24th November, 2008

It was a very cold weekend, the coldest this year. But I still got outside to do some of my latest favourite pastime...leaf collecting. I still have a way to go to fill the new leaf cage.

The greenhouse is the place to be if you are a young plant at this time of year I reckon. The broad beans are looking great.



The spinach and spring onions haven't done much but I will prick them out into modules next weekend. But the onions outside are a good size.



The lettuces are small and I think they may be bitter to taste, maybe I should taste a leaf and find out.



The garlic and shallots too are showing some green shoots.

The soil is very wet now and I won't be doing any digging for a while since I'll just make the soil structure worse by walking all over it, but also it is too heavy to work. I don't have a lot of compost left and I intend to incorporate the compost every time I am digging. So I'll have to wait.

Finally, I used up nearly 3kg of the stored apples to start off some apple wine. It's bubbling away nicely in the airing cupboard. It will be ready in 6 months if all goes well, that is when I'll be harvesting the broad beans. This is my first venture in to wine making and it seems to be relatively straightforward. Let's hope it works out. But it has inspired me to make more, I think I'll try some parsnip wine next. It's nice to have a bottle of wine at the weekend so to satisfy that demand I calculate I need to make a batch of wine every two months!

I've given up on the cider making unless I can find a cheap cider press, but that seems unlikely. I did make a bid on ebay for a 6 litre press but it sold for the price of a new one (~£110+). They seem to be popular at this time of year not surprisingly, so maybe I'll look again when they are not in demand.

I overestimated how much chicken wire I'd need to make a cage for the leaves. Or there was a generous amount of wire provided. Whatever, I have a very large cage now! I doubt I will fill it; it would be great if I did as I know I will use as much leaf mould as I can make.



I had to use the flash to take the photos, as it was getting late in the day. I've only managed to fill about half of the cage.



I've braced the supports for the blackberry and loganberry plants. The blackberry especially put on so much new growth over the summer that the supports were buckling under the strain.



I plan to cut down the Leylandii hedge (behind the blackberry in the picture) as it mostly dead and therefore not very attractive and it's very hard to trim, and it's probably drying the soil out.

The broad beans continue to grow in the greenhouse and there are two main leaves on most of the plants. The lettuce under the cloches are growing too and there should be enough to pick some leaves for a salad soon.

The potatoes are lasting well and we'll be eating them well into the new year. Also in store in the garage are the apples which are lasting well and are being used for apple pies mostly. I shall make some more apple jelly though on a cold day when I can't get outside, as every week there are a few apples that have turned brown. The onions should last us until the next harvest, although I have rediscovered fried onions.

5th November, 2008

Not much activity now. I've been collecting leaves for more leaf mould.





The beds look very empty now. I've pulled up the squash and pumpkin plants and taken down the runner bean wigwam. There were two green marrow shaped and sized pumpkins which I am going to leave for a while to ripen up hopefully.

Leeks and cloches over the lettuce in the side bed.



Just parsnips showing, but I've dug in compost/leaf mould at the far end and planted garlic next to the parsnips, bu there is no sign of their green tips yet.



Only the parsley left in the middle bed.

29th October, 2008

This is an update on the pictures I should have taken last blog. First are the chillis in the greenhouse looking very straggly; I don't think they will survive the winter especially since today and yesterday saw a heavy frost which is very early; some parts of the country had snow.



These are the broad beans in pots trying to germinate. No signs yet. I've got enough I think without needing to do a second spring sowing. I've still got broad beans in the freezer from last year!



The spring onions have germinated after all! I can grow them. They are on the right in the picture below with the spinach in the other pot.



Below are the lettuce underneath the plastic squirrel protector domes.



And some more under the cloche.



I planted these on a lovely sunny autumn day and was quite hopeful that they will put on some growth but the latest cold snap will probably slow them down and I may be lucky to get much at all. Maybe I'm expecting too much and perhaps I should just pick the young leaves.

A good thing about the frosts though is that it will kill off many of the overwintering pests, hopefully some of these guys.



The onions are showing their green tips, a lovely sight.



The garden chores are slowing down now. I've been digging in some compost and last year's leaf mould in the bottom bed. I will have to continue to collect this year's leaves. I want to make two permanent cages for the leaves, one for the current year and one for last year's. I'm undecided how to do this at the moment. I'm inclined to go for the simple chicken wire cage, but I want to make them really big as I can collect a lot of leaves.

Now that we have had a frost I can try the leeks and parsnips, they should have sweetened up nicely. The horseradish will be good to dig up too, I'll need to get the ingredients to make some horseradish sauce.

The cold weather has driven me indoors and into the kitchen. It's warm when the oven is working. I made some more pickled beetroot and two jars of apple jelly. The jelly has already been tried on sandwiches by the kids, so I'll probably be making more which is no problem as there are a lot of apples to get through. I had a go at making an apple pie too. For some reason I had thought there was some magic art to making pastry but on the BBC food website there is a video masterclass that shows you how using a food processor. Works a treat!