with an underground network of power leads filling borders. Gone are the days of mass fields of sunflowers growing across France for cut flowers, there will now be fields generating power for the world.

Masterminded by Thompson & Morgan’s development team with the help of leading scientist Professor Paolo Rilf, the PowerFlower is a long blooming variety, which lasts up to 4 weeks in flower. Even when the petals fall and the seed head begins to develop, the whole plant is still producing electricity within the S-Stem.

New Product Development Manager, Michael Perry said “The PowerFlower is capable of producing unlimited electricity over an 8 week period. With a dose of Thompson & Morgan’s exclusive new Incredibloom® fertiliser technology, you can increase the strength of that electricity by up to 4 times.”

Thompson & Morgan is planning to release this variety during late 2014. When buying a PowerFlower, customers can choose between the “SunCharge” USB pack, or the “SunLight” table lamp unit, and plants are ready for producing electricity immediately. Prices are yet to be confirmed.

Tweet using #PowerFlower.

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