Herbs

NEW POTATOES

/ Allotment Queen / Leave a comment

I had an old dustbin on the allotment – with holes already drilled so it was obvious that someone grew something in it. I brought it home, put it behing my greenhouse and put some of my potatoes in. They have sprouted and weren’t good for anything else and as I don’t like to throw anything away, I planted them there. It was very early in the year – February I think. If they did well – fine, if not – fine too.

They did well and I’ve got the result for our lunch today, served with home-made pesto, together with a cheese and onion flan.

002

LEEKS

/ Allotment Queen / Leave a comment

I think I’ve finally got it right when it comes to growing leeks. In the past I usually put the seeds in a seed tray, they grew but were rather spindly and when I wanted to plant them out, all their roots got tangled and the result was disappointing.

Not so this year. I’ve got a small raised bed next to the greenhouse in my back garden so I decided to raise the leeks there. The seeds went in, I erected a small protective “fence” out of thick because the birds would have loved to sample the seedlings and then forgot about them.

Today I pulled them out and was delighted – lovely strong plants and enough to fill an empty space on the allotment.

001This work done I had a bit of time to inspect my squashes. They too are doing fine, it certainly helps that I have been watering them with either comfrey tea or diluted liquid from my wormery.

WASTE NOT WANT NOT

/ Allotment Queen / Leave a comment

I have got three apple trees on the allotment – Egremont russet, James Grieves and a Bramley. I was waiting for the ‘June drop’ and finally today did my rounds to check. All is well, the obvious casualties have dropped down but I was still left with quite a lot of bunches of apples. As I was thinning them I thought – they would make great jelly (or something like that). Saved them all and then found out that when I was thinning out the gooseberry bushes I just did one of them, left the other. Did that today and finished with a nice box full of goosegogs.

This time I had a recipe in mind but only for the ratio of sugar to the liquid. I can’t really call my creation a jelly – because it has got all the bits in!

First I cooked the little apples and pushed the resulting mush through a fine sieve and got 1,5 pint of thick liquid. Then the gooseberries were cooked in just enough water to cover them in the saucepan, with a bunch of sage – for a change!

Again, everything was mashed up, the bunch of sage taken out and to each pint of liquid a pound of sugar was added.

Back to boil, slowly first to dissolve the sugar and rapidly for about 15 minutes. In the meantime I chopped a big handful of sage leaves and added them to the mix, after the plate test showed thet we’ve reached a setting point. For that I kept a small plate in the fridge, put a small amount of the liquid on it and when it wrinkled when pushed with my finger I knew I was home and dry.

Bottled and another batch of tasty conserve is done.

EDIBLE GARDEN SHOW

/ Allotment Queen / Leave a comment

Today was the first day of the Edible Garden Show and also the spring equinox and the eclipse. Not sure what should be more important, the show was the first thing on my mind.

Same as last year, I drove down to Alexandra Palace with my brother-in-law Chris – both very keen gardeners. We both agreed that it was a pity it moved from Stoneleigh to London but we treated it as a nice day out.

We arrived in the car park a few minutes after 11am but the queues were huge, we had high hopes. And those hopes were somewhat dashed!

You could count the seed companies and plant stalls on the fingers of both hands, no more.

Why would I want to go to a show that calls itself Edible and Garden where there are stalls selling anything from sausage rolls, to cheese and gin and finishing with jewelry? What has that to do with gardening?

We shall rethink our strategy for next year and find something else to satisfy our gardening needs.

This show has just lost two keen gardeners.

WORMERY

/ Allotment Queen / Leave a comment

As much as I can I compost everything to give me eventually some rich compost; for that purpose I have two large black composter bins on the allotment. Apart from cooked food or meat I put everything there; not weeds though, they go on a separate pile and there they can rot. I add shredded paper and torn egg boxes to the bins as well.

It follows then that I don’t like to use chemicals as fertilisers. I have a large barrel of comfrey tea ready, use it diluted when I’m watering and my latest innovation is the liquid from my wormery.

002

The wormery is in my back garden and I put in any kitchen waste, the worms seem to get on with anything and everything and the end result is bottles of dark liquid and I use it the same way as I would the comfrey tea – diluted in my watering can.

worm tea