Bedding down with the Strawberries

We gave the strawberries alot of TLC this weekend. There's six plants altogether and each plant has alot of fruit already, most of them small and very much of the green variety but this cheeky chappy is blushing to say the least!

We read in our Alan T book that you need to give the plants a pillow of straw, so the actual berries don't come into contact with the ground, otherwise they'll go mouldy. So as you can see from the piccie above we duly followed instructions. We've also netted them off as the birds will go crazy over the straw and that'll draw their attention to the berries which they'll devour in an afternoon if they get their own way. Also to note, Alan mentions that you should water around the plants and try not to get the fruit wet, as again this could make them go mouldy, so be extra careful with your watering.

So, fingers crossed it could be perfect timing. A bowl of freshly picked, homegrown strawberries as we sit down to watch Andy Murray beat Roger Federer in the Wimbeldon final. Well, I'll put a bet on half of that coming true...

Say hello to Pete

This is our friend Pete. Pete the Pigeon. He spends probably 80% of his life in our garden. We don't know why he's so fascinated by it. At first we were abit irritated by him, we liked our little Goldfinches and Bluetits and Pete was well, just a pigeon.

But over the past few months, we've both grown rather fond of Pete. He's no trouble, he eats the seeds the other birdies drop on the floor, so he helps keep the garden tidy. He's well presented, he doesn't have gammy feet or one eye or half a wing, he's nicely turned out, some would even say dappa. He's even bought his new lady friend along to show her his humble abode.

We quite like Pete. We think he can stay.

Hats off to the Ladybirds

These little troopers are without doubt the best thing we've bought for the garden this year. Ladybird larvae. I'd never seen them before, they're quite interesting looking things, they've got spikes running all up and down them and they look like they're made out of rubber.

We had what can only be described as a swarm of greenfly, they were literally smothering the garden. We'd read about using ladybirds to combat greenfly and we were pretty desperate, none of the organic sprays had really done much so we ordered some larvae from here.

http://www.organiccatalogue.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1192

I must admit, it was very strange getting bugs in the post. It turned a few heads in the office! Anyway, home they came and they made inroads immediately. Apparently they can eat up to 100 greenfly a day. Within about two weeks the greenfly were well and truly under control and now we're pretty much aphid free, a few colonies here and there but nothing the plants can't handle.

These guys grew big! They were gorging themselves. When they first turned up they were probably about a 1mm long on average, some of them must have got to nearly 2cm. About two weeks ago they started to turn into adults, almost simultaneously which was a little strange, here's a shot of them mid-flow.
They almost concertina themselves up, we couldn't quite work out how the red bits on the larvae in the top picture turn into the red bits here but nevertheless it was all very interesting to watch. We hope they stick around, we've got a ladybird house so maybe they'll make themselves comfortable and keep on top of the greenfly.

Either way, we'll be definitely getting some more of the troopers next year. Hats off to the ladybirds—they rock!

Basil Faulty!

Oh dear... we are really struggling with Basil this year! We planted our first batch way back in February which in hindsight we think is way too early—so lesson learnt there. They did however germinate after about a month, and about another month later got their second leaves, honestly, it was that long, it felt like an eternity! So when they were ready we put them out into the grow tent and after about two weeks the whole lot bar two plants got completely nibbled by the ants.

This was the last of those two plants. I made a lovely little herb garden, Sage, Coriander, Parsley, Chives and Basil. Today I got out and this has happened. What was it? No snails near the area, maybe ants or maybe a caterpillar?

We're both abit stumped now as to how to give Basil a chance. Maybe up high in hanging baskets? Trouble is all our hanging baskets are full to the brim with tomatoes!

We've got another batch of Basil growing on the windowsill and we've gone on a numbers game this time, probably about 30 plants there so hopefully five or six out of those will survive! We just need to keep them out of harms way so they can establish themselves and deal with a nibble or two.

Tommy Gunn's

For some reason I find growing tomatoes immensely satisfying, I don't know why. Up until a visit to Italy about 5 years ago I didn' t really eat them, well not without saddling them up to a piece of lettuce or a slice of cucumber to disguise them a little. But wow, Italy sure is a good place to gain a great appreciation for the fellas. Now I can't get enough, I love 'em, especially the small juicy ones.

Which gets me to my point... that's the type we're growing, they're called tumblers, great for growing in hanging baskets, as the name suggests. We've gone for two varieties, both tumblers but one batch are red and t'other yellow. We can't actually remember which ones we planted first, we think red but I wouldn't bet on it.

We've had some good weather recently, some cracking sunnny days and the tommy's have loved it. They're covered in flowers and are looking really healthy.

So why so satisfying to grow? Maybe because they look like the sort of things that should only be grown in hot countries and little ol'England is far too damp and grey to support such wonderful bursts of colour.

I for one cannot wait to have a glut of tomatoes. I'm gonna eat them, dry them, roast them, bake them, make sauce with them, jar them. Anything but give them away.

Baby where art thou

Well, another bit of avian excitement today. Due to the not very nice weather today we were both indoors, upstairs in our studio (well... spare bedroom full of computers really) we had the window open to let a nice little breeze in and bob's ya uncle what flew straight in through the window but a little baby blackbird! Bless him. I reckon he must've just fledged, his tail feathers were very short and he was a little more than unsteady on his feet.

He flew straight in and landed on my desk! we both panicked a bit, thinking oh my word, this is going to be interesting trying to get the little fella out again... we shut the door and sat down so he wasn't spooked and he just turned round and flew right out again!

I've really learnt to appreciate blackbirds this year, they look so proud and dapper. The little babies are brown and spotty, there should be a fair few around so look out for them, hopefully you won't get as close as we did this afternoon!

I think we'll name him Billy. Billy the silly blackbird :-) He did brighten our day.

Going Underground

We've been watching the potato plants getting bigger and bigger but the world beneath was eternally hidden from us. Were they making nice little tubers and if so were they in good shape or had they provided a nice feast for the slugs and other little blighters?

We've got two sets of potatoes on the go our first earlies and our main crop. The main crop is Maris Piper and our first earlies are the Epicure variety.

Both sets have started budding. We're cutting off the buds from the main crop to hopefully encourage them to put all their effort into the tubers as they've still got some months to go till harvest. However we've let the earlies bud away as from what we've read these will be ready for harvesting once they flower anyway.

But of course we couldn't wait for those buds to open and decided to pull one of our grow bags out to see what we had. We're justifying this as a 'health check' to make sure everything underground was going as planned. So I started foraging around in the top soil to see if there was any sign then realised we were going to have to go deeper to find the fruits of our labour. So we pulled up three plants from one bag and the pic above is one of the results.

We got about 25 of these little fellas varying in size from slightly larger than the above to pea sized. Evidently they could easily have done with more time in the ground but they were out now and looking tasty.

And to give good thanks and a proper send off to this little crop we made a potato salad with some of our radishes and parsley.























Potato Salad with Radishes

• 20 new potatoes, large ones halved and all boiled for 15mins
• 4 or 5 radishes sliced thinly
• 3 or 4 spring onions chopped finely (not from the garden yet sadly, though they are growing)
• 3 table spoons of natural yoghurt
• Small bunch of fresh parsley chopped
• Juice of 1/2 a fresh lemon
• Salt and pepper to taste

Boil the taters and let them steam off and cool down to room temperature. Transfer them to a mixing bowl and spoon in the yoghurt, radishes and spring onion and most of the parsley. Mix this well with a broad plastic or wooden spoon and while doing so slowly squeeze in the lemon juice. Add salt and pepper to taste and give it a final mix in. Ideally it's best if you can then cover this and leave it in the fridge for an hour to let the flavours meld.

The result is a really fresh and tangy potato salad that tends not to be too heavy due to the yoghurt rather than mayonaisse, probably a bit more respectful of the wasteline too.

The potatoes themselves were full of flavour and had a lovely texture. We accompanied this with a little leaf salad from our radiccios and little gem lettuces and a few slices of butternut squash and some crumbled feta cheese (though goats cheese would have been preferable).

It was fantastic to eat our first proper meal from the garden, even if some of the ingredients were from our local grocers.

One thing to note though, when we pulled the taters up we noticed that the roots didn't go very deep inside the potato bag and so not as many taters as the bag and plant could produce. We think this is because we may have been watering them too regularly so the roots haven't had to dig down to search for water. So we've cut back the watering on all the potato plants now in the hope of letting them dig deeper and produce greater yeild.

See I said it was a health check really. Tasty one though!