A day in the sun

Today was sunny, hurrah! The site was busy with several people making the most of the weather, including some newbies - it's good to see the derelict plots being used again. Let's hope they keep up the momentum, last year two sets of new comers only lasted one summer before giving up. It's a shame to see their crops going unharvested.

Despite the predicted continuation of poor weather I decided to risk putting in my early spuds - sharpe's express. They won't appear above ground for a while so hopefully they'll be ok. I prepared the bed the other day, dug a trench, added ripped up cardboard and horse poo and watered the trench before filling it back in. It meant today I could just make holes for the individual pots so only took a few mins.

Everything is really dry! Funny, when you think how much snow we had but more recently we haven't had much rain and our sandy soil dries out really quickly, hence adding cardboard to the potato trenches for extra moisture retention. JB weeded the strawb bed which I then watered. I need to add some compost to the bed but didn't want to trap in the cold water, so it should have warmed up in the sun when I go back tomorrow. Same for the asparagus bed and raspberries.

The wind also dries the soil out and can obviously damage crops. I bought some reed screening from Wilkos 1.8m high for £14 I think. I cut roughly in half height-wise to get double the length and also as didn't want to create too much shadow. Have put this along the south-west boundary as this is the prevailing wind direction. Will see how this gets on before buying any more. Am also hoping to make some willow wind-breaks.

Pruning one of the sage bushes I saw my first ladybird of the year, lovely. And a robin and chaffinch were singing nearby. Jackdaws were flying past with twigs in their beaks. JB saw a butterfly but wasn't close enough to see which type. She saw a bumble bee too. Surely it must mean spring is finally here!!

Tea tonight included baby leeks  from the plot (or actually leeks that just didn't grow very big hehe) and some some salad leaves from the lean-to in the garden. Oh and some lambs lettuce that I needed to clear for the potatoes. Quite satisfying!

Seedy Sunday

Sorting out this years seeds into months. Always a surprising number that can be sown early if weather allows. A lot will roll forward from one month to the next though, so mustn't panic! Need to clean out the seed trays too. Better get busy!

Seeds and slugs

Thanks to a welcome day off work, today I've finally got round to placing my seed order, hurray! (normally something I would do in Dec and already have my seed potatoes chitting-away). It's one of things I enjoy doing but also feel a bit pressured with...have I made the right choices? ...Stick to the old favourites or try some new?

Well I've gone for a mixture of old and new. Potatoes - I've decided to do a few less this year as they did almost too well last year and we still have loads in store. In the next couple of months they'll start sprouting themselves (as a way of extending the storage am thinking of trying to make my own frozen chips, which sound pretty easy - parboil, dry, freeze).

Anyway, so I've gone for one variety of early (Sharpe's Express 1.5 kg) and a main (Rooster 2 kg). Normally I would have 4.5 kg total but always end up giving a few away anyway due to lack of space. Both of these are new for me. Rooster is meant to be a good all-rounder so seemed worth a try. I really would have liked a variety resistant to scab (as we sometimes get it quite bad on our sandy soil) but the sizes available didn't suit.

So just a few other examples of my selection -

Sweetcorn Sweet nugget - grew this last year and was v tasty. Froze well too. As I have a few seeds from last year, it made sense to get the same variety as otherwise they can cross pollinate and not end up how they're expected, as I understand it.

Squash - still have a few Potimarron seeds left and it wasn't in the catalogue this year anyway, so have added Crown Prince.

Onions - Am trying Sturon (new for me, normally would grow jet set, which do ok-ish but fancied a change). Have stopped bothering with autumn onions too as they don't do well for me though plot neighbours have good harvests)

Runner beans - didn't grow any last year as couldn't find my seeds! Am trying a new variety Lady Di.

Climbing french beans - Blauhilde - a lovely purple bean that normally does well. My climbing beans were rubbish last year though - the wind really damaged them. Am trying to think of ways of protecting from the wind.

Broad Beans - Express - a new one for me, mainly chosen due to the number of seeds in the pack! (60) We did well with broad beans last year so hope for a repeat.

I always order through the organic gardening catalogue and also get a 10% discount as a Garden Organic member

SLUGS!! A bbc news report says that a particularly nasty species of Spanish slug has been discovered just outside Norwich....Yikes! Better keep an eye out on the plot.

Spring?

The weather this morning was lovely so I ventured down to the plot for the first proper session in several weeks. Aside from a few quick visits to dig up parsnips or harvest sprouts (which I
 did on Xmas day for our roast, mmmm) for various reasons it's been a slow time on the plot recently, especially as I'd usually be down there most weekends in autumn and winter. Anyway, today was too good to miss so I spent a few hours pottering around. Despite the need to do a lot of weeding, I've decided to leave this for a while as I reckon they're possibly doing some good at the moment by preventing nutrients being washed out of our sandy soil. Last year I put down horse poo in autumn and then covered the beds with cardboard but didn't manage to do that this year. Am hoping to get some horse poo soon, so will weed then.

Although it was great to have a warm sunny day to get down on the plot (which then made way to colder damp fog), it's worth remembering that probably the worst of the winter is yet to come!

Autumn harvest

So yes it's been too long since we last posted but will hopefully be back on track now.
We dug up our first parsnip yesterday and it was a big'un! It was roasted with our own potatoes, yum. Whilst the oven was on I roasted one of the potimaron squashes, which went into a spiced soup tonight. Double-yum.
Beans did badly this year, as did red currants but most other things did pretty well. I wish I'd made more effort on the greens though. We do have sprouts and some cabbages but not much chard. As the saying goes, there's always next year!

Peat-free compost

Don't forget that if you want to have real green credentials you should use peat-free compost. New Horizon is the best I've found and it's been given good reviews in several mags recently, including the Garden Organic members magazine. (better yet, make your own! I've read that home compost mixed with leaf-mould makes a good seed compost. Our home and allotment don't generate enough home-made stuff so I buy-in the New Horizon multi-purpose for sowing seeds and growing toms etc in the lean-to, with usually good results and good germination rates).

Today it rained (still is) but we trekked down the plot to attach guttering to the shed, to catch the precious stuff falling from the sky (kind of ironic really!). It was a bit fiddly and the old guttering we'd been donated had been a bit hacked about previously but we managed to get a reasonable seal, fashioning some extra-thick seals from old bike inner-tubes, (we also bought the end-stops and brackets from BnQ) and the tub started to fill up straight away. We just need to find a bit of pipe for the down-pipe but in the mean-time it's happily dripping down from the end-connector bit. Quite satisfying , especially as we have a drought in the east. In fact a sign has gone up on the gate saying that a hose-pipe ban will be coming in at the end of the month - not that i use a hose-pipe anyway - lugging the watering can is extra exercise!

More rain expected tomorrow so the potatoes will have to wait a while before setting out but maybe I'll sow some leeks at home instead.

Thought for the day...

...or thought for last sunday as that's when it occurred to me.... I was roasting the last of our parsnips and earlier that day been sowing the parsnip seeds for next year! The circularity of growing fruit and veggies is quite apparent at this time of year - spuds chitting and sowing seeds of parsnips, leeks, purple sprouting broc and so on, which can grow for over a year before harvesting. Start planning now to prevent that hungry gap!

Our 'gap' is quite small this year as we've got lots of leeks (I sow them now in pots and then plant out once the potatoes have been harvested - makes the most of space, helps reduce risk of leek moth damage. The down-side is that depending on the autumn/winter, you might not get decent sized leeks til the spring), PSB in the back garden, black kale, chard, parsnips just finished (discovered a secret row that I'd missed but the green tops starting to grow gave their presence away - a nice surprise) , still some potatoes in the shed, parsley, rocket (nice young leaves from where it's accidentally self-seeded around the back garden), and in the lean-to: pea shoots, coriander, oriental leaves, lettuce leaves, salad onions, all sown in the old tom compost from last summer (which will get added to the back garden borders when these crops are finished).

I do sometimes feel a bit stressed at this time of year, thinking of all those seeds waiting to be sown but take a deep breath and try and enjoy it instead. The toms, peppers, chilis and so on are all doing well, even producing their first true leaves. They'll probably need potting on soon!

Preserving frenzy

Perhaps a bit of an exaggeration but I've dome two lots of prserving in the past two days which seems like quite a lot to me! Firstly over the weekend I made elderberry and apple jelly. Haven't tasted the proper jelly yet but did clear round the saucepan with a teaspoon. It was quite a strong flavour so prob should be used sparingly. Weirdly, the cooled 'scum' from the boiling liquid had a much fuller (and more pleasant) apply flavour. May be something to do with the air bubbles. The recipe was from Wild Food by Roger Philips.

Tonight I'm midway through making tomato ketchup based on a Jamie Oliver recipe. It's reducing as we speak so I thought I'd take the opportunity to catch on a bit of blogging. Tomatoes, coriander seeds and basil are all home grown. Let's hope it tastes good. Have to sieve it now....

Syrup & Shed

Elderberry Syrup

I made a batch this weekend, after harvesting the berries from trees on scraps of council land round near we live. Very satisfying - no effort went into growing these at all!

The recipe is really easy too - You need elderberries, sugar, cloves, water

Remove the berries from the sprigs (you can use a fork to speed things up but I always end up pinging the berries round the room by accident), wash them (freeze them at this point if you don't have time to make the syrup straight away), put in a pan and just cover with water. Simmer for about 30 mins until the berries are soft. Strain out the pips and skin and measure how much liquid you have ( Save on washing-up by straining straight into a big jug, or even better, a pan with measures up the side). Put the liquid back in a pan and then add the sugar and cloves - you need 1 lb sugar for every 1 pint liquid and 10 cloves for every 1 pint of liquid. Slowly melt the sugar, then leave the liquid to cool ( I leave it overnight but cover with a tea towel). Remove the cloves.

Lastly, pour into sterilised screw-top bottles (I then keep these in the fridge, just in case), or you can also freeze it. It's great with hot or cold water and is meant to be good for preventing/getting rid of colds. Good for hot toddies too, with a little bit of whisky.

The shed

Here's our lovely shed. Small but beautiful. It's now a bit darker in colour as the other weekend I treated it with Ronseal eco woodpreserver. Haven't made much progress with sorting out shelving etc yet but there was a skip out the front of our house recently, from which I scavenged some shelf brackets. A project for the autumn I think.

Stormy Wednesday

Well, I was expecting to go to the plot tonight and slug(!) several wateringcanfuls (I think I made that word up) of water around the neediest crops but an unexpected storm came along. Ok, so it was due now (10pm) but arrived at about 6.30 instead. The blackberry picking will have to wait for another night.

I harvested the first winter squash yesterday, as it was looking a bit tempting for light-fingered 'visitors' to the site. I would have preferred to leave it for a while longer on the plant but hope it'll ripen more in the lean-to at home instead. Two of the squashes are planted through black plastic so despite the storm I'll probably give them some water tomorrow as the rain doesn't really get to them.

The shed is now in place and looking great! I'll post a pic soon. I bought some Ronseal Eco shed and fence preservative (water-based instead of solvent-based) on Friday and gave it a couple of coats over the weekend. A couple of fit friends from work helped move the shed last Weds. The ingenious suggestion from one of them made things a lot easier. After lifting the 'shell' off the floor and base, we levered the floor and base out of the ground (it was set in the ground on metal legs) and flipped them over to take out the screws and remove the legs. Some of the screws were stuck fast so the guys just broke the screw heads off. So then we could move the base and floor. That was the easy part.

Moving the shell (sides and roof) was a lot harder than I was expecting, I think because the weight is in the roof making the structure a bit unwieldy. First attempts at moving it involved sort of sliding it along planks which kind of worked but was difficult. Then came Ed's suggestion - lifting one side of the shed on to a wheelbarrow (with a plank across it to support the full side of the shed), which I wheeled backwards whilst the guys lifted the other side. It worked! And altogether the whole thing only took about an hour. Phew!

Now I'm trying to work out the best way to store things/put up shelves. It's quite a small shed (just under 6x4ft) with a lean-to type roof so will be quickly filled!

This week my best harvest has been crystal-lemon cucumbers that I'm growing in the glass lean-to at home. I've been having one a day, taking it into work as a refreshing snack. Yum. The skin's tough, so I peel the whole thing with a trusty penknife. There's another 3 fruits ready, so snacks for this week are sorted! Interestingly, the crystal lemon plant in the back garden has pretty much died without even growing much at all, so just goes to show the difference a bit of protection and extra heat makes.