Snow Joke

Well, what an eventful few days we've had. We missed the first batch of snow down here in the South East but we well and truly got hit last night! I'd been quite disappointed with our measly flakes of snow this week but I couldn't complain this morning - we probably had about 3/4 inches - doesn't sound like much but for London that is pretty good :-)

Of course + snow = - trains! So both the gardeners were at home today. Had a lovely walk in a snow covered Greenwich Park at lunchtime but spent most of the day snug and warm at home.

So whilst you're toasting your toes by the fire give a little thought to the birdies and wildlife out there. They need your help - make sure you top up your feeders and put out fresh water. I've been clearing away the snow in the morning and laying down seed for the ground feeders – blackbirds, robins etc (although the pigeons are having more than their share...)

Peanuts are great and sunflowers seeds too – but if you don't want to shell out left-overs are just as good – high fat is best so cake, biscuits, cheese is a great one - our birds have had Parmesan this week (albeit an out of date one but nevertheless, only the best for the SE10 birds!)

Green Manure

So, it's that time of year – all our veg has pretty much been pulled now - beets, fennel, potatoes, tomatoes and it's all looking rather sparse.

Normally we'd just leave the garden, to overgrow - let it harbour some juicy insects for the birdies over winter. This year though – we'd heard lots of people talk about green manure so we thought we'd check it out.

Green manure is a crop that's grown to benefit the soil. There's lots of different types that can be used to perform several functions. A lot of them have deep penetrative roots that will help break up clay and improve soil structure - great for London gardens. They'll also release nutrients into the soil ready for the next crop and suppress weeds so hopefully that first job of the year will be a little easier!

We've chosen two types, Forgae Rye and Forage Pea. Forage Rye looks a little like wheat – it's very grass like. When it comes to next year, you just loosen the roots and dig it into your soil. Easier said than done I think.... Forage Pea as the name suggests is part of the legume family, again deep roots that break up the soil and good for weed suppression as it has quite a lot of foliage.

We bought our seeds from sow seeds which sounds like a lovely little family run business.

So, it all sounds great. We get to look at something other than bare earth for a few months, bye bye to weeds, hello to lovely nutrients for our veges next year. Everyones a winner? Lets see what we say when we have to dig up the whole garden next year...

Blight Fright!

We thought a week ago that our main crop might have blight. Blight is probably one of the worse diseases you can get and it can wipe out your whole crop. It was the cause of the Irish potato famine and so obviouly we were pretty concerned. I'd seen loads of pictures of the leaves curling at the end and going brown - and this is excatly what we had so hence the worry.

What is blight?
Blight is a fungus – Phytophthora infestans. It's triggered by warm wet conditions and August this year has been great for blight - warm and SO much rain. The first thing are brown patches on the leaves. The tubers can be affected as well and they'll just rot from the skin through the flesh.

What can you do to prevent it?
Well, not much really. It's killed by cold weather so cross your fingers for a few cold days! There are a few chemical treatments Bordeaux mixture which is organically approved but contains copper which probably isn't that good for you... and Diathane 945 which sounds horrid!

The best way to get round is it to choose a variety that is less affected by blight.

Thompsan & Morgan have a good list here.

What can you do to treat it?
Again, not much! If it's just a few leaves that seem to be affected then you can remove those. Whatever you do, don't put them on your compost heap! The spores will love it in there. If possible burn. By pruning this may stop the spores from reaching the tubers (as long as they're well earthed up)

We duly followed instructions and took off any foilage that showed signs of browning. The plants actually look pretty healthy - albeit a little bald now! I'm now not sure that it is actually blight. I've read a few forums and I think we might be lucky...

Watch this space!

Tomato Troubles!

Yes, look at these beauties. Luscious and green and bursting full of summer. Our tomatoes are doing great. Well, SOME of our tomatoes are doing great. It seems we have 3 stages of tomato health in our garden.

The shot above is of the latest plants to be repotted. And because we'd run out of room for hanging baskets we planted them in a potato patio planter. They don't seem to mind, infact I would say they're thriving.

So in order of decline, next on our list is one of the hanging baskets.
Now, they look OK. They definitely don't look healthy. Just OK. This shot is of the hanging basket that's to the right of the shed door. The shot below is the one to the left.
Now, they definitely don't look healthy. I would go so far as to say they don't even look OK. Originally both hanging baskets were looking like the shot above, so we did a little test and fed the one on the right more often than the one on the left. It seems to have worked because the one on the right does look better than the left. But why are they having troubles when the fellas in the patio planter are looking brilliant?

Maybe the depth of the soil?
The plants in the hanging baskets obviously won't have as much room as they would in the patio planter. But we used the baskets last year and had no problems.

Maybe the soil we used?
This year we've only used peat free soil so maybe that's caused a problem. We also lined the baskets with sphagnum moss this year. Again, could that be leeching all the minerals away from the tomatoes?

I checked in the ever helpful Vegetable & Herb Expert by Dr. D G Hessayon and we think it might be magnesium deficiency. You can help this by spraying the plants with epsom salts. This we did last weekend... hard to say whether they look any better. They certainly don't look any worse so I guess we have to be thankful for that.

Oh... and the huge downpours we've been having have caused some of the fruit to split... all in all, not a good year for the tomatoes so far.

Books, lovely books.

Books. We love them. We have far too many and by default not enough space but we'd never be without them. Our dream home would most definitely have a library.

But surprisingly we don't actually have that many gardening books. Any problems we come across we do tend to just Google – there is so much information out there and some great forums where people are just happy to help – Gardeners Corner being a great example.

But there's nothing like sitting down of an evening with a cup of tea (or a glass of wine if you've earnt it!) and pondering over a book. And everyone has a favourite, one they go back to time and time again. And our favourite is The Vegetable & Herb Expert by Dr. D G Hessayon. It truly is a classic and the worlds best-selling book on growing vegetables and herbs.
Inside it's choc-a-bloc full of brilliant photographs and illustrations. It is unbelievable helpful when it comes to diseases and problems.
Each problem is detailed and has full colour illustrations. It's proved so useful and we refer back to it time and time again.
Infact, I was reading it this morning to try and find out what is wrong with our tomatoes – more about that in another post.

So if you're going to buy one book, get this one! And best of all, it's so cheap! Available on Amazon for just £4.00. An absolute bargain.

Pete-ettes

Pete (& Pat) look what they've gone and done. They've bred. They've created another two of the damn things. And oh guess where they were tonight... yup – our garden!

Now our garden is small. It can handle one Wood Pigeon (Pete) quite comfortably. Two Wood Pigeons (Pete & Pat) is a bit of a squeeze, they kinda get in the way - their wings are too big, it's awkward.

Four. No, four is just not going to work. Pete (& Pat) this is not a creche - you've got to sort out nursery, or get your parents to look after them during the day or something. This just isn't right and it's definitely not OK.

A dinner full of roots

Our beetroot is doing us so proud. We're really chuffed with how well they're doing. We planted a lot more than we did last year simply because we enjoyed them so much.

We've only got a tiny little garden and a quarter of the land is taken up with the beauties, and we made sure that this year we staggered our planting - so hopefully we'll have more of a constant supply rather than like last year where we had a massive glut for 2 weeks and then nothing!

Our current favourite way to eat them is roasted with some nice garlic and rosemary oil but this year I'm hoping that we'll have enough to make our own Borscht soup - a real favourite in the little gardeners house.

And if we're going to pull some beets today it only makes sense to pull some carrots too. I mean.. how could you not. I think the baby carrots are one of my top 5 crops from the garden. Infact they're probably a close second to the tomatoes - maybe even joint first.

Flowering at last

My my, it's been a long wait but finally the chillies have begun to flower. I can't believe how long they have taken. We planted them indoors in March so that's over 5 months to get to this stage. I guess our UK climate is not ideal for these fellas.

So a few more weeks and we'll be able to make our own all'Arrabbiata and if timings are good we may even be lucky enough to use some homegrown tomatoes.

Undergound Surprises

There is nothing like the surprise that you get from root vegetables. The delight in pulling up a perfectly round beetroot or a twisted knobbly carrot.

It's because you can't see what's happening. You just have to let nature takes it course and hope that everything is going according to plan. But when things start to grow, you get a tiny little glimpse of what could be, that's when I start to get impatient! I want to pull that beetroot! I want to see how big the carrots are! Just look at that beetroot - tempting us with a little peak!

But this weekend we've had disappointment to deal with. We pulled some of our first earlies and I must admit I was very underwhelmed. We went for the recently launched Accord – partly because they're ideal for containers and we'd decided early on that all our potatoes we would grow this way. They're also high yeilding and disease resistant – particularly against eelworm

We admit that we were pretty late in chitting and planting them but we honestly thought that they'd been in for a while and were ready to harvest. Here are our results from three plants!
Rubbish! 20 potatoes! And some of those so small they don't really count! We were gutted! Luckily we opted to harvest just one pot first just incase something like this happened. So the other container we're going to leave for maybe another month to hopefully increase the yield.

I think we'll try and be a little more patient with the rest of our underground friends.
Although... that baby carrot does look REALLY tempting. I must say - I have never tasted something so delicious and surprising than a home grown baby carrot. They beat the supermarket by just miles and miles.
And this year we've attempted to grow onions from seed. We use a lot of onions so it makes sense for us to grow them but I just don't get these set onions. So you buy a small onion – you put it in the ground and you get a bigger onion. Just doesn't seem worth it to me? So we never really bothered with sets. But, fingers crossed, the seeds seem to be doing OK.

Strawberry Dreams

Nothing beats a homegrown bowl of strawberries with some double cream. Yummy! I think we've probably still got enough left for another bowl each. They sure have done us proud this year – maybe triple the crop we had last year.

Easy Peasy

Oh my - fresh peas from the supermarket taste just great. But fresh peas - picked a few seconds ago from your back garden – well they just taste sublime. Tiny little green spheres bursting with the taste of summer. None have made it to the kitchen yet...

An Asian Invasion?

There is a lot of talk at the moment about the invasion of the Harlequin Asian ladybirds into the UK and how they're edging out our native species. We have a pretty healthy population of ladybirds in the garden so I thought this year I would take a shot of each one I see and compile a list.

It'll be interesting to see how many UK vs Harlequin we have.
The first two are:
This fella is a Harmonia axyridis which is yep, a Harlequin.

and yep, you've guessed it this is Harmonia axyridis conspicua – another variant of the Harlequin.

Not looking good for the UK fellas. So 2-0 to Asia so far.

New entrant as of 24 July 2010.
Harmonia axyridis... Asia 3 UK 0.

The guys over at Harlequin Survey are recording all sightings of Harlequin ladybirds over the UK. So if you do see one it would be great to let them know. They have an online form which is really easy to fill out and you can even upload your pictures and they'll email you to confirm your identification.

Red Strawberries!

So Wimledon started this week and look! The strawberries are turning red! How wonderfully English :-)

We're away at Glastonbury for the week so unfortunately we won't be sampling the delights just yet.

Back on Monday so after we've scrubbed ourselves clean we might enjoy a nice bowl with a glass of Pimms. That's if our friend whose kindly watering the garden for us while we're away doesn't decide to eat them first!!

An Emergency of Tiny Proportions

Oh no! Look at our poor leeks!! I was doing my morning check and putting the Basil out to get some summer sun when I saw the monstrosity that one of the local felines had created. What was once a little patch of leek seedling wonder had been turned upside down into a big earth mound.

So I had to forgo my early train to work this morning and do some emergency gardening. I managed to salvage some of them - albeit with some leaves missing on most. I quickly put them into pots for now - I think we'll leave them to establish themselves a little more first before they go back into the ground.

Can you believe it! We've got wire cloches dotted all over the garden to protect the seedlings from cats. On the little leek patch we stuck garden canes throughout it to stop them digging but whoever the culprit was just dug around the canes. Beetroot last year and now our leeks...

I saw you Tabby this morning... sitting on top of our shed - surveying your work were you?! You wait - next time you won't just get a shooo from me - you'll have a water pistol to contend with.

Grrrrrrrrrr.

Yip-Pea!

Well, would you look at that! A yummy, deelish, hard to keep your mitts off, baby pea! This is our first year of growing peas, thinking about it I have no idea why we didn't grow them last year, I mean, they have to be one of THE best tastes of the summer. Nothing beats eating raw peas out of their pods.

We've gone for a dwarf variety and they're doing brilliantly. To be honest, we hadn't noticed the pods growing, we'd just been looking at the lovely white flowers. It took us a little by surprise but now, every day I pop out and check how they're doing. I absolutely cannot wait for the first peas ready to eat. They are SO not gonna make it as far as the kitchen!

Blooming Marvelous!

Lots of flowers in the little garden at the moment. None just for show – oh no, these flowers have work to do! Can you guess what they all are? Some are dead easy, others not!

A Little Adventure

Check him out! This is one of our little Great Tit babies that are hanging out in our garden at the moment! They're pretty timid so stay in the tree most of the time crying to mum and dad for more food. I have to say, mum and dad, hats off, you have been working like crazy.

But this little fella decided to brave it and go for a little adventure. Hopping around the garden, getting stuck in, looking for insects no doubt. We got a little worried at one point as we thought he was going to hop into the house. But instead he flew up onto the neighbours roof – hence the shot above.

Here (s)he is in the tree at the bottom of the garden.
What a cutie!

What a Great Pair!

What a lovely start to the Bank Holiday weekend. I came home from work to such a racket in the garden! And what do I find – two Great Tits razzing around like nobodies business.

They had three little fledglings in the big tree at the back of the garden – no wonder they were busy! Well they were doing a great job – I put out some dried mealworms for them which they lapped up instantly.

Also saw a Wren running backwards and forwards, hopefully he's got a brood on the go – with the hard winter we had they need to boost their numbers. Historically Wrens have been pretty good at bouncing back so fingers crossed he's doing his little bit. Imagine how small a baby Wren would be! Incy teeny weeny – bet they're so cute!

Dead chuffed about the Great Tits, we've also had a baby Starling, Blackbird and a little Dunnock. Waiting on the Goldfinches now... come on Gary, don't let us down!

Say Hello to Alfie

Alfie is our new tree. He's a Japanese Maple – otherwise known as an Acer. We think he's just beautiful. He's sitting in our front garden looking very majestic. If you walk by give him a little stroke, he's wonderfully soft.

We hope you like him.

Easy Peas

We've had our peas growing on the kitchen windowsill for the past couple of weeks and we thought we'd do a little time-lapse experiment on them – results above.

I admit, not the most exciting piece of time-lapse you'll ever see but I love the way you can see them reaching out for things to grab hold of. This was just over the space of an hour and amazing to see how much they actually move about.

Hopefully we'll do some more time-lapse in the garden – we'll have to think of some stuff we can video... any suggestions?

Nail the Snails

Yes... it's that time of year again, out of hibernation come those pesky snails and they've been gorging on our seedlings. Once again we move heaven and earth to try and protect our precious crops. Pray what contraption have we come up with this time?

Well... we can't actually take all the credit for this one. We spotted it being used by the allotments near the train station but contraption it is and so far it seems to be working...

It's as simple a few pieces of timber and some chicken wire. We got the smallest chicken wire gauge we could get – it's never going to stop all of the snails, especially those little baby ones but it will stop the big buggers and lets be honest – they're the ones who chomp straight through your line of seedlings.

It's basically a wire cloche – cut your four bits of timber and make a base and then staple chicken wire to form an arch. The one above is over our beetroot seedlings. The first row got munched completely but the second row is doing well now it's covered.
Our rogue potato really needed some help – it was on the verge of death by snail. We cut a length of wire and then weaved four canes down through, and into the ground. You just have to make sure that you earth up around the wire where it comes into contact with the soil, make sure there's no gaps they can get in.

Hey presto. It's working so far.

Oh Chit!

To encourage your potatoes to have nice sturdy shoots you should chit them before you put them into the ground. You're basically getting them to sprout before you plant them, giving them a bit of a head start.

You need to start about six weeks before you intend to plant them. The piccie above is our Blue Danbue maincrop being chitted. It's easy peasy, you just stand them into an empty egg carton and put them where there is plenty of natural light – a windowsill is ideal. We really need to get them into the ground now – we've run out of compost (again!) so they will have to wait until next weekend now.

This year we've gone for Accord as our earlies, they're great for growing in planters which is exactly what we've done.
The diagram above shows how you plant them in patio containers. As the plant grows you earth it up and add more compost. Last year we just filled it right up straight away and stuck in our seed potato. We got an OK crop but we're hoping this year if we actually plant them correctly we'll get a biggest harvest!

Both our earlies and maincrop are going in containers – we had a lot of trouble last year with our main crop – partly our inexperience and partly the dreaded mollusc invasion. Hopefully this year we'll be able to avert any major disasters.

Happy Mashing!

Going to Pot

Horrah! My second favourite time of year is finally here! Seed sowing time. We planted our first seeds of the year this weekend and it couldn't of come sooner. I just love sitting at the table with seeds all around me and deciding who goes where – it's such a defining moment of the year and bursting full of potential.

So week one it was Beetroot – these little fellas went straight into the ground – we germinated them last year on the windowsill but we're hoping they're hardy enough to just get going on their own. One thing we slipped up with a little last year was not staggering our planting enough so we planted one row this week and then we'll leave it for 3 weeks and plant another.

Into the propagators we planted tomatoes, basil and chillies. We had a bit of a nightmare with the basil last season so that's indoors for the duration of it's life this year – we just had too many munchings and nibblings, the poor things took a real beating.

Anyway – I digress. In the past we've spent a lot of our hard earned cash on compost – seedling compost – that's expensive stuff. So we purchased a sieve and tried our hand at creating our own seed compost. Pretty simple really – quite tiring but hey – no pain, no gain.
It's weird you end up with all these little balls of earth that look like rabbit poo. Brilliantly successful though – our seedlings now have lovely fine soil to sprout through – no trouble at all for them. Well worth the £9.99 investment.

It just amazes me that from one incy wincy teeny tiny little seed you get so much. It's pretty unbelievable. I mean just look how tiny they are. Truly amazing. You can't help but be impressed.
So presently everyone is sitting safe and warm on the kitchen windowsill. I just love getting up in the morning to see if any little cheeky fellas have broken through the topsoil. Nothing yet – it's only been 3 days but jeez I'm impatient! Such a wondrous occasion and no better way to start your day.

Feather Someone Else's Nest

I bought one of these the other day. It's a ceramic holder for sheeps wool. Now why would I want one of those I hear you ask? It's for the little birdies. Right about now they'll be looking for twigs and feathers and all sorts of suitable material to line their nests with. A large number of birds would originally have used wool – but because our farmland is being replaced with houses, fried chicken shops and betting shops the little fellas can't really get hold of it anymore.

It's been up about a week now and I can honestly say I've not seen one bird even remotely interested in it! So today I took a little of the wool out of the holder and stuck it on a few random branches around the garden. Maybe that will encourage them to be a bit more nosey.

I'll report back with my findings.

Some overdue TLC

After the long, harsh winter we've had our poor little garden was in dire need of some TLC. We'd purposely let it be for a while so the mess would harbour lots of insects for the birdies and we wouldn't disturb anything that might be sheltering from the snow and rain and sleet and hail and frost and wind and you get the message....

So, with an ever so slight hint of spring in the air today the clean up started. Once the weeds were all cleared we gave it all a good dig over and sprinkled a generous amount of fish, blood and bone all over to help replace all the nutrients. We're pretty lucky with our soil, a previous owner was a keen gardener and we're reaping the benefits of her hard work.

Actually, looking at that picture it doesn't look that tidy! But my, it's a vast improvement believe me.

Tonight we're going to sit down and order all our seeds for the coming year. We're thinking maybe some Borlotti Beans and we're going to make a concerted effort to grow different varieties of things – stuff that you can't buy in the supermarkets like purple carrots or those green stripey tomatoes. We'll post our shopping list up so you can see what the year ahead has in store for us. We're both really looking foward to getting the garden up and running again, can't wait for it to be in full vege bloom again. It seems such a long time ago.

The Bestest Ever Homemade Marmalade

Mmmmmm – how delicious do those oranges look! Well if you eat them raw then they're pretty disgusting as they're Seville Oranges and quite bitter – but they're probably the best orange ever to make marmalade with. They're only around for a few weeks of the year so get down to the grocers and grab yourself a basket – you won't be sorry. I try and make a big batch of marmalade every year to last me until they come around again.

I always thought making jam/marmalade sounded a bit daunting. All those stories from Grandma about boiling sugar and how terribly dangerous it all is. Nah – that's all rubbish, it's dead easy and you won't have ever tasted marmalade like it. It really is light years ahead of shop bought stuff.

So first things first – get to your grocers and grab yourself a kilogram of Seville Oranges. Chop them in half and squeeze all the juice out of them and then cut all the peel – chunky or fine – the choice is yours. Don't cut any of the pith off – that's the bit that contains most of the pectin which is what helps the marmalade set. Put everything in a bowl together with 2.5 pints of water and leave to soak overnight.

Transfer everything in to a large pan and bring to the boil. (Before you do anything else put a couple of saucers into the fridge now, you'll need them later.) Simmer for around 2 hours with the lid on or until the peel is soft – this will vary depending on how thick you've cut it. Just take a little bit out onto a chopping board and you should be able to squish it with your fingers really easily. Make sure you let it cool down first!

While you're simmering you'll need to sterilise some jars. There are various ways to do this – for ease you can put them in the dishwasher but I generally use my steamer – pop them in for half an hour.
OK – so after you've boiled for 2 hours you then need to add 75ml of lemon juice which is approx one lemon and 2kg of demerara sugar. Jeez – it's an awful lot of sugar – I didn't realise how much actually went into jam and marmalade – it's a bit of shocker! Stir the sugar to make sure it's fully dissolved and now you want to get your marmalade to a rolling boil.
It'll look a little like the shot above – lots of foamy bubbles. Don't stir when you get to this point as it'll reduce the temperature of your marmalade and take longer for it to reach setting point. You need to boil for approximately 20-25 minutes.

Now – this is the trickiest bit I think. Trying to work out if it's reached setting point or not. This is where the saucers in the fridge come in. After about 20-25 minutes take one of your saucers out and drop a little of the marmalade onto it, leave it to cool for a minute or so and then if it's reached setting point it should crinkle when you push it with your finger – like below. Can you see that?
Leave it for 10-15 minutes to cool down and then pot into your steralised jars. Hey presto home-made marmalade. I promise, you won't look back.