Garden 2013 no 6

Garden 2013 no 6

As I said in the previous garden update, I spent the month of May in France. It rained a lot while I was in away, but this is Scotland, and I’m pretty certain it rained even more here. Thanks to the heavy rain throughout May, I came home to a jungle. I’m not complaining, every thing I planted before I left had grown, but so had every thing else. 

The grass was knee high and took several attempts at cutting and there were more weeds than my little veggie plot had ever seen.

The pond looked lovely with forgetmenots all around and the water marigolds spilling out of the pond. But the water was so high it was overflowing at one end.  On the plus side, the radishes were ready to eat as soon as I arrived home and the strawberries will not be far behind, they already have lots of flowers.

It took me a couple of days to cut the grass, weed the shallots and then weed the little plot behind the pond. I planted garlic sets, red onions sets and beetroot there before I went away.

The garlic and red onions have done very well but needed weeding and the beetroot, which was planted from seed,  had done so well in the rain they needed thinning out as well as weeding. 

This little chappie was my constant gardening companion for a few days.

The bags are all doing ok, the radishes are ready to eat. The rocket seems to be slower, I just hope it didn’t get too wet, the spring onions are looking good, they needed thinning out but they are fine and the beetroot I planted in bags also looks good. The carrots are coming up very well in the tubs. It looks as if I accidently left some potatoes in there because I have potato plants growing in there with the carrots, which I wasn’t expecting. I resorted to buying some little lettuce plants last weekend because the rocket is no where near ready and it would take too long to grow lettuce from seed. I bought a tray of green lettuce and a tray of red lettuce, the type where  you can just pick leaves and leave the plant in the ground.  I need some green to go with my radishes.
And on the ‘non eating’ front, I came home to find the London Pride and the Bluebells in full bloom down the side of the garden. 

Lastly…………….this beast of a plant nestling between the Pink Campion and the Bluebells is Mullein. I scattered seeds from wild Mullien on the ground two years ago and when nothing happened I thought the seeds were dead. 

I didn’t know Mullien takes two years to grow. They are fantastic plants, described on good old Wikipedia as; ‘’a hairy biennial plant that can grow to 2 metres tall or more. Its small yellow flowers are densely grouped on a tall stem, which bolts from a large rosette of leaves’’. I first saw this plant growing outside a ruinous, abandoned farm building in rural France and fell in love with it straight away. I’m so pleased I now have these in my garden. Its old fashioned herbal name is lungwort which reflects mullein’s traditional use as a treatment for relieving cough and congestion of those with minor respiratory ailments. Mullein is recommended by herbalists for treatment of cough, sore throat, and colds. Not of course that I intend to use it, I just like looking at it and as it grown to its full height, I’ll be posting more pictures of it.

Garden 2012 no 22

Garden 2012 no 21

There’s still stuff to do in the garden before real winter sets in and the ground freezes. Last Sunday I carried out boring routine tasks, I cleared the paved area of weeds and grass and removed the deep rooted weeds from around the fence. I tidied up around the outside of the fence and cut back the over hanging plants. I pulled the last of the spinach and lettuce and threw them in the compost because they were too bitter to eat. 

I’ve collected all the compost and filled up the empty tubs ready for next year, I’ll just have to feed and fertilize before planting. I missed most of the Tay berries and black berries this year because the fruit came when I was recovering from the eye surgery. The branbles were taking over and beginning to wind themselves around the two gooseberry bushes. 

My solution was to replant the gooseberry bushes in pots ready for next year and train the blackberry and Tayberry brambles around the fence where the gooseberries were. I’m hoping for a bumper crop next year because I missed the crop this year. I dug up the carrots; they were the only crop left in the ground. These are the weirdest carrots I’ve ever seen, no idea why they grew like that but the smell when they were dug up and washed was delicious. 

They may look like monster carrots but I think they will taste good.  I’m going to make carrot and coriander soup, that way their poor misshapen bodies will make no difference, as long as they taste good the soup will be good. After digging and bottling the beetroot last week I made beetroot soup using the stock the beetroot were cooked in, some red beetroot stalks, some beetroot leaves, some of my garlic, some of my red onions and some vegetable stock.  It’s a deep red colour and has a satisfying earthy taste. I ate some with home made garlic bread and saved some in the freezer

Next Sunday, weather permitting, I hope to finish off tidying up and tying back the fruit canes, clear the vegetable patch and start digging ready for the winter.

Garden 2012, no 21, Cooking with the Harvest

Garden 2012, no 21

Cooking with the harvest

It’s as if someone flicked a switch, the first two weeks of October were like a real Indian Summer; and now its cold, wet and miserable. The season changed in the blink of an eye, like flicking a switch. The heating is on, the winter woollies are out and the soup is on the stove. No more nipping out across the road to the shop in your indoor clothes, now its coat and shoes just to put the rubbish out. If you need milk or bread, or any thing else from the shop, remember to pick it up on the way home from work. Because once  indoors, it’s into the baggy, warm, indoor clothes, turn up the heating, close the blinds, close the curtains, lock the door and turn up the TV to drown out the sound of the wind.
Fortunately; I found time in my busy schedule to harvest every thing from the garden.  I’ve picked the last of the beetroot, last of the onions and last of the fruit. Actually, there are a couple of lettuce and spinach plants left in the ground, but they are old and taste bitter, so for now, they are staying in the ground until I get out and start digging.
I’ve done lots of cooking with the produce. I’ve been saving the fruit in the freezer, especially the rhubarb, until I had harvested as much as possible and could use it all together in a huge end of season jam making session.  

The Rhubarb was mixed with the fallen apples from my friends’ garden, I had bags and bags of apples, none of them fit to eat raw but perfect for jam making. I used some of the apples, all of the Rhubarb, a couple of lemons  and a generous amount of ginger and made jam, eight large jars of it, and it tastes delicious. I did have a little help with the labels.
And once that was done, I made sweet white jam. This time I used all of the gooseberry, all of the white currant and some more of the apples and another couple of lemons.

 No ginger this time, this white jam has a delicate sweet taste that I wanted to keep. There wasn’t as much white jam but poured into small jars it went a surprisingly long way, I filled 11 small jars in total. 
The fancy white frills around the tops are just paper cup cake cases placed upside down over the top of the jars before the lids are screwed down.
On to the Beetroot;
It was dug from the ground, boiled in the pan and bottled in spiced vinegar. 

This time I made another 5 large bottles of beetroot. Last time it was 3 large bottles and 4 small bottles, not a bad total for such a small garden and difficult year.
The last of this years cooking with produce wasn’t exactly cooking. I made eight bottles of infused olive oil. Which; I hope to use both as a salad dressing, and to cook with. Each bottle was filled with extra virgin olive oil to which I added one sprig of rosemary, one sprig of mint ( chocolate mint), a couple of garlic cloves, a couple of slices of red onion, and a few pieces of chopped red chilli. Every thing except the chilli came from my garden and the chilli came from my daughters greenhouse.
I still have quite a lot of garlic and some red onion drying out in the kitchen. At the moment I’m not sure what to do with them but I’ll probably just store them in the cupboard next to my potatoes that are already stored

So………..grand total for this year is’ bottled beetroot, pickled shallots, two lots of jam, herb oil, stored potatoes, stored garlic, stored onions, a bag of frozen broad beans and a bag of frozen spinach.  What I need now is a fairly dry day at the weekend to start weeding, tidying and digging ready for next year and before the ground freezes.

Garden 2012 no 20.

Garden 2012, no 20

A brief update, the seasons are changing, the temperature has dropped and the nights are longer. When I wake up there is a chill in the air, we still have nice days, in fact we have some extraordinarily nice days for this time of year, we have had a true Indian Sumner. But however warm and sunny the day, by late afternoon its over, the shadows are long, the temperature drops, the sun lowers, the light begins to fade and the sky turns red.
I spent a couple of hours in the garden yesterday, which as it turns out was exactly the right thing to do because today it’s too cold, wet and windy to even think about gardening. The wind has been getting higher all evening and now I can hear it howling around the houses, slamming gates shut and bouncing bins down the street. When the weather is like this I’m so grateful to be warm and dry indoors. 
Yesterday was different; it was a perfect gardening day. The little strip of grass around the vegetable plot was overgrown and took forever to trim back with my hand mower. Most of the veg is finished now, I still have a few onions to dig and the strawberry runners need to be sorted, but virtually every thing else is gone except the pest deterrent geraniums.

 I’ve hardly been out since surgery and things are quite neglected out there. Something I will have to do soon is empty out one of the compost bins, sift and store the compost and make the bin ready for the next lot. 

I have so much garden waste lying in heaps around the garden I do need to get it sorted before the temperature plummets too far and it all freezes.  I even tidied up the shed, and while emptying every thing out, came across my old bike right at the back. 

I’ve not ridden a bike in years, as a young person I used to cycle every where. I should get this old bike serviced and start using it again, cycling is supposed to be excellent exercise and I’m sure a couple of new tires and some brake cables wouldn’t cost too much. Maybe cycling should be something else to plan for my retirement.This is the amount of shallots and beetroot I have bottled so far, the shallots have finished bow but there is more beetroot still in the ground.  

My next kitchen project will be to make herb oil. I’m still drying the bag full of rosemary and yesterday I lifted the garlic from the ground. I think garlic and rosemary oil sounds like an excellent idea. Oh…………..and yesterday I saw my first robin of the year, he sat in the apple tree and watched while I worked.

Garden 2012, no 17

Garden 20112 no 17

So here I am, now 17 days post surgery and at last beginning to feel more like my normal self. So much like my normal self that I’m getting very agitated about the state of my garden. I may be feeling better, but heavy gardening is out of the question. I spent about an hour and a half out there today, the weather was lovely and it felt so good to be back outside.

The first thing I did was check the pond. Its now covered in duck weed but that’s ok, the water underneath is crystal clear, I think the duck weed actually helps clean the water, it puts long thread like roots down into the water and seems to suck up all the impurities.

And to my utter delight, I found a tiny baby frog; it’s so young it still has its baby tadpole tail attached.

I’m worried about the state of the weeds. I’ve kept on top of it all year and now the combination of a couple of weeks neglect and excess rainfall has resulted in weed heaven. I’m afraid by the time I’m fit enough to weed the garden the weeds will have sent down those long roots that are impossible to get rid of. My tub of nasturtiums is completely overrun with weeds and grass. I think the only thing I can do with that tub is too empty it out, remove the weeds, feed the compost and get ready to start again next year. I’m waiting a little while before emptying it out because its producing a lot of seed ready for next year.

The grass was so long you could lose things in it; I did manage to cut the grass because I only have a little strip around the veg plot. It was long and wet and took forever to cut, but I managed. It needs another cut and the edges need doing but it looks better than it did.

I also cut all the dead flowers off the buddleia, that tree is only about 3 or 4 years old and its taking over all ready. If it gets any taller I won’t be able to reach to cut it so I guess next year it will have to be cut right back.

I found myself getting tired in the garden, and I came indoors to make the yoghurt. 

Todays harvest was Lettuce, spinach, beetroot, spring onions, a few nasturtium leaves and a little chocolate mint. The chocolate mint was cut right back before I went into hospital and already it’s covered in new growth. 

Garden 2012 no16

Garden2012 no 16

So now I’m 11 days post surgery and absolutely NOT supposed to be gardening. But I needed to go to the shop which is only across the road and that meant walking though the garden. The first thing I did was to fall over my tub of beetroot, while I was down there, sitting beside it, rubbing my knees and feeling very foolish, I was close enough to notice how badly it needed watering. I thought ‘just doing a bit of watering couldn’t hurt’, and that’s what I intended to do, just a little bit of watering. 

That is until my friend arrived, she’s not a gardener but she knows how much my garden means to me. She agreed to pick the last of the broad beans and pull what was left of the bean plants ready for composting. 

Some of the beans were already going black on the plants, they wouldn’t have lasted much longer. Picking the beans, pulling the plants, collecting the canes and then doing some watering was the only work that was done today, plus pulling a few of the biggest shallots and   beetroot, but it was enough to stop me getting really frantic. 

I couldn’t help noticing the rhubarb needed pulling, some of the lettuce has to come up and some of the Tay berries are ripe. 

The nasturtiums have mostly gone to seed and there is grass growing in their tub.   

And of course the weeds are thriving in my absence.  After my friend helped me out we just sat outside, enjoyed the sunshine and admired the plants. The pond is looking good. It is covered in duckweed now which, as far as establishing a wildlife pond goes, is a very good thing. The water under the duckweed is crystal clear and the tadpoles and baby frogs are loving the cover it gives them.

Today is the first time I have sat in my garden, in the midst of my plants and enjoyed being there for almost two weeks, It was lovely, until big black clouds appeared and blocked the sunshine.

This evening I have bottled my first jar of beetroot and my first jar of shallots. It’s a start and the rest will be OK in the ground for a little longer. I hope I can get back out there soon, my garden needs me.