Harvest Monday - crouching Lou, hidden strawberries.

Well here we go, more strawberries. I've picked about 12kg so far, plus about the same for my friend Andrew who can't get down to his plot at the moment. So if I'm not on a slug-hunt I'm picking strawberries. But I did find a cute toad a few times in the same spot, tucked away under the dried grass I use as mulch on one of my strawb patches (however, yesterday there was a massive slug in its spot instead, ugh).

One batch went a bit wrong....oops. I only left it alone on the hob for a minute honest! Just enough time for it to bubble up and over.

For a different batch I decided to add a bit of rhubarb from the back garden. As rhubarb's rather tart, I mixed in some marrow jam that Jan's mum gave us a while back. The jam has an unusual flavour, it's kind of sweet/savoury so I'm not sure what spices went in...maybe mixed spice? I'll have to ask. Anyway, I puréed it up before freezing. It'll go well topping the breakfast muesli later in the year. There are two big tubs of strawbs over on the counter that need to be processed too but I didn't get chance tonight.

Other harvests have included a couple of batches of baby chard (from the self-sown plants)

And a couple of batches of early potatoes. They're very buttery, yum. (Variety Colleen I think, without checking). We had some tonight drizzled with olive oil. Of course, when I was lifting the potatoes from the ground I managed to spear the best ones with my fork...(Not these below though, phew). And I found an absolutely massive toad, the biggest I've ever seen, luckily I didn't spear him/her. The tops of my earlies are starting to die off now. Once I've lifted them I'll plant-out the leeks in the space. Oddly, the slugs seem to only be going for the maincrop potato tops but maybe that's thanks to the toad keeping busy amongst the earlies. I have at least three toads, as there's a more orangy coloured one around too.

I decided to pick the last few of my autumn-sown broad beans because the slugs were just attacking them and damaging the pods. My spring broad beans are coming along ok (as long as I keep dealing with the slugs and snails regularly) apart from blackfly have discovered them and rust has started appearing too. I've nipped off the tops of the worst affected blackfly plants but there's not much to do about the rust. I've never had it before but apparently it's caused by the damp, which isn't usually a problem on our dry sandy soil. This year however, it's very wet with all the rain.

Jan made the beans into a stew with some of the potatoes.

Back at home the tomatoes are doing well in the lean-to. Here's stripey tigerella. It's quite difficult to move round in the lean-to now, suddenly there's a jungle. Hopefully I'll get lots of fruits as well as leaves. There's lots of flowers anyway.

In the back garden most of the lettuces have been demolished by snails. Ironically I'd been quite vigilant checking for damage on the allotment but not in the back garden...but I found some hidey places today, with some rather large snails.

 

I have some more salad seedlings on the go and made a start at potting them on tonight. But I'd left it a bit long and they've all gone spindly and intertwined, making it really difficult to carefully tease them apart. Hopefully some will survive anyway, I've got more to do tomorrow.

Bishop's Garden - open afternoon

Yesterday we visited the Bishop's House Garden, next to the cathedral. It's usually private but they open it a few times a year for different charities. In all my years in Norwich (21!) I'd never been before, so it was about time.

 

It was lovely, quite large and gave a different perspective on that part of the city.

 

Old gatehouse

Wildflower meadow with labyrinth snaking through

Amazing pear tree in the middle

There were lots of different areas including a veg patch (well, not really a patch!)

Double row of tomatoes in the greenhouse. The taller ones at the back actually had a few fruits ripening.

Gigantic fruit cage

Big compost area too

A few traditional borders

Main lawn

Bee orchids in a cordoned-off patch of uncut lawn

 

So that was a nice afternoon, a pleasant distraction from the mess that this country is in. Sad times but we'll see, nothing seems to be set at the moment and anything could happen. I wasn't going to mention the EU referendum but there it crept in at the end. It'll be even more important now to grow our own, in a sustainable way, and to encourage others as well....looking after our environment, healthy food and contact with nature as well as saving a bit of money where possible.

 

Ok, thanks for reading, I'm linking in with Harvest Monday kindly hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres, just sneaking in before it becomes Tuesday.

 

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