And the prize for knobbliest spud goes to......

Me!
Well, it would if I entered it in a competition!
I've reached that time of year when I can serve up meals almost entirely produced by me and it's a wonderful feeling. What's more, I find I'm reaching this happy point earlier each year!

This very knobbly spud is a 'pink fir apple' and I am getting the heaviest crop ever from these at the moment. They are delicious steamed or boiled but for a real treat, they make the most fantastic big and lumpy chips! It seems the early frostnip they got did no harm at all.

Yesterday dinner was a plate of these, beetroots and carrots from my allotment with hard boiled eggs from my chickens and mint and chives from the garden. (okay, I bought the butter but even so!) 

We often have eggs for breakfast but when we don't our shopbought breakfast cereal is studded with berries from the garden, gleefully collected by little flower in her pyjamas on her way back from letting the hens out.

 We've had a little robin redbreast keeping us company in the garden for the last couple of weeks.

We've watched as she hopped round the garden collecting bits and pieces for her nest that she built in Wurzel's shed.
We brought horse hair back with us from the stables and put some on the ground beside us and she came right up and got it.

We bought live mealworms to keep her strength up while she sat on the eggs and were so excited when those little fledglings started bombing round the garden!
One came close to being a chicken snack so little flower had to pick it up and show it back to the nest....quite an experience for an eight year old London kid!

  

I've started processing the purple garlic that had to be harvested early because it split.
For the first batch I decided to make myself  some 'umami' paste. I cooked the cloves gently in oil, added herbs, balsamic vinegar, anchovies, horseradish, parmesan and worcestshire sauce.

When it cooled I blitzed it all and put it in the freezer. It tastes really good but not very garlicky or strong which is a bit disappointing. 
I'm hoping that the oil will make it easy to take just a spoonful of this paste to liven up risottos or to add to basil for a super quick pesto.

So, all in all June has been a good month. Plenty of fresh things to eat, wildlife nesting in the garden, the weather is evening out now and we're all looking forward to the long summer holidays. 

Even the dog looks chilled out! He spends hours like this, asleep on the decking.

 It ain't a bad life eh?

Fruitless furtling

As the rain continues to fall I've been busy up at the plot and in the garden at home. We've gone from drought conditions to ark building weather and I'm getting soaked so often my feet are in danger of webbing!

Earlier this week I harvested the last of the winter peas. They were a variety called 'Douce Provence', sown in January and they did really well in frozen clay! I can't tell you how they taste cooked because none ever made it that far, I graze on them straight from the pod while I work. By the time they fill the pod they have lost their sweetness but at this stage the chickens love the peas and the horses enjoy the pods. Nothing much gets wasted hereabouts!

The sudden change of weather has wreaked havoc on the purple garlic. Almost every bulb swelled too quickly and split. This hasn't happened to me before so I'm at a bit of a loss. I assume the bulbs won't store well dried in this condition so what shall I do with fifty or so bulbs of immature, split garlic?
So far, strangely, the white variety is unaffected.

Some crops though are lovin' the rain. Remember the potatoes so badly frosted in April?
Well they have recovered and bushed up and are just about to flower. I had an optimistic furtle today (furtle is a slightly rude, very old fashioned English word for a furtive fumble that has now come to be commonly used for rooting around for spuds) but sadly it seems that the lush top growth is not evidence of fat little tubers beneath. All I turned up was a handful of slugs.

 Tomatoes too are enjoying the rain. These are gardeners delight, always the first to come ready. I can't wait to taste my fist home grown tomato of the year!

                                                         

Today I took advantage of the rain to get started on my 'lasagne gardening' project. I'm doing this as a last ditch attempt to make the area in front of my shed productive. 
Currently the ground is so hard as to be impenetrable and if this doesn't work I'm going to return it to it's original use as a car park!
For anyone who's never made a lasagne bed, here's how I did it.


I've been getting my neighbours to save me their newspapers and I laid these down directly onto the weedy, scrubby grass. The area is on quite a slope so I bordered the lowest edge with clods of clay to stop the whole thing washing away.


Each layer must be thoroughly soaked before moving on to the next so it's the perfect job for a rainy day.
The next layer is manure.
This is to lure the worms up from the ground through the paper to start working your bed for you.

After the manure is soaked you add a brown layer, something very water absorbent. I use Aubiose (shredded hemp horse bedding) This is from the henhouse and contains some poultry manure too.
Once that's good and wet add a thick layer of green waste, veggie peelings, grass cuttings that sort of thing.

Here you can see the four layers. Paper, manure, absorbent, green.
The final layer (for now) is a thick blanket of straw. Hay or dried grass cuttings would be fine too. This will keep your bed warm and moist for some speedy composting action.
In a week or two this will slump down and I will probably add more layers.
Then, in the autumn, I plan to move my raspberry plants here. I'll let you know how they get on.

 

At long last....

We have finally had some rain, great drenching cloudbursts with thunder and lightening that flattened the plants and soaked the washing and I am oh! so grateful!

 Hattie, our beautiful welsummer went off lay for a few days (or so we thought) but it seems that with three broody pekins hogging the nest box she was sneaking off to build her own nest! A couple of times we've been unable to find her in our small garden, even with three of us searching. I followed her the other day as she toddled round the rhubarb and through the solidago to a spot just behind her favourite redcurrant bush and found her stash of eggs.
I'm so impressed that this bird, hatched in an incubator somehow knows how to do this...and do it so well! We would never have found this secret place!

I think I have amassed enough seedlings now and the threat of frost is pretty much over (touch wood quick) so it is time to start planting out.
Earlier this year I went to Seedy Sunday with my friend Dom and we chose some weird and wonderful seed varieties to try.
Dom has a conservatory and a greenhouse so agreed to start off all our tomatoes and squashes etc. while I concentrate on hardier stuff. I've been transporting seedlings back and forth between our houses and I think we each now have a pretty good mix. So now I know what my family will be eating this year and barring catastrophes we should be eating very well!

Dom has sown a lovely selection of tomatoes. We are growing;
Roma
Tigerella (my absolute favourite) 
Black cherry
Mille fleur
Purple Ukraine
Gardeners delight
Muskovich
Costoluto genovest
Cuor di buie
I also swapped some cabbages with another plot holder for a Marmande.
There are also a tray of unidentified toms (labelling issues) so maybe some surprises.
We have five different types of winter squash, three types of cucumber, sweetcorn, assorted beans and peas, grain amaranth, cape gooseberries, various colours of carrot and beetroot, fancy lettuces, spuds, all manner of cabbages and cauliflowers and the regulars, garlic, spring onions and leeks, perrenial friut bushes, raspberry canes and such.

  My parsnips failed to germinate in the dry heat of March so, inspired by my friend Flo, I'm soaking the seeds on kitchen paper until they shoot then transplanting them quick.
I'll let you know how they get on (bet you can't wait) well, just in case you're as weird as me!



And for those of you who aren't enjoying picture after picture of seedlings, here's a shot of Teddy stealing kisses from Little flower as she grooms him. I'm off to try and find room for forty odd tomato plants, 20 squash plants, 20 sweetcorn..............

 

Conspiracy theory

We British are obsessed with the weather. 
We talk about it all the time. It is the basis for polite conversation on the commute to work..."Morning! turned out nice again" is one of very few accepted phrases exchanged by strangers on the 6.32 to London each morning.
And yet, somehow, the total lack of mad March storms and April showers have gone unmentioned, perhaps even unnoticed!

That's just weird!

We still have not had a single drop of rain round our way. Not one. April is always the wettest month of the year so to have absolutely no rain, you would think, would be news.
Not world news, I'm not suggesting for one moment it's as serious as the flooded Mississippi, the Spanish or Japanese earthquakes or the American typhoons, but locally I feel it deserves a mention.

 My allotment is on clay.
Thick, claggy, orange clay and it's a bit of a nightmare.
Three seasons in it's not really improving at all and I'm starting to get discouraged.
I've imported manure, double dug, trench composted, made mountains of leaf mould, mulched heavily with straw, turned over rough for winter, and still each spring I'm planting into builders rubble.
These photos (ignore the date, they were taken yesterday) show what I mean.

This is never going to be a 'friable loam' is it?
Whatever I add, this is what I get, fist sized chunks that stick to spade when wet or unbreakable as concrete when dry.
Either way, it's bloody hard work.


The books keep telling me that clay is full of life and potential, that with some organic matter will be unlocked....but I've been piling on organic matter for three years and nothing is happening.

In the garlic bed, where I dug out the first layer of clay and replaced it entirely with compost and manure (topped up twice a year) the clay foundation is sucking the moisture down to leave great chasms on the surface.
I would normally mulch this bed in April when the soil has had a chance to warm and the ground is good and wet, but I'm still waiting for the good and wet part.

Another casualty of this dry spell, my comfrey has developed rust. It grows just near the tree line and I hoped it's long taproots would be able to find moisture but it has really been struggling for a few weeks. I've tried watering but the water just runs straight off down the hill. It was wilting for a while before the rust arrived.
I just hope the young oak tree behind it is coping better.

One or two of the shallots in the raised beds are bolting and going to seed.
I'm thinking I might let this one go and harvest the seed for a bumper crop next year. These are the legendary 'Banana shallots' absolutely massive and easy to peel. I couldn't get hold of them from any seed seller, garden centre etc. Folk advertised them but when they arrived they were bog standard so I bought these from a greengrocers.
I put them in their own little raised bed so that any disease on them wouldn't contaminate the whole plot, it's always a risk with 'shop bought' and they're doing really well.
I've never grown shallots from seed before....if it works though I'll be well happy!




And still, I'm worrying about this weather....or rather, I'm worrying about the silence about this weather. By now we should be getting those public information adverts from 'Thames Water' on how to conserve the stuff. There should be talk of hosepipe bans and the papers should have headlines misquoting the met office. This is, after all, the driest spring certainly of my life.
Agriculture in the South East must be suffering, surely there will be price hikes and shortages later in the year so why so quiet? hmm?
It's making me paranoid.

Busy, busy, busy

It's that time of year again!
There are chicks in the dining room, seedlings going in and out, the garden is crawling with froglets that are being stalked by chickens and though the days are long they are never long enough!

Racey Lacey hatched her chick. Of the five eggs only one was fertile but we smuggled some chicks underneath her on day 21.
She's now proudly raising two seramas, a sebright and a pekin.
I'm a little worried about the sebright. It just isn't thriving. The others are flittering about and exploring their world but the little sebright is still tiny, seems a little wobbly on her feet and keeps getting pasted vent.
She's the dark chick at 6 o'clock in the picture.

Little flower is still blissfully in love with Teddy.
Luckily it appears the feeling is entirely mutual! 
Teddy is really enjoying all the attention. At this time of year as he's losing his winter coat he gets itchy if not groomed each day so he comes running as soon as Little flower bursts into the paddock calling his name.
Then he waits for her to fit his bridle and they skip off happily together for his hour of pampering!

 


The street party was a great success!
Turns out my neighbours are all bonkers!
There were plenty of games, sack races, tug-o-wars and such.
We had face painting, tombola and raffle.
The children used chalk to colour in the road, draw round each other and write messages to 'Will and Kate'

Everyone brought out mountains of food.
These cupcakes took ages to ice!
Me and Wurzel cracked open the homebrew at about 3pm.....it all got a bit hazy after that!


Together we all raised lots of money in support of  'Help 4 Heroes' a charity providing care for injured British soldiers.




Up on the plot.....
Here in the South East we have had the driest March and April on record. In fact, we have had only one brief shower in the last eight weeks! Normally we depend upon 'April showers'  to provide a large proportion of our annual rainfall so drought conditions so early in the season is proving disastrous for seed germination.

To add to our woes, high daytime temperatures are making those that do germinate bolt and go straight to seed and (adding insult to injury) we are still getting the occasional night time frost.
The potatoes in the picture have been badly frosted...I've earthed them up now and can only hope they will recover.

All is not doom and gloom though.
There is always optimism enough for gardeners in springtime! My house, so dark and cold in the winter is proving to be the perfect place to 'hatch' trays and trays of seedlings. My dear friend Dom has a large conservatory to bring them on.
Between us I think we have it covered. I care for the brassicas, fennel and salad leaves, potting on (and on and on) until conditions improve, Dom cares for the sun lovers, the chillis and squashes, melons and cape gooseberries. And there are sometimes delightful surprises at this time of year! I found this splendid purple flower at the edge of my fruit bed the other day. It's quite tall (about 18 inches) and closes quickly if you cast a shadow over it. I've no idea what it is but I'd love to find out.
Do you know?


The best thing about spring is the sudden energy boost afforded by sunny days. The children are boisterous and eager to get out there and play! Poor Wurzel is usually the climbing frame of choice giving me precious time to gaze at the chicks and marvel at seedlings emerging from the soil.

Happy growing blogland!

  

Can horses smile?

I think they can!
Maybe because spring is here or maybe he just likes his new home. Perhaps (and I realise this is unlikely) he was really pleased to see me but whatever the reason, I'm pretty sure Teddy grinned at me yesterday!

Teddy, a little gelding, along with a fourteen hand mare called Mary have come to live at our allotments. They are very, very welcome. The long time resident, Mr Chips lost his companion (Gracie) before Christmas when she died of a twisted gut and he has been in a deep depression ever since. To see him cantering and frolicking with his new friends is a real joy! What's more, Teddy is exactly the right size for little flower to groom and he's so friendly and gentle, nuzzling her and stealing kisses! Little flower is ecstatic!

Back home, our eldest chicken, Boudicca, died last weekend. She was five and a half which is really old for a hybrid. They're life expectancy is three years. 
Anyway, we took the opportunity to get two more big girls to keep our pekins in check!

 

Meet Hattie the welsummer.
She lays beautiful, large dark brown, spotty eggs.

and Miranda, the light sussex. Miranda still looks a bit moth eaten bless her. She lived with a cockerel and was evidently his favourite!
She hasn't laid yet but we are expecting a large, pure white egg. And I'm sure that with a little TLC (and no randy cockerel) she'll look and feel a lot better in a week or two.

The chap we buy our hens from has become a friend over the years and as we were leaving he gave us some hatching eggs to put under our broody.  They are supposed to be three lemon sebrights and two buff orpington bantams but egg number 4 seems a bit big for a bantam so we'll wait and see!

Racey Lacey, our ever ready broody has been moved indoors and is patiently sitting on them. She's a very determined little mum and we have to forcibly lift her each morning to make her eat, drink and poop!
Today is day 7 of 21 and we'll probably candle the eggs tonight to remove any duds.



Our home is full of seedlings and Union Jacks this week! 
The Royal Wedding is approaching and I am organizing a street party. Street parties are are a very English phenomenon and involve a group of neighbours dragging their tables and chairs out into the road to celebrate together. We string red, white and blue bunting from lamp post to lamp post, make mountains of sandwiches, fairy cakes and trifle. The children get to play without fear of traffic, the old folk get prizes for living here longest and there are raffles to raise money for good causes....ours will raise for injured British servicemen and women.
So do me a favour?
Pray to whatever God you believe in for good weather in London on 29th of April! 

Hosts of bobbing daffodils!

So, apologies first....February was a horrible month and having been raised with the old adage  'If you've nothing nice to say, Say nothing'   that's exactly what I did.
But now it's March, spring is springing and it's impossible not to be cheered by the sight of bobbing daffodils so I'm back, feeling a bit fragile but optimistic nevertheless.

Let's get the bad news out of the way first.
In February my bees died. Having made it through the coldest winter in decades, having thwarted the attentions of a hungry woodpecker, having eluded human vandals and withstood the dreaded varroa mite they got over excited one sunny afternoon and broke their cluster early. They flew about collecting pollen from the crocuses and Queen Bea foolishly started laying eggs.
When the temperature plummeted (as it does in February....every year!) a large number of bees refused to return to the cluster and remained instead diligently caring for the brood and there we found them two days later, frozen to death.
I was quite unprepared for how sad I felt when I found them. It's not as though they were pets! Yet a silent hive is a terrible thing and the sight of the dead bees 'bums up' in the comb where they'd tried to warm....and the waste! there was a litre and half of beautiful honey in there and so much new pollen...I was gutted. I still am.
Still, onwards and upwards. I've ordered a new colony (ready in May) and might even pick up a swarm in April as well. Lets hope for better luck next time eh?

 Up at the plot things are picking up. The purple sprouting broccoli is already showing signs of budding and (as shown here in this totally rubbish photo!) the garlic is growing strongly.
I'm hoping that the early snowfall last December will result in fat bulbs with lots and lots of cloves.

 
 This picture is my 'elephant garlic' actually a type of leek that looks and tastes like garlic only much, much bigger!
I bought a bulb (it was expensive too) the other year, split into eight cloves and planted. 
Only two grew.
I ate one (oven baked and delicious) to see if we liked them and whether they were worth the effort (yes and yes) then split and planted the other last September for one last try.
I now have eight growing strongly and two weak ones so I'm well pleased! At five quid a bulb to buy (if you're lucky enough to find them) these are one of those crops that make me feel very smug to have an allotment!

Elsewhere on the plot I'm off to a slow start. My arthritis has flared up quite badly and I'm simply too vain to use my crutches in public so I'm not as far ahead with my digging as I'd like. I have sown some early peas, beetroot and carrots. It's a bit too early actually and weather is still very unstable so I've only sown a little of each along with some onion sets just to cheer myself up really and anyway....you never know your luck!
The currant bushes are beginning to leaf up but as they're not very photogenic I thought I'd leave you with a picture of the crocuses that snuggle amongst them.
Fantastic little flowers aren't they?
 

Time to get cracking!

So the decorations have come down and the Christmas tree has been turned into mulch. Everyone is back at work or school....
This is the season for planning. When the weather is awful and the soil is claggy there can be nothing better than snuggling up on the sofa in your Christmas slippers with dog beside you and a good book.

I have a couple of favourites that I return to again and again.
John Seymour's 'Self Sufficiency' is one. It has a lot of sensible advice in it but that's not why I read it. This is my daydream book that I study regularly so I'll be prepared when I win the lottery and buy that smallholding in the country.
(I don't actually play the lottery so winning it is unlikely!)

My current book of choice though is 'Gaia's Garden' by Toby Hemenway. It was a gift from my big brother who is kind enough not to be surprised that his sister now dresses like a scarecrow and talks passionately about brassicas.
Anyway, this book is a real gem, inspiring and practical and a fantastic introduction to permaculture principles.

This is a subject I've been trying to learn about but not having hundreds of pounds and unlimited childcare to go on courses I was struggling to move forward. I've read the book cover to cover twice already and am busy redesigning my back garden around my new apple tree that big bro bought me to go with the book.

Today though, the weather was glorious! Bitterly cold but crystal clear with that harsh winter sunshine that makes it hard to see.

Today was a day for being outside!

Little flower was keen to come with me and made a good job of raking the fallen leaves while I turned over and weeded one of the long beds. 

There was some damage to the beehive.

I suspect a woodpecker but I'm not entirely certain.

It looks almost as though something has been chiseling at the place where the brood box meets the hive floor....it's not a round hole like (I imagine) a woodpecker makes and thankfully it doesn't go all the way through....yet.

I wrapped chicken wire crop covers around the hive which will thwart woody if he is the culprit...but I wonder if it may have a rat in which case Queen Bea and the girls are probably doomed.

 Little flower distracted Mr Chips, explaining in patronising tones the perils of coming too close to a hive of agitated bees so I was able to work without hindrance.

I did, for a moment, wonder at the wisdom of letting a small child march up to a stallion but he seemed to listen intently and when she'd finished he nodded slightly and rested his great head on her chest so she could tickle his ears.

I never should have let her watch the Horse Whisperer!

  Finally, before heading home we enjoyed a hot chocolate break over by the shed where we were joined by a fat little robin on the ground, there was a very tuneful thrush in the tree to my left and above her, right at the top, sat a distinctly shifty looking woodpecker!

  

 

Well, that's that!

2010 is finished....how was it for you?
We had a pretty good year, grew stuff, made things, laughed, sung and didn't cry much!
We're all healthy, we're all together and we're starting the new year with no debt and a whole heap of optimism.

Winter celebrations are a big deal in this household. We are not at all religious but we join in with christmas, winter solstice and any other parties we can think of. 
We start on December 1st, making decorations, baking, making and wrapping gifts. 

My children argue less, the house smells and looks lovely and this year we were treated to early snowfall that turned 'Thomas' my topiary hedge man into a very special snowman!
I do so love this time of year!

Winter is also a lovely time to be up the plot.
Yesterday I spent a peaceful afternoon there, completely alone apart from Mr Chips, the old horse.
The fog obscured the view of the London skyline, and muffled any noise.
I won't pretend I got much done, a little digging....moved some manure and planted the last of the spring bulbs.
Truth is I spent most of my time sitting by my little shed brewing coffee with my new 'kelly kettle' (a present from Wurzel) and watching the birds and the foxes squabble and play. I can honestly say it's the most relaxed I've felt in years!
And speaking of relaxed, I'll leave with a picture of our soppy old dog Jacob in his favourite spot (when he thinks I'm not looking)
Happy New Year everyone!