Category: grow your own food

Prepper

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That is to say preparing the garden to receive the seeds for this year’s food crop. Hopefully it will be better than last year’s which was pretty much a washout. Today has been about putting some goodness back into the soil. I’ve also planted the first spud crop (assuming the frost doesn’t get them) it’s a beautiful day. The sun is high and I’m pleasantly tired.

Yesterday was a scuba day with the club giving up it’s time to support a local men’s emotional support group. The guys are always so lovely and so grateful to try something scary with people who are not going to judge them. They can be openly afraid and that is a huge thing for many men. Masculinity can be so very toxic. No stiff upper lip when you’re facing your fear.

There is a saying that you should do something that scares you every day. I’d say do something that challenges you instead. No point in being scared all the time. It’s challenging to pick cat poop out of the raised beds when I’ve spent years trying to chase them off from using those as a litter tray. It’s challenging to talk to a stranger who is about to put their life in your hands. It doesn’t always have to be jumping from an airplane scary!

Next week sees the transfer of seedlings to larger pots and the plants that can go outside being planted. It’s time to look forward again after a tough year. The cycle goes on.

Cold Comfort

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Spring is springing. It’s been su shine and showers all week and mainly too cold to do anything meaningful. A couple of weeks back I managed to get 4 buckets of potatoes planted. The garlic planted last autumn are growing strong but  a few weeks way from harvest yet.

This is when the seeds go in. The beds were dug at the same time that the spuds went in and the solid layer if fertiliser had leached in nicely. Time to top out the potatoes with farmyard manure and put some brassica in to sprout. The strawberry plants are growing nicely

Today peas, mangetout, broccoli and cabbage. There are new tubs on the windowsill slowly streaming up and hopefully getting the plants revved up for planting out before we jet off again. The cats are fascinated.

My personal task today was putting together cold frame. I hate using chemicals  and avoid them if at all possible and, since last year saw us losing to slugs and caterpillars, the next line of defence is now a plastic half formed greenhouse in miniature which fits over one of the raised beds. Let’s see who wins this one sluggies!

The blackcurrant is putting out new shoots. The gooseberry is spiky and green. We may have enough for a pie this year! As ever, the garden is a joy since we converted it to growing food crops. We use it so much more with the summer house being a glorious place to sit.

Spring Into Action

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Well the clocks change tonight. Tomorrow we will be a)up late or b)up on time and grumpy. Twas ever thus. Today, however, is the planting of the food crops. To be fair the rhubarb stays out all year and garlic gets planted in November but all those delicate veg need to go outside now. Today we plant onions and broccoli and peas and beans, beetroot and carrot but only for the tiny shelter/greenhouse (only it’s not a glasshouse) with just a few things directly into the earth. Lettuce, this year, is going in the chest height herb bed to attempt to avoid slugs.

Planting
Literally a greenhouse

Last years food crop was amazing considering we only completed the raised beds in late April, so this year we have organised a bit better and hope to have more food available. We also took the opportunity to put some fruit bushes in February, though I doubt those will fruit this year. A gooseberry and a blackcurrant. Hopefully the last frost has been and gone but in the UK who knows.

Rhubarb

The compost has been fed through the winter. We have a vermicompost system buried into the raised bed thanks to Subpod (no money has changed hands) a New Zealand based company. The nice thing about worm based compost is that it doesn’t smell. You don’t need to spread it either because this system has holes for the little fellows to wriggle in and out taking the nutrients with them.

I’m not a garden expert, I’ve just realised that we can make more from what we’ve got… cost of living… pension.. blah. Between last years jam, sell by date boxes from the supermarket for soup and pickles, even marmalade. We compost anything that’s too far gone and use ash from the wood burner to add carbon to the soil. It’s all going rather well.

Hori hori

Little pricks

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By which I mostly mean bramble thorns. Autumn is coming in fast enough and the season of mists may not yet be hear but on the pastway behind the house we have ‘mellow fruitfulness’. For reason don’t understand there are raspberry canes but mostly blackberry brambles. So far I’ve had around 3 kilos and these have even dutifully turned into jam (or jelly if you’re American although technically since these have not been sieved to remove the seeds its jam.)

Jam and bread. Home-made

You’d be surprised how many people stop to talk when you’re out foraging. Family groups who want to encourage their young. Older folks who want to share a memory. Some cheeky types who feel it’s OK to stick hand into your tub and taste the fruit! Mostly I go alone and take a small plastic dish and my grandfather’s old bamboo cane. I can remember him using it to bring down the taller branches to my height so I could help when I was small. Now I use it to do the same even though I can reach higher. Its good for thrashing away nettles too. I’ve just the one serious scratch from a particularly springy ground level branch. Should’ve worn long pants.

My brother donates bags of home grown chillies so there’s chilli jam too.

In other needle related news I went for a new tattoo or two this week. Maybe I’m old enough to know better but I’m also old enough to not give a damn. They’re small enough and covered much of the time. They’re for me not you.

Spring has sprung

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First really warm day of the year. I can just about stand to be out without a jacket and the washing (laundry) is on the line outside. It is spud chitting time. The Maris Pipers have been sitting on the window sill in an upturned egg carton for about 5 days now and possibly tomorrow they will be going into the grow boxes. The cats are, of course, rolling all over the warm, planted areas of the raised beds but regardless I can see radish begin to sprout.

Potatoes chitting

On the warmest window sill the mange tout and peas are showing green shoots but no-show yet from the broad beans.

Pea shoots

Even after a late night, at a long anticipated concert, the sunshine has lured the family, cats and all, outside. Walking down tne Street people are smiling. There’s a sourdough loaf being manufactured and brownies ready to gift to a sick friend. Its one of those ‘Famous Five’ Enid Blyton kind of days (historic children’s adventures from my youth. Those of a certain age will know what I mean). Lashings of ginger beer.