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.

RSPB – "Wildlife in Crisis"

With the extreme cold weather looking like it's going to continue for another week or so our wildlife is really suffering. The RSPB have launched emergency action to help our birds survive the cold snap. Here's the four point plant.

1) The RSPB is organizing emergency feeding of several threatened birds at locations across the UK. Species being helped with this direct action include: bitterns and cirl buntings – all threatened species vulnerable to the impacts of extreme cold

2) The Society along with other organisations, including the British Trust for Ornithology, Natural England and the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, is urging the public not to disturb flocks of wetland birds, including ducks, geese, swans and wading birds. Disturbance causes these birds to expend energy they cannot replace, pushing them to the brink.

3) Britain’s gardens are an increasingly important refuge for several species of threatened species, especially during icy conditions. Several red list birds use gardens regularly in winter, including house sparrow, starling and song thrush. The icy weather will bring further red-list birds to gardens, including redpolls, yellowhammers and tree sparrows. To help these birds the RSPB is urging as many people as possible to feed garden birds.

4) The Society is urging Britain’s farmers to spare a thought for threatened birds, such as corn buntings and yellowhammers, on their land by putting out supplementary food, especially in the form of grain tailings or residue’s from last year’s crops.

You can read the full RSPB article here.

Don't Forget to Feed the Birdies

Just a little reminder that although we're all back at work today (groan) the birdies will still be struggling for food in this cold weather. If you've been feeding them over the Christmas holiday's then please try and carry on.

If they've got used to food in your garden then they'll expend precious energy flying to a guaranteed food source and so it really is important to still put food out for them. Any old scraps will do, you don't need to spend money on expensive seeds – left overs are great. In this cold weather they needs lots of fat to get them through the cold nights so things like cheese, left over pastry (mince pies are a great treat!) yorkshire puddings etc. Bread is OK to feed them as long as you put other things out with it too, whilst it fills them up it doesn't give them the nutrients they need so try and vary what tit bits you give them.

Today I put out a left over bit of pizza – I didn't give them the crust just the nice bits with lots of cheese on, an old bit of cheddar and some mealworms. The RSPB has a whole heap of advice on what, when, how and why to feed the birds here.

http://www.rspb.org.uk/advice/helpingbirds/feeding/index.aspx

Mr and Mrs.Blackbird have been feasting today, the Grey Wagtail has made several other appeareances (not the best picture I know but I wanted to show everyone he does actually exist!) and our resident Dunnocks have been out and about, a nice shot here of one hiding in the bushes.

Birdtastic

OK, I admit – this post is not technically about the garden – or even about the wildlife in our garden. But I have managed to convince myself that I can stretch the topic of birds in our garden to include – well – birds anywhere.

As a birthday present for one half of the little gardeners we both went on a Falconry Insight Day over at Leeds Castle. What a truly exhilarating experience!

We started off with the smaller birds – Oscar the Barn Owl and then went up in size. Ozzy was next, a brilliant little character.

Maggie the Vulture was next and although Vultures get a bit of a hard rap she was so graceful when she flew. Off for a spot of lunch and then out hunting with the two Harris Hawks, Brock and Fosters. We had a beautiful walk through the Leeds Castle estate whilst Brock and Fosters kept their eyes peeled for rabbits and squirrels.

It was such a wonderful day and I can't thank the Hawking Centre enough, the two Falconers Kelly and Mark were brilliant and we learnt such a lot about all the different birds they keep. They're going to be moving from Leeds Castle to the beautiful Doddington Place at the end of February – they'll still be running lots of different courses so if you fancy a brilliant day out then have a look at their website.

http://www.thehawkingcentre.co.uk