Harvesting bags
For years I’ve used carrier bags when out foraging. They are convenient and slip into a pocket – so if you unexpectedly come across some hedgerow treasure you have a bag for your bounty. However, it’s difficult to keep the neck of a plastic supermarket carrier bag open so picking has to be one handed. Earlier this year I treated myself to this smart harvesting bag. The long strap means that it can be worn across the body, leaving two hands for picking. The opening at the top is rigid and less fruit falls to the ground than when...
read moreBiodynamic gardening update: July 2010
“It’s nearly the end of July. Surely there’s something we can eat from the garden?” Danny was exasperated – forgetting that we have already munched loads from the garden in the past few months. Spuds, orach (German Mountain spinach), calabrese, turnips, broad beans, raspberries, strawberries, tayberries, loganberries, peas, lettuces and salad leaves. But then I twigged that he’s desperate to start harvesting his favourite. Runner beans. They are a bit late this year but a careful examination of the beans revealed that they...
read moreOne Pot Pledge®
Have you heard of the One Pot Pledge®? This is a great campaign started by Garden Organic – the largest organic growing charity in the UK. The idea is to encourage 30,000 people who have not grown some of their own food before to make a pledge to grow something edible in a pot. This is a superb initiative as everyone has a place somewhere for a pot. Even if it’s on your desk at work. This campaign started much earlier this year but there are still lots of things that you can grow and enjoy. Salad leaves, peas or even nurture a tomato...
read moreExperimenting with reseeding the lawn
This lovely hot summer and the pile of rocks that I dug out of the herbaceous borders have connived to wreck the lawn in the herbaceous garden. The grass paths in the kitchen garden aren’t too bad as they have been watered with the overspill from the borders. But when we peek out of the back door we saw a desert of cracked mud and yellowing grass. Even during cooler summers the pounding of tiny Min Pin paws always results in a long grass free dried mud path down the garden. This year I was determined to crack this problem. Sensible...
read moreThe potpourri project: How to make a simple solar drier
Rose petals are an important ingredient in many potpourri mixtures. You can buy rose petals online at around £15.00 for 500g. That seemed like an awful lot of money until I started drying our own rose petals. I large rose weighing 150g produces approximately 10g of dried petals. I’ve also found these – 2 Ltrs of rose petals but am not sure how much 2 litres of rose petals actually weighs. Luckily, even though we dug up our long rose walk there were a lot of other roses dotted about the garden. Mainly French, climbing and...
read moreGarden Peas: fresh and frozen
Three years ago we discovered that frozen “Garden Peas” are much tastier than frozen “Petit Pois”. They are cheaper too. The shops are now full of fresh peas in the pods. They look so tempting but I’ve always found them tough and disappointing. I reckon that they need to be really fresh or frozen fresh to shine in the taste stakes. This year I have grown two types of peas – both biodynamic from the Demeter range at Lunar Organics. A sugar snap pea (Sugar Dwarf Sweet Green) and a more traditional pea (Hurst Green Shaft). A week...
read moreAmaryllis (indoor and hardy)
Now that’s a name to conjure with. I’ve never met anyone or even a pet called Amaryllis. I did know a girl called Primrose T. She had big bones and would galumph across the lacrosse field and score goal after goal. Not being a sporty type I was always relegated to the edge of the field where I could observe the hub of the game and rarely be tasked to join in. Oh the bliss of growing up and not having to endure school sports. I used to only grow white amaryllis but gradually I have begun to appreciate the huge range of colourful blooms...
read moreClimbing courgettes: basic care
This year I’ve had a series of disasters on the courgette/zucchini growing front. Seeds haven’t germinated, pots have been knocked over snapping the contents and when I finally planted the remaining three out in big pots in the kitchen garden they were guzzled by slugs. “I can’t face the thought of a summer without home grown courgette salads. “ Danny exclaimed. “We’ll have to buy a plant.” As home grown courgettes taste so much better than shop bought ones I was hoping for a courgette glut too. Apart from raw courgette...
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