Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Successful Cake Number Two!
Turned out well, in fact it turned out brilliantly and is probably the nicest coffee and walnut cake I have ever had and I'm not trying to be big headed. Nice height, even size, gooey and moist but not under-cooked...yes indeed it is another sure fire WI winner!! Obviously I won't be divulging the recipe in case I decide to make my fortune in cakes (if book writing doesn't pay the bills) but have a look at the pictures and be amazed. YUM.
Monday, 26 October 2009
Autumn Colours at Westonbirt Arboretum
Enjoy the photos...
Thursday, 22 October 2009
- Plan earlier - yes but I still need to plan even more...with a 4mx20m lottie on my hands I'll be planning til the cows come home (if I was allowed to have them on the plot!).
- Start sowing earlier and think about staggering the sowing (although this didn't work a jot with broadies as they all ended up cropping together) - staggered crops such as radish, lettuce and beetroot but this still didn't work well; perhaps I need to stagger them further apart as they all ended up cropping at the same time. I think staggering works along as you eat the veg at the appropriate time otherwise it all goes to pot!
- Feed, feed and feed some more - yes did this and had interesting results. I think I may have damaged my beans via the added manure as they wrinkled badly and didn't crop well however the soil overall looked amazing...did feeding work? Not 100%.
- Make the brussels bed a bit more firmer - not growing them this year but the PSB is well wedged in.
- Move the beans from their usual spot - yes.
- Don't bother with tomatoes outside - waste of time as it ALWAYS rains in July - success story of 2009; tomatoes were bl**dy brilliant especially the outside ones which were much bigger than the indoor ones.
- Don't bother with aubergines as the weather is never hot enough - yes; it wasn't hot enough and I wouldn't have managed a full-size aubergine.
- Pick things and don't let them go to seed e.g. radishes growing two foot tall - need a new freezer I think! Radishes only grew to 1ft tall this year the lettuces managed 2ft.
Ruminating about 2009
Overall though 2009 has been a rather decent year in terms of weather; whilst we may not have had the scorchers that we've had every now and then in the past decade it certainly felt a bit more like British weather although I could have done with a nicer July but that is just asking too much I think. The early part of the growing season was gorgeous - memories of having to water everything everynight - only to be followed by a hideous wet July. The plants loved it and went potty but it meant everything was out of kilter and subsequently cropped all at once by the end of August/early September. Given the past three years of blighted tomatoes I was fully expecting the same again and admit I turned to the use of Bordeaux Mixture - whilst not considered 'organic' it certainly saved the entire crop from being decimated unlike the rest of the country which suffered terribly. Anyway I'm not too concerned as I don't buy organic fruit and veg, I don't buy organic seeds and I have used glysophate, tomorite and slug pellets - I can hardly start worrying about a little use of Bordeaux Mixture. Now whether or not I try to be organic with Lottie 11a is another matter and one to be perused over the winter...and perhaps in a winter blog when there is little to take photos of in terms of progress.
Monday, 19 October 2009
Practical Uses for Gluts
My Naked Plot
Thursday, 3 September 2009
Cheesy Damsons???
In the garden we have a tree totally laden with them and some are actually still edible whilst the rest are rapidly mouldering (a word?) away to the joy of the wasps who seem to particularly like the goo that oozes from them. I was thinking about damson jam, damson gin (more on damsons and booze in a later post), damson crumble perhaps but no I plumped for that well-known delicacy damson cheese!! Apparently quince cheese or membrillo is well known but damson cheese seems to be more a rarity although when I googled it recipes appeared everywhere!! So is damson cheese cheese? No, couldn't be far from it. The only similarity is that it can be sliced and so can cheese but then so can bread and it's not called damson bread is it!!
I digress - I picked 2 kg of damsons from said tree in the garden and put them in a big pan with 4tblsp of water to simmer. After only ten minutes and a few times bashing with a wooden spoon they had reduced to a perfect mush.
This perfect mush was then pushed through a sieve to get all the gooey puree and juice out - this took ages as I did it bit by bit to make sure I got as much goo as possible.
For every 500ml of goo I added 350gm sugar and returned to the pan. I simmered it gently to get the sugar to dissolve and then let it continue to simmer (making sure the mixture does not stick to the bottom) until I could make sticky goo part on the bottom of the pan. As someone in another post has commented this does not have to be a Moses' parting of the seas i.e. it doesn't have to stay parted just leave a momentary channel.
I placed it into two flat containers from the indian restaurant and left to cool; after a night in the fridge it is rock solid and delicious - note the tester's evidence. YUM!!!
Can't wait to eat it on hot buttered toast (thick and white of course), with roast lamb instead of redcurrant jelly and with cheese - won't I look posh when I bring this out on a cheese board!!!
Monday, 17 August 2009
Silly Season
The long awaited summer (ahem...fingers crossed) is bringing with it a glut of beans and all the tomatoes changing at once. I can see them now - they've all been hanging back until now and then BOOM time to ripen!! At least with both tomatoes and beans the freezer comes in very handy or it would if it was empty...hence the manic manufacturing of rhubarb crumble, defrosting of blueberries for breakfast (yeugh - beloved husband can have those...what on earth was I thinking about when I bought them??) and using up of ancient stock which probably could do with being used up anyway! Will there be enough space in the freezer or will we need to buy a new one? Only time will tell.
Thursday, 13 August 2009
Who Needs Leaves???
Unfortunately one of the plants looked a little blackened on the stem so rather than risk the possibility of blight the plant was quickly removed this morning. I'm still not 100% sure it was blight but there was one black and rotten tomato (removed two days ago) and the stem looked a little iffy HOWEVER it looked perfectly healthy further up the stem. Anyway there was only one decent sized tomato on the stalk so I decided on balance it was worth the loss.
I'm going to cover up the stalk and hope that if there was any blight it won't spread through the roots...there are FAR too many of those to remove and is not really very practical.
Always remember to clean your tools - my secateurs are currently soaking in bleach!
Wednesday, 12 August 2009
Going Bananas in my Pyjamas!
This morning I was out in the garden in my pyjamas trying to convince the damn things to go red using the well-known 'you-WILL-ripen' staring technique. I find that this highly therapeutic technique is not only widely used throughout gardening circles but is often applied with slightly different end results in mind in the kitchen when waiting for the kettle to boil and in the rest of house when waiting for paint to dry.
Monday, 10 August 2009
117 Green Tomatoes Hanging on the Wall
Outdoor Purple Cherokee.
I am cultivating a wonderful crop of green tomatoes - green beefsteaks, green stripy ones, green slightly different stripy ones, green pear-shaped ones...the list is endless of beautiful green tomatoes.
Lovely green Ananas Noire.
We have had some visitors along the way...
And we've also had the odd crisis - here the bamboo canes had started to rot and collapsed under the weight of the tomatoes. I had to remove a lot of foliage and just hope that there was still connective tissue in the stem!
Happy days have eventually arrived on my birthday when a telephone call came through from my sister declaring a national celebration because...I had a yellow tomato and one turning red...or was it purple??
Back After Three Months!
We were away for two weeks in June and the tomatoes were just in their infancy so our fabulous next door neighbour kindly watered them whilst we were away - we had spent a small fortune on irrigation equipment so all she had to do was literally flick a switch and after half an hour switch it off again. She was great though and watered all the young plants which I had not had a chance to plant out - it certainly helps to have a garden-lover as a neighbour. For two weeks after the hols I enjoyed the luxury of being unemployed and I got a thoroughly well-deserved two weeks of hot, hot and phew goddam it's hot weather. I developed a lovely I-know-its-bad-for-me-but-I-like-it tan just through pottering in the garden during the day; in fact it was so hot that I actually heeded advice and stayed out of the midday sun. I'm neither a mad dog nor an EnglishMAN.
I managed to get my cucumbers in at last - they survived me being away but they really needed to go into larger containers. I chose the walkway past the shed as a perfect place, which would get nice and warm and keep them toasty and happy. I didn't have much success with the cukes last year inside with only three fruits being viable. I was hoping my Long Whites would be better outside this year.
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Busy as a Bee
I read somewhere that courgettes can be just as hungry as runner beans so would adore the same pre-planting treatment we would give our beans.
I then filled them in and built up 'molehills' on top of the trench. I'll plant the courgette into the molehill so that when I water them the water will run into the surrounding moats instead of hanging around need the main stem and rotting the plant.
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
Where Does the Sun Shine?
2.15pm
5.30pm
The hellebores have bloomed marvellously and continue to do so, incidentally on my lunchtime walk yesterday I spotted a stunning variety which was double, if not triple flowered - beautiful!! In the shady patch I have planted a few primroses which are thriving - more so than the ones in the sunnier opposite side. Additionally I planted five Athyrium or fern on Sunday including Ursula's Red, Burgundy Lace, Lady in Red and Ghost, I do hope they thrive like the existing ones in there already. The Euphorbia is also do so well and spreading quite happily, which I don't mind about as they produce huge lime-green bracts which lighten up that patch throughout spring and early summer.
The sunnier right side is this year's potato patch but it cheers me that we could happily use it for a flower garden without many problems although it is more moist than further down; in a hot dry year though that would be a bonus rather than an issue. We just need that hot dry year!
Here are my potato trenches; the three varieties are in: Red Duke of York, Maris Peer and Pink Fir Apple. No signs of them yet but I do keep looking...
I'm interested to see how they deal with growing there; they get the water from rains although the trench closest to the hedge only 'just' so I think I will need to water that one more.
I was going to plant some early dwarf beans once the daffs have gone but they are only just flowering (I planted them late). I think Rocquencourt will look nice there and perhaps some Borlotti.