Giving stuff away

Our village Facebook page is full of "stuff" people put out for free at their gates, mostly plastic toys. Late yesterday afternoon I put out a FREE message, saying it would be on verge around 10am on Saturday. By 10.05 the first person dew up, by 11.30 they were all (20) gone.

Who would think a few scruffy spare plants would be so attractive on a damp dull morning?

Just as well all gone by then, as its 3 pm and its started to snow.

Prompted by my FB post, an acquaintance in the village just messaged me to say she was house packing ready to move to Kent. Shocked. She was so entrenched in village life here (various committees) and how did she manage to view houses in Covid times? Also jealous as it is one of the areas we are contemplating and we have not made our first step to achieve anything yet.

Sweet chilli sauce

 I tried out a new recipe today to use up the abundance of red chillies from the poly tunnel the 8 or so plants have done well and I had gathered about 50!

The Good Food web site had a simple recipe. 20 chillies, 5 garlic clove, ginger, caster sugar and cider vinegar. 

I strained it to make a dipping sauce consistency. Used some as a marinade for chicken tonight. I usually have a bottle of branded chilli sauce in the fridge and this was just as nice. 

The garden is still giving us plenty of fresh veg though dressing in wellies, thick coat, scarf and hat to go and get things in the damp misty weather is a bit of a pain.  Washing the mud off the carrots using rain water is a cold business so we do it just before coffee time and come back in to warm up.

Autumn Harvest

Gathered the ingredients today for Chilli and tomato jam. Its perfect way to use up late season harvests. I looked up several recipes online and then made up my own as I lacked fresh ginger, star anise and other fancy stuff.

Spent a good half hour (while waiting for parcels from husband's on line spending spree) dicing as much as possible. And washing the neglected jam making saucepan. (Have not indulged in jam making this year as we never finished last years or the years before!).

Put on for a good boil but it did not seem to go sticky? Added some more brown sugar, liquidised and re boiled. 

Ah well. It will still zip up some scrambled eggs over the next few weeks.

I have also been on and off the village Facebook page as I offered these things for FREE today.

We are altering our en suite and took out this perfectly good suite to put in one a tiny bit smaller. The built in "room" by previous owner is only good if you are a stick insect. Seemed a shame to take to tip so I hope someone wants to reuse them.

Update

Well life is going on and so is the stress!

Covid son has had 25 straight days of throwing up in hospital and at home. Has not got the body mass to lose weight and there is always the Type 1 diabetic and keeping blood sugars right to worry about. Then there is the no visiting!!!  As a mother the instinct is to run towards - like they say about fireman and police - and not stay away.

The garden continues to drive us slowly nuts this year. The weather just does not settle down consistently and we have such mixed results.  Since April 4th we have been trying to sow parsnips. Two rows of seed tape and two rows of old seeds form last year put in at various points - usually between showers and then a hot spell. We can't get any to come up and just end up with a row of weed seedlings.

One success we have had was treating cabbages with a home made thyme tea to get rid of white fly.

They have recovered well!

Meanwhile back to researching more recipes for courgettes. They are giving us loads already!

Helping my village?

I had three starter packs from my Organic Gardening training which contained big packets of organic pea seeds. As all volunteering directly to people is out of the question I left this message on our village Facebook page:

" have been working with www.gardenroganic.org.uk as a volunteer to encourage more people to begin grow their own food. As our volunteering spring activities have been cancelled I have 3 unused introductory packs which include a packet of pea seeds and I don't want to see then go to waste. I will put them out at the end of our drive in T**** Road in carrier bags if anyone would like to pick them up on Saturday morning after 10 am. The packs says you could get a crop in 9 weeks so kids could get some results before getting back to school. For parents - I will pop a few sticks of freshly picked rhubarb as we have far too much to eat ourselves."

They soon disappeared. Though afterwards thinking about the loo roll crises I did wonder if the free Rhubarb could have been a mistake!



We've got lots more to come - I will continue to give this away freely. 

Put some in freezer for next year for us but as we are still wading through last years frozen fruit I don't want to overdo it!  However I have just found out how to roast rhubarb and now I have lots of ideas for different dishes using that. Its lovely. Do try it. Just put in a dish with golden sugar or honey, cover, bake for 15 mins. it is not as sloppy as stewed and fits in better with making desserts. Went great with a cheesecake made from a packet which is usually too sweet and cloying.

Have you got some garden goodies to share locally?

Leeks seeds and early cauli

Of all the seeds popping up at present it is the leek seeds that make me smile. They come folded over and then straighten up and often keep the seed husks like little caps!  These are a new variety for us - Crusader F1, just for a change as we have grown the old Mussleborough for some years.  You can see more of our seed sowing on YouTube channel Grow to eat.

We are still getting a few veg from last year from outside. Tops of Brussel sprouts and odd bit of kale that is quickly going to seed. Usually we have Cauliflower in the poly tunnel to fill that gap but this years have not really come to much. This very small head today. Well, it is fresh and supplements BirdsE frozen peas!

Sigh. Had to buy some carrots this week. First for over two years.

Come on spring I need fresh veg!!

Organic?

I went to the induction day to become a volunteer Master Gardener on Saturday.

I will talk more about the role of encouraging people to grow more food themselves and the organisation in the future  but as I had to take two buses to get there I had plenty of time to contemplate what to say if asked "Was I organic?".

I certainly don't pay out deliberately for things labelled organic - for the garden or in our food consumption.
If it meant rescuing a plant from devastation I may well reach for some sort of spray but would check its harmful side effects first. I might even give up on those grounds (but more likely not bother if it was an expense!).
I compost and recycle.
I keep plastic use to a minimum and keep it off our land.
Look after and try and improve growing area soil.

OK. As I neared the door I felt quite confident.

Turned out they were lovely people and their definition was

"A practical way of producing food that makes best use of resources and works with the environment".

Came away thinking, yes I can do this! Which was a boost as retiring can knock your self confidence a bit.

So I may include a bit more about gardening in this blog and include news of things a Master Gardener may do.  I would encourage any keen gardener to join in!  www.gardenorganic.org.uk  (formerly Henry Doubleday research).

Pumpkin

Last Halloween I promised my grandson I would plant the seeds from his pumpkin and grow a big one for him. It was a supermarket buy so I was a bit unsure of the seed viability and 3 planted early. He had saved about 100!

Got 3 good ones in a few days and potted them on. Now one has gone a bit floppy.

What do you think? Too early and got too cold? Watering?  Seed viability?

Not worried too much, got lots more seeds and I looked it up and should be sown in March.

First time I have grown pumpkins at all.  Like to try something new each year.

Time to break out the hot mat!

Its seed sowing time for early vegetables. We use an electrically heated mat to get the early seeds up to temperature. This goes in the conservatory at first so we can control the ambient temperature around it and not have to heat the whole green house. The mat gets filled, seeds come up, move out, new trays refill and so on about 6 times during Feb and March. Its a bit of a process.

I hope this video extract works! If not, its on Youtube!

This hot mat works well. These seeds went in on 2nd Feb and by 8th the first seeds were up.

Just posted my 7th episode about the seeds sowing preparation on my YouTube channel Growtoeat. When I told my eldest son his response was "Oh Good. We let the kids watch that when we want  them to go to sleep. They could do with a new episode."  Thanks, son. Glad to know this Grandma and Granddad (who live miles away) have some uses.  And are obviously, totally boring.

Welcome to new followers - it is lovely to see you!

Ready, steady Go to sow!

Its Feb, the sun is shining, its quite warm (10c plus)  if a bit windy..... and the seeds for 2020 have arrived.  Sorted out all the ones that say start in Feb!

Soon as the rugby stops, it will be time to get sowing!

Seed catalogues

The first one is here and as its a bit cold this afternoon I am going to spend a lovely hour dreaming of summer and fresh growth.

Then I am going to light the fire!

You Tube channel - Gardening

I hinted some weeks ago I was experimenting with You Tube and thinking about doing a gardening channel thing from the perspective of retirees who grow things to eat and eke out the UK State Pension.


It all started because my husband, the photographer with lots of expensive equipment, had been saying he would do something for months but could not work out the movie making and editing bit and of course wanted to buy more lovely equipment i.e. a drone. I got fed up with waiting for his motivation to kick in. So I challenged him to a contest. He put movie software on my old PC.  I shot a load of quick bits and in two hours achieved a 4 minute video and added narration and music and uploaded to You Tube. A month plus later he is still hesitating!



Over the last few weeks I have put up 4 videos on growing your own fruit and veg and am working on my last for the year. And I think it may be the best to date its got a few bells but no whistles!. Although they are not very sophisticated as I just use a point and shoot small digital camera held in my hand. I have not Vlogged (as they say) which is talking endlessly to camera. And I don't think that will ever be me!  Only yesterday found out I could put my little camera on my husband's tripod so I can do stuff in front of the camera.

I am not sure yet if it will be worth doing a lot of this, but I do know I know a lot more about growing fruit and veg than some people on You Tube! And there are not many "elders" sharing sensible growing for the cooking pot.

So I called my channel "Grow to eat" which was a mistake, I think, as it comes up on a search along side these body builders who eat to grow their bodies! There is also another channel with the same name, but You Tube did not tell me that and mine loaded anyway. When you do an email address it usually automatically says there is another "MollyB" or whatever, in the system. Strange. 

Other strange thing, my family say I have put on a very posh voice. Honestly did not try to do that. It just comes out like that because I am still self conscience about sitting here with a mike talking to myself!

If you get time please go and look and give me some feedback.  I would be very grateful.


Here is a link to the first video.
(I think, It feels like I am still stumbling in the social media dark forest.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJd0NFZtzIg&t=21s


Now back to some more editing and learning before we go away for Xmas and for a short holiday somewhere a lot warmer than the British east coast in January!!

Grow it, Eat it

Yesterday's lunch.

Our potatoes were spoilt by wire worm so when peeling and sorting out we end up with lots of bits of potatoes  which I dice and par boil. I then put some oil and spices in a deep frying pan (turmeric, cumin, paprika, coriander) put in some garlic and onion, diced potatoes, any left over courgettes, peppers and tomatoes. In fact any bits left over! and some stock to just cover. In a few minutes you have a nice dish. If I have it I sometimes put in panacetta or bacon as an extra treat.

For pudding we have a lot of autumn raspberries still producing the odd berry. They go in a dish with a couple of spoons of granola and Greek yougart.

Does not cost a lot, except the kitchen always looks like a tornado hit it after all the preparation!

June Fruit garden tour

Continuing to tour our garden I thought you would be amused by the long fruit "tunnel" that has gradually emerged this season. Bit rough but does the job. The nearest end is the latest to be netted as the berries are on the verge of turning ripe. I did not do it one year. picked one load as they ripened and went back next day and the rest were gone! Blackbirds.  We got some 2x1 inch posts from the old guy next door for the sides and used some scrap wood to form some of the cross pieces. Canes along the rest. The ground has had thicker ground cover fabric for last 2 years and saves any weeding.

Then there is a run of strawberries. 2nd Year growth. I left this bed too late and it was full of grass. A couple of weeks ago I attacked the worst and then down put some thin weed suppressing fabric we got cheap. Terrible stuff; it tears easily. I just cut holes for the best strawberries. and then put old fence posts and bricks to press the fabric down on to the weeds still there. Then the usual triangle of canes and netting. I now have some more hooks and could take the bits of wood off the sides but acutally it helps when mowing as they have a bit of paint on them and you can line up the mower wheels nicely. The plants are full of flowers and fruit and starting to ripen. 

The strawbs merge into the 3 blueberries which have a permanent netting now as the deer (muncjac) just will not leave them alone in any season. This is the best they have been in 5 years and have grown out to the netting sides. I have put a cane on the outside and used string to pull the net out. Its a mess and when all the fruit has finished we must take it all down and do something better. We have discussed a cage or metal hoops but we should have invested 4 years back and I can't see a return on monies now. Our plan at present is to stay another 5 years and we could buy a lot of blueberries at the supermarket for the costs of a cage!

Not had to bother with netting the gooseberries or the thornless blackberries beyond as nothing seems to bother them (yet). Pleanty of fruit on the green gooseberry but it is far from ripe.

Loads of flowers on the blackberries. We had a bit of second hand left over fabric cloth so the run got extended a bit. Saves weeding. Its mostly couch grass and it is hard to get out when the ground is baked hard. I have quite a bit of success last year and this in throwing a couple of inches of grass cutting round this bit to keep weeds down. Not to deep or it will turn to sludge but just enough to mulch.  

Right at the end of this bed is my rhubarb. It has always struggled. I did get quite nice early sticks by covering them in the cold spring but I am going to leave them now to grow and strengthen. I have attacked the couch grass again and started to mulch with compost from last years bin.

In the parallel fruit bed we start with the tayberry. I netted this early as I knew we needed the largest bit of netting for this tall structure. Its a bit thin looking but we get a good crop. The birds utterly love these as much as we do and you have to leave them on till they are fully ripe so they are in danger daily! Their main disadvantage is they are horribly prickly.

From there right back down is raspberries. Autumn ones and then summer fruiting. The late ones have only just started to re green due to the cold winds and then the dry weather. The summer fruiting one are not looking at all happy this year. We may dig some out as we have too many anyway and we are definitely mulching them hard all this summer to try and get them stronger. 

To the right of the two long fruit beds is our orchard of a dozen trees. After 5 years we are not seeing great returns. We get some hard winds off The Wash (5 miles away) and it is very well drained soils here (silt base from land reclaimed from the sea in 1700s - in fact this orchard slopes up slightly as part of a sea bank marked on maps of 1756).

 Some tiny damsons. Never had a crop till now.

 A few conference pears perhaps?

 A few William pears perhaps?

 May be some Bramleys?

A nice lot of yellow plums possible.

Theres a nice row of red gooseberries (6 bushes) at the end of the orchard with a decent crop coming on them. Again I have used weed suppressant fabric under these to cut down the need for weeding under the very prickly bushes.

Lets ignore the other trees as there is so little fruit it is depressing. We have tried to increase the early flowers by putting in areas of daffodils and leaving cowslips to colonise to make sure there are bees etc but those cold east winds always seem to come just as the blossoms are out.

Hope you enjoyed this long tour of our fruit garden. There are lots more new fruit things coming out in the seed catalogues but we have decided we don't need more. We are still eating our way through last year's jam.   I am actually avoiding the old chap next door who has a giant rhubarb patch as he will only try to give me a wheelbarrow full if he catches my eye!

Fruit and Veg at start of June

Hi
I have been a terrible blogger lately but life just gets in the way sometimes!

Our fruit and veg have been kicking in to contribute to the household budget nicely, that is, without overcoming us with a "glut".
We have had a nice crop of broccoli grown in our poly tunnel, now we have lettuce, radish and spring onions from there with some strawberries. Outside more strawberries are coming - a full bowl each last night.  I could not keep up with the early spinach so cut half right back to give baby leaves and dug the rest up. Husband spotted one potato plant looking a bit sick so dug that today. There were enough small pots there for a handful each with the lunch salad.
I have done a tour of our kitchen garden.

 This is one lot of outside strawberries. Second year. I have gone for weed control fabric this year which is working very well. Kept weeds away, I could select the best plants and just covered any off shoots from last year. The fruit is clean and I can spot any runners straight away. So far no trouble with slugs. I used a stiff close mesh over short bamboo canes, I think it was labelled as a pond covering in Wilco. This has remained tight and easy to secure so no birds have got trapped in there (yet) I ran out of metal hoops to secure the edges so I used bricks. Those have proved easy to lift off and harvest and put back.

 The next bed has 6 rows of potatoes and so far looking good. We have been through and weeded and my husband ran the rotovator up the rows that are wide enough apart to loosen the soil to bank up. We have a thistle problem so we keep pulling them out every few days. The two early rows are a bit too close so I am trying a layer of grass cuttings as a mulch between. It was recommended on the Scottish gardening programme Beechgrove the other day. We planted when the soil was wet (and really it was still a bit cold) and thank goodness we did as it is been terribly dry ever since.

 Here are the spinach I just cut back, the seed packet says you can do that 4 times to encourage baby leaves. I replaced one end with a dozen summer cabbage plants we had spare. Again gone for the weed suppressing fabric and cut holes in it for plants. We have noticed it stays damper under there too.

 Our next bed has onions (grown from seed), carrots (2 rows), parsnips and beetroot. They have been watered but are desperate for rain to "swell". The weeds are a pain and I recently picked my way up and down the earlier bigger carrot row, and the beetroot and parsnips, plant by plant. These are the best parsnips we have ever got going. We followed a Charles Dowdling recommendation and started them in plugs. Beetroot are still small and the hares have been down the garden nibbling on the tops already.

 Sweetcorn have finally gone greener and looks better. I have "de thistled" this bed with a spade but I need to go back and get the small weeds out with a hoe. As soon as we put the corn in we had fierce drying winds and they did not look happy. To the left I have a row of baby leeks. And a row of french beans, not exactly romping away either.

The peas and beans have gone in. The peas this end probably don't need canes that high but I had to put the mesh up to keep the pigeon flock off. The runner beans like the sweetcorn did not like the wind and dry and are only just getting up the poles.

The  last bed has garlic on the left, the main row is good but the garlic in the other two rows has failed. I think it was a very late (reduced)purchase at the garden centre and a waste of money. At the far end I have some dwarf broad beans. Just enough for husband as I dont' like them! Some more beetroot and then a long cage of brassicas. 6 each of sprouts, kale, cabbage, and 4 red cabbage. Some how a broccoli got in there and did not form one head but had several spurs on one plant. No problem as it meant a couple of small heads cut at a time, mixed with spinach was a nice green for several meals last week.

Just beyond the compost bins I have two courgettes. I have had to wander up with extra water to get them going and one has a small courgette on it.
We had a 3mm shower today and it has wet the soil a bit so things might get going. Promise of more rain in the forecast next week which we could do with here.

I will update you on the fruit crops on my next post.
Hope your crops are coming on now.

Veg garden progress March into April

Its been dry and sunny here in Norfolk (just off The Wash) but cold. The east wind has a bite and the nights have had low temperatures. As a result the seedlings are beginning to back up in the greenhouse waiting for the temperatures to rise a bit.

Some things are hardening off just out side the door but ready to be put away on the very low nights.

My husband has made a nice deep trough for in the greenhouse to grow melons (and 2 early tomatoes). As the base is on concrete the greenhouse gets too hot in the height of a good summer for much. So hopefully the melons will love it. Never grown these before.   He utilised some rough old wood to off set the cost of the 2 big bags of compost he put in these.

The poly-tunnel only looks empty becuase you can't see much in the dry soil  Husband is trying a different method of watering again this year. He is putting the spray nozzles up 2 ft suspended between wooden posts. We can then weed/hoe without blocking the nozzles - which was a problem in past years when we tried seep hoses.

To the left are some radishes (see below), some spring onions and carrots sown via seed tapes just coming up and some stocks for cut flowers. In the middle at the far end are some brassicas - for an early crop protected from the east winds and the flock of pigeons. There are some strawberry plants on the right of this bed. Fresh plants for this year as the previous crop had to come out after 3 years.  To the right at the bottom are some spring greens  we put  in10 in January and we are having one a week for the kitchen. Planted between them as they matured are some cauliflower which always do well in here and give us an early crop. Then just to the front at this end are lettuce which are growing quite quickly now.

Baby radish picked today to liven up the shop brought salad!

Hoping for a change of winds and air flow (need to get southern winds) by Easter so we can forge ahead!  I will go and photo some of the fruit bushes etc to see how they are progressing today.

Hope your crops are coming on now.

Asparagus

Has anyone else noticed such an early crop? Picked this one yesterday and there are plenty more spears showing.

Not wasted - sliced and added to a nice omelette for lunch.

Salmon in the picture was for tea. We are on a diet as we have over indulged  and put on a little weight!  Roll on the summer and the salad crops.

Potatoes are in

Some may think its a little early, but we live in a very dry part of East Anglia and have found if we leave it till  Easter (the traditional time to plant potatoes) then the soil at depth has already dried out too much.

My husband borrowed this hand drawn ridger from our ancient neighbour to make the furrows and then go back down and make the ridges. The sub soil was damp, but full of worms, and the top loose and dry.  We ended up with 5 and a half rows. 2 First early and the rest Main crop. the last row was a mix of all the left over little ones from each of the main crop bags.  That left half a row in this first veg bed. So I re dug it to make sure their was no couch grass, thistles or docks and planted some spinach. Not done this outside before (we have done it in poly tunnel previously) but we were watching Charles Dowdling You Tube on spinach and he recommended this method outside and planting the whole module with no thinning. You pick the spinach leaves at a very small and young stage. So far, looking good but as it has not rained for a few weeks and the water butts up veg end are empty I have been trolling up and down from the house end with watering cans from those butts to bed the spinach in.

In the next plot my husband has planted 4 rows of onions grown from seeds and they are taking well and making good progress.  They enjoy the sunny open area.

In other bits of the veg beds we are trying to be much more no dig. I have been experimenting with putting some thick plastic on top of the autumn dug soil which is already showing invasive weeds - speedwell and thistles.

After 3 weeks I went back for a look. The thistles were up but spindly and loose, the speedwell had lost its grip on the soil and were easy to get the whole thing up (rather than it snapping at the base and leaving the roots to re grow).  So a quick surface turn over and re-cover and I will probably plant some beetroot there as there is just enough space between the brassica netted area and the garlic on the right. We are doing beetroot in the Charles Dowdling method to give them a head start - several in each module and then just plant them as a whole and thin as they grow.

Lots of heavy work this week in the veg garde, plus the fence is finally repaired.

Ok, not pretty and, yes, that metal joining piece is part of a big hinge off the old outside loo door! One day I will paint this side of the fence, or, I am going to cover it with climbing plants. The latter may be difficult as on our side, it is actually an old horse menage with 3 foot of sand under that grass so we would have to make containers at regular intervals to plant in.

Lovely day today and looking forward to some sewing time this weekend.  I have just been to the village to get some bread and on the way back cleared up some litter in the verges, then as I neared our house I wondered what this brown lump was in the middle of the road.

It was someone's MacDonald's breakfast bag!!! It had not been there when I went out 15 minutes earlier. Put photo on the village Facebook page straight away with the hopes of shaming them.