47 days ago
The last tomatoes were literally rotting on the vines. So the kids and I gathered what was not rotten and ripped up the plants putting them in the bulging compost heap. All together we had 2.5 kg of green tomatoes. At this point I apologise to my late uncle Christopher Booker whose birthday it would have been on Monday. I am sorry but the scales here are metric.
59 days ago
Joshua snd I picked raspberries through the rain and it really was a bumper plunde of reds, golden and pink berries, more than 1.3 kg in all. These bushes are a gift that keep on giving. So there was enough to flash freeze another tray and also to make four pots of jam. With seven more jars of jam ( blasckberry andd apple) made late into the night, the larder is now bulging with jams aand chutneys. Next up, rhubarb and ginger jam, apple stewing and chilli stringing.
776 days ago
The sprawling massd you see before you are the two butternut squash plants I put down earlier this year which seem to have merged into one. Behind them lie half my tmatoes and under the white netting winter cauliflower and cabbages. I hope that the last of the cabbage whites will soon bugger off and I can remove the netting allowing my plants to shoot higher. Underneath the squash foliage I have, so far, found five squashes but there may be more. The first two picked are shown below.
1130 days ago
The cooking apples keep falling from the tree which sits on the edge of my vegetable garden, the area formerlly known as “the jungle.” There is only so much stewed apple we can make – I still have two large jars in the fridge and you can’t eat apple crumble every day. So last night it was chutney making.
1147 days ago
I have since added a couple more red hot chillis to these jars of vodka which I have prepared ahead of a promised Christmas visit from thirsty daughter Olaf. The Mrs and I tasted a drop yesterday and they already have an almighty kick. “Good for clearing your sinuses” remarked the Mrs, before adding “Presumably you do add tonic?” I think we will be doing so. as for Olaf, I assume she will be drinking it neat.
1161 days ago
It seems it is not just my Irish neighbour B, with his somewhat eccentric conspiracy theories, who is convinced that the food shelves of Britain will be empty by Christmas. The looming panic is across all the newspapers today. Maybe B was ahead of the curve after all? If it is all true, here at the Welsh Hovel we will miss the Christmas Duck if this is the case although, I suppose, I could always try and snare one off the river. Maybe this might be the excuse need to persuade the Mrs to allow me to get a gun. Not only could I shoot a duck for Christmas but I could shoot at anyone trying to steal my food in storage or my winter vegetables in the ground which are flourishing.
1185 days ago
There are two damson trees available to us here. There were three but one at the top end of the vegetable patch just died and it is being chipped to make chippings to go around the fruit bushes with what is left over going onto a Guy Fawkes night bonfire we are starting to build. There is another in the vegetable patch where Joshua and I went collecting yesterday. A third is in our neighbour’s garden but hangs over the fence to our formal lawn so we are – with our neighbour’s agreement – abler to harvest half of it as well.
1186 days ago
We all agreed that an Indian recipe i found on the internet was the way forward for dealing with my gherkin glut. Okay there are a few cheats here, notably that I had bartered a few gherkins for a few tomatoes and a cucumber or two grown by the parents of one of Joshua’s friends. But anyway…
