Spring! Better luck this year

So, this blog really had bit a bit sad and lonely for the last year.  After last year's perils of torrential rain and flooding over much of the UK for most of the summer the ground was saturated, the slugs were everywhere. Literally no man standing after planting out your seedlings and leaving them overnight, and as for direct planting, pah!  They even ate all the developing pumpkins off a bought pumpkins plant.  I had even gone to the trouble of applying the trusty Nemaslug! I was not impressed.  But all is not lost, with every new Spring comes fresh opportunity and a new wave of hopefulness that this year there will be a bit of sun....even in England.

Turn the page and we find ourselves in March.  I have high hopes for March, even though a cold snap is promised near the middle of the month.  Undeterred I have made the majority of my seed purchases and made a hefty start to the weeding.  So what am I planning to grow this year?  So far the list is something like Leeks, Tomatoes, Jerusalem Artichokes, Courgette, Runner Beans, Peas, Potatoes, Kale and Chard.  I might end up putting a few patches of extras in though, my seed box overfloweth!  Again I am hoping to combine vegetables with pretty herbs and flowers in my perpetual thirst for an Alice Fowler style vegetable garden (seems I have made it harder for myself with long wide beds).  There are still some plants in from last year; strawberries and chives.  I've also planted this years Garlic (late!) as well as 3 of the biggest cloves of last years Elephant Garlic.

I must also mention that a very sad thing happened at the end of November 2012, Lenny, my oldest Greyhound died.  I am still pretty gutted about not seeing his furry, loving face any more, but consoling myself with the thought that he had lots of love from us, and a good long life full of seaside trips and castles and gardens since he was 8 (when I adopted him from kennels).  I have had him cremated and am keeping his ashes for now, when the others go I will mix their ashes and find a place to scatter them together.
A Greyhound should be free to run with the wind, as they did in life.  R.I P. my lovely little Lenny ♥

Playing Catch up & Kill 'Em

Nemaslug Review

As this year I have been MEGA crap at sowing anything at all at the right time (due to personal circumstances) I have a lot of bare soil at the moment.  To top it off there are millions of big fat juicy slugs and huge snails this year thanks to Britain's dire weather; it's rained almost every day for months, with the occasional flash flood (to add that extra groan and mutterings about needing to emigrate!).  Have no fear though for the sluggy snaily things (technical gardening term) can be dealt with by Nemaslug.  If you don't know what this is it comes as a packet mix of micro-organisms that go to live in your soil and eat your pest by destroying slugs from the inside, they die in the ground (where they live), so no mess to clear up and unlike slug pellets there is absolutely no risk to pets, children or wildlife (so anything eating the dead slugs get no ill effects at all).  I was a bit sceptical but I won a free packet last year from following Chase Organics on Twitter (thanks guys!) and I have to say, it really does work brilliantly!  I have bought another pack which will go on the garden today, within 2 weeks the slugs will be pretty much all dead.  Brutal? maybe...but safe and effective!

Aaanyway, this week I planted out the peas that I had grown in tiny newspaper pots.  They are Early Onward variety, so...um...a bit late!  But they are growing great guns (that's an expression, I haven't yet managed to grown legumes with firearm capabilities!), I reckon they will catch up and maybe give me a late crop if we end up with some late summer sun (ever hopeful!).  I germinated 2 cucumbers with an idea to maybe see if I can force them up to speed by growing them in the sunny extension (will that work? who knows, I don't) and also 2 pumpkins...because I love pumpkins so I'll give it a go and cross my fingers.  In the mean time, have a picture of the garlic scape I had on my Elephant garlic (it's a bit mature, they start out curly and then straighten with age).  I chopped it up and ate it in a vegetable omelette.  Yum!

This is a garlic scape, you can leave them on but the thought is that the garlic bulb will be smaller if you do.  So chop them off and lightly cook and eat them.

September - Mini Harvest

Had my own little mini harvest so thought I'd share the picture! Spuds (Rooster, and a few left over Maris Piper from last year), Carrots (the ones the carrot fly didn't ravage!), 2 different types of scalloped squash and kohl rabi (not bad roasted). Nom!

The rest of the harvest of Potatoes. I feel OK about this amount, much more reasonable than last years epic harvest of doom that we never managed to eat through.

Garlic! Pretty good I think, nice pale pink cloves. I seem to have picked pretty varieties of everything this year! These went into the ground last autumn, to be honest I think I left them a bit too long as they had sprouted extra cloves about the outside, I broke these off and they are in a bowl in the fridge to be used first.

My tomatoes did not ripen *sad face*. There are still a few tomato plants languishing outdoors but as an experiment, these ones, who were taking up space in the main vegetable beds have been ripped up and suspended upside-down in the sun in the extension. The Internet tells me this will allow the goodness to drain down the plant and they will ripen. I remain sceptical, but...who knows! Worth a go, and if not there's always Fried Green Tomatoes!

I have cleared out all the spend summer veg. Still in the ground are scalloped squash, pumpkins (planted too late I think, they look a bit sickly), Parsnips, Onions, Kale, Kohl Rabi, Swiss Chard a Salsify or two and some Cauliflower (purple!). In this month go Broad Beans, Garlic, various winter salad leaves, Toughball Onions, early Spring Onions and possibly some other stuff I have forgotten. The land with nothing on has some field beans as green manure.

Finally, Nigella seed heads removed before they open and self seed all over the place again (nice yes, but a bit in the way). I think I will suspend them upside-down in a bag and collect the seeds.

Pumpkins!

So, time for an update! I shall start with the traditional British topic - the weather! It's is getting colder, someone forgot to tell the sun that it's only August. Some of us have crops to ripen...make with the warm!! At least this means Nath's contribution to gardening (watering and mowing the lawn) is a less frequent which he's probably grateful for. I may have to teach him advanced weeding next, those mini nettles are evil creatures!

The pumpkin plants are growing really well, a bit too well really, I regret planting the second one so close as they are such huge monsters already. This picture above is of the largest so far, I've wedged a stone underneath to lift it and stop it rotting. A couple of smaller ones have dropped off, we ate one of them roasted in the oven with a sample of our purple carrots (not ready yet, too small) and parsnips (ditto).

Peas...we've had millions of these! You can see the lettuce in the background too. I massively over planted the lettuce forgetting that more or less everything I plant grows (it's a curse I tell you!!). I have found a very nifty way of using it up though, lettuce soup!

Lettuce Soup

Ingredients
Serves: 4

1 Large Lettuce

1 Medium Onion, chopped

1 Medium Potato, diced

25 Gram Butter

450 ml Milk

300 ml chicken or vegetable stock

Salt and freshly ground pepper

4 Tablespoon Double cream, optional

Method
Shred the lettuce, reserving some for garnish. In a saucepan fry the lettuce, onion and potato gently in the butter for 5 minutes without browning. Add the milk and stock.

Bring to the boil, stirring continuously, cover and simmer for 10-15 minutes.

Liquidise and return to the pan.

Ladle into warm soup bowls, whirl on a tablespoon of cream if used and garnish with lettuce pieces.
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This is the plait I made with my garlic, they are tiny, I think I should probably have left them until the foliage was more dead. I have left the other tub and will try again in a month, see how big they are then. These ones are plaited and drying.

The Maris Piper potatoes are listing helplessly about now flowering is over, blocking the pathways to the smaller veg. This is annoying, I might tie them up with string at the weekend. I seem to have grown 'true seed', small tomato-like pods on top of the flower stalks. I read that these can be planted next year and will grow potato plants all be it a bit unpredictably as you don't know what variant will grow from each one of the 200 seeds in each seed pod. There's some very interesting info on this here. I have pulled one row of tatties early so we could try some, while they are still smallish they taste lovely (and were a constituent of the lettuce soup!).

Things still to come are peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, florence fennel and butternut squash....to be honest this cooler weather and lack of sun is really not helping!!
I have not stopped planting yet, there is more lettuce on the way *groan* also kale, kohlrabi and some cabbage (if I can find room for the donated cabbage seed to germinate). I want to find room to grow some late onions.

Our other big news is the imminent addition of chickens! 3 from the British Hen Welfare Trust. A big garishly pink Eglu hen house will be arriving Saturday!

In the Heat of Summer - *boing* vegetables appeared!

Here, have a picture of the side of my head (Nath's poopy photography skills meant rejection of gurning shots) with Amy(pink collar) and Jack ('the white one').

Well there isn't much heat at the moment, but there was heat, and plenty of sun (and in England too...who'd have guessed!), which meant our veggies have grown big and healthy. There are loads of fat pods on the peas, finger sized baby carrots have miraculously appeared in the ground and this surprise purple radish has just been discovered...it's huge!!!!!! Shame I hate radish (why is it even considered a vegetable?!), but I'm sure Nathan will enjoy it! The garlic have wilted right down, though the leaves are still green, I don't think they should be lifted yet, but I lifted one as an experiment, it's not bad...not massive but it smells good. The pea was scoffed about 2 minutes after this picture was taken, it's friends will share it's fate soon! In other news I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm too fond of brackets (but maybe it's fine).

Summer is here!

Temperature 25°C, Sunny

So, I haven't blogged in a while, this is mostly because I have been very lax with weeding and it looked a bit unkempt, so I was too embarrassed to show you. Yesterday Nath and I delved into the jungle with Pith helmets and rifles (in case of Tigers, you can never be too sure). All the weeds were tweaked up by the roots, the things we planted sorted from the things we did not (I did that bit, it still foxes Nath') and the tigers were sent packing. There was a brief rest for Nath when he went off to the shops to buy kneeling pads (now I really do feel old!) and several more bags of soil (will it never end!). Upon discovering it was cooler with your head stuck in the potato undergrowth I got stuck in earthing them up, I hope I didn't leave them too long.

Ths picture at the top shows a raised bed showing 2 different types of Lettuce and Peas growing up my home made trellis with Rocket and Butternut Squash growing at the near end (couldn't fit that end of the piccie). Soon there will also be Florence Fennel in there too and maybe Kohlrabi. My Spring Onions failed to show, I think I planted them too late.

The next picture shows the main bed, and the massive plot of Potatoes in the middle bed (how will we eat them all?!). In the main bed we have, closest to furthest away: cut and come again salad, mini Carrots, Pumpkins, Parsnips, purple Carrots, Leeks, purple Radish, Beetroot, Salsify & Rhubarb
This next photo shows the blue tub of Cucumbers (still looking a bit yellow, hopefully moving them to this end of the garden will allow a little more light), and the Tomatoes.

Strawberries need no introduction, they are growing massive! Compare it the size to my fingers next to it.

The Garlic is still growing nicely in it's pots

Also I have started to develop the rest of the garden a little, cornering off two tiny flower boarders, here is a nice Anthemis bought from a National Trust shop. Nath likes this one, it's the only plant name he's learned so far...so expect to hear it a lot! ;oP (edit- he's just scoffed at this comment, aparently he knows lots of plants names, he also knows Fuchsia and Potato). You can't eat this one, but it's a pretty plant, I love daisy shaped flowers, they are my favourites.

I can't do a massive photo session without including a picture of the blogs namesake. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Lakers Amy...at play:

So what do you think? Not a bad start I'd say

First Veg!

The first thing planned, all be it in a pot as we still have no raised beds, is Garlic! This is Amy, as you can see she is mightily impressed with the garlic tubs (there are 3). The problem I am finding is that things unknown are nibbling them...could be the pigeons and magpies I keep seeing in the veg garden, or it could be the dreaded rats! One more week of activity and I shall call the council to do a proper investigation in the area, the only activity I can now see is the occasional dropped nibbled food stuff but I can't grow food if something is going to piddle on it or dig it up.