Thunder and hail
Still having problems with the laptop. I’ve tried the air spray idea but the precious machine is crashing constantly – answers to inquiries and comments when the system is more stable. Meanwhile here is a post. “When you were little did your parents tell you that thunder was just God moving his furniture around?” “No.” Danny smiled. “It’s a great concept, though.” “Part of me liked it. I enjoyed imagining the size of a table or sofa that would make that noise. But the idea worried me, surely God would get his...
read moreWe are gardening but just in case you are wondering, we are still developing recipes
Last Sunday D roasted a superb chicken, stuffed with some of the lemon skins and orange peel left over from the St Clements Punch. He added a teaspoon of finely chopped preserved lemons and presented a roast chicken dish to die for. This evening we made a great stir fry with the remnants of the lemony orangey infused chicken. Now we need to try this recipe with complete lemons and oranges, rather than just the peel. I’d be loath to encourage anyone to use just the skins of citrus fruit. We will, of course also add the instructions for those...
read moreEarly May in our garden
“I’m expecting something to break through by Monday.” “You may have a sporting chance!” Danny glanced at John Coe’s rows of potatoes bursting through the earth. “I don’t want to win the challenge. I just want loads of spuds. I’m worried that John’s rows don’t have the contents of the composter and mine do.” “I sprinkled sulphate of potash on his rows. Perhaps the compost is too high in nitrogen to be good for your potatoes. The main thing is the watering. Don’t you remember the farm shop near Bury? They didn’t...
read moreBank Holiday Saturday, chicken pellets and slugs
The bliss of waking up to no commitments was perfect this morning. I’m working for a couple of hours tomorrow but this is good as it will finance my extravagance at the garden centre today. A happy hour spent with loads of other people enjoying the prospect of a sunny bank holiday, choosing their summer bedding, grow bags and vegetables. For the first time in months I noticed that nearly everyone was smiling. My trolley was unwieldy from the start as I cashed in on the offer on grow bags (3 for a fiver). I bought a tray of dark blue...
read moreThe best gardening tools are not necessarily the most expensive
I’d cut down the rose bushes to large stumps and wheeled away about ten borrow loads of rose branches and quite a lot of bindweed roots. John Coe cast an eye over the warzone border covered with hefty skeletal stumps. “I can see what you mean. With this and the new potato border you will have a much more productive space for growing vegeatbles. Kitchen garden borders always fill up fast.” He picked up my spade and stabbed at the biggest rose root. “This’ll take some shifting.” Within five minutes the base of the spade had snapped...
read moreGardening presents
The pleasure that I get from special garden tools and gardenalia is immeasurable. I love my two traditional Sussex garden trugs (giant and baby sized), the set of three cedar seed trays, my paper potter and my new mouseproof Burgon and Ball Seed Packets Tin. Seraphina has given me most of these luxury items. As with friends who have given me plants, I always think of the donor when I use them. Good solid old fashioned quality. The things seem timeless. The seed packets tin was given to me when I gave Seraphina a hand with her elegant...
read moreFinally a whole weekend in the garden: Plans and promises
I spent most of the day in the garden today. I have prepared the borders in the kitchen garden and should have been setting seeds but I was drawn to tackle The Border of Stones. This is not a horticultural installation rather a border that was laid on top of the place where the basket weavers’ pig sty and outbuildings were knocked down covered with a thin layer of topsoil and laid to lawn. Over the years I have removed about six barrow loads of stones from a border than cannot measure more than 4’ x 8’. The stones gradually move their...
read moreThe value of allotments
It’s been a good week. The BBC Gardeners’ Question Time team advised that we could safely use the soil from our blighted tomato grow bags. So John and I shifted ten of them from the pile in the driveway to the kitchen garden to spread on the bed that has a problem with heavy soil. Then we planted our broad bean seeds in the plumped up earth. Plant your BB seed in November and you will have an earlier, sturdier crop. It will also crop for longer than spring sown seeds as long as you harvest regularly. It’s also an enormous fillip to see...
read more
On This Day
-
2023 -
2010
-
2009
-
2008
-
2008
-
2007
FD