Summer berries

 

There are lots of berries in the garden at the moment, that's if they've not been eaten by slugs in the very wet weather we've been having. Strawberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants, they're all delicious. My favourites are strawberries and raspberries. You can just eat them as they are, with cream or ice cream, or make them up into flans, sorbets, mousse, cheesecake, the list is endless. I found this recipe for a berry compote whilst I was going through my recipe file the other day.  It's really easy to make and will keep in the fridge for several days.

Berry Compote
serves 6
8oz (225g) strawberries
8oz (225g) raspberries
4oz (100g) redcurrants
4oz (100g) blackcurrants
6oz (150g) sugar
3/4 pint (375ml) red wine
1 cinnamon stick
pinch grated nutmeg

1. Pick over the soft fruits, discarding hulls, stems and leaves. Quarter strawberries
2. Put the sugar in a large pan with the wine. Stir over a low heat until dissolved
3. Add prepared fruits, cinnamon and nutmeg. Simmer for 5 mins or until fruits are softened but still hold their shape.
4. Leave until cold. Spoon into dish, cover and chill for 1 hour.
5. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

 Nutrients per serving
calories 180 protein 0g total fat 0g (saturated fat 0g) carbohydrate 35g fibre 6g


I didn't have any redcurrants, so I used extra of the other fruit. I used last year's raspberries and blackcurrants  from the freezer it was a good way of using them up to make room for the this year's harvest. I didn't have any red wine so used up some port we had in the drinks cabinet. More expensive and probably a sweeter taste, but was  delicious and very boozy! Probably too boozy, I'll try with wine next time!

Family weekend at the allotment

As we come to the end of another week's work at our new allotment, I'm happy that it's beginning to look something like an allotment.  My husband has finished building the drains, we've had a lot of rain to test them out and they seem to be working. We now have four raised beds. They have been dug over several times, and  as many stones as possible removed ( there were lots of them). We have been  incorporating some good soil from another area of the plot and some well rotted manure into these beds. We plan to use three of the them  for fruit growing as we will need to transplant the fruit bushes from our old plot in the autumn when the tenancy comes to an end.  We have been working on this section of the allotment for four weeks now and in that time it has gone from looking like this:

to this:

and this:

to this:

 

We have planted up some purple sprouting broccoli, red cabbage and brussels sprouts in one of the beds.

At the other end of the L-shaped plot, weeding is in progress, but it's a long job.

All the family got involved this weekend. We had to make it fun for the grandchildren, so I made some obstacle courses over the muddy areas.

And we tried to make a way through the jungle of weeds. We still haven't managed to get up to the top of the plot, there are so many weeds and brambles. My grandson said he thought there was a bear living in one of the bushes. Hmm I wonder!

The plot is still full of surprises, my husband found two scythes in the shed. My daughter used one of them to cut down some of these weeds. I am used to finding many stones, boulders and bricks as I dig but today I had real trouble digging, my husband helped me and we unearthed this huge piece of metal. I'm sure we'll find a use for it somewhere around the plot!

There's a tremendous amount of work to do, I know it will take a long time to get the plot looking good but after this weekend I am feeling much more hopeful. 

A hidden gem

Readers of my blog will know how much I love visiting other peoples' gardens, whether they are big 'famous' gardens or the lesser known gardens of NGS members or even the local 'open gardens' weekends. It's a delight to see how other people do their gardens. Or maybe I'm just very nosey.

I can be emotionally moved by people's gardens, it may be a planting scheme in a larger garden or just the whole ambiance of a smaller garden. There's just something about a garden which gets to me. And every once in a while we visit a garden which just bowls us over.

This was especially so with a garden we visited whilst on holiday recently in North Devon.  We were staying in Appledore and towards the end of the week there was an Arts Festival in the town. Appledore is quite an arty place with  little galleries and craft shops tucked away in the quaint narrow streets. During the festival there were exhibitions and workshops going on around the town.

On our last day there we noticed that one of the houses was opening its garden in aid of a local charity during the festival. The house was a little terraced cottage on one of the narrow streets and the cost of visiting the garden was a mere 50p. We thought for that price it would just be a little courtyard garden.  We decided to take a look, it would only take a few minutes to look around we thought.

The entrance was a little strange as we had to walk through the owner's house to get into the garden. Having got  into the garden we were quite taken aback to find it was a 'proper' garden and not just a backyard as we had imagined.

 There was a neatly mown lawn area with clipped box hedging around it, and lovely herbaceous borders.

 In the far corner was a raised decked seating area, I climbed the steps to the top and was greeted by a wonderful view of the town and the estuary with all the boats, as well as a brilliant view of the neighbours' gardens. There I am being nosey again!  Underneath the raised decking was a very shady corner which the owner had cleverly made into a fernery. Pots of ferns were clustered together to create a lush, shady spot.

At the end of the garden was an archway, which led us into more garden. This garden was bigger than we thought!  I realised at this point that we were going to be longer than a few minutes looking around.

The garden was long, narrow and divided into smaller gardens. It was very well planned making good use of space.

There were little secluded seating areas.

And  'quirky' areas

Some interesting features

Surprises round every corner

There was everything here in such a long, narrow space, a formal area, gravel garden, several seating areas, water features and a vegetable garden.

The overall impression was that it was a very 'arty' garden with quirky features without being contrived. It made us smile, gasp in amazement and gave us ideas for our own garden. I wanted it to be my garden, it was lovely. So lovely that for the rest of the day we kept talking about it and when we returned from holiday I think we may have bored our family by talking about it.

The owner opens the garden every year for a local charity. I don't know her name, I don't remember the number of her house, but if you're ever in Appledore during the Arts Festival Week, have a walk along Bude Street and you might just see this garden open. It's well worth the 50p entrance fee.

Slow progress at the new allotment

We are making progress at our new allotment although it feels very slow. I think that is because we are just impatient to get some growing space. We do realise that it is going to take a long time to get it all sorted. And it's only 3 weeks since we started. So bearing that in mind we are actually doing quite well.

My husband, who is the engineer of the team, has built the compost bins using wood which has been left on the allotment car park for everyone to use.

My daughter, son-in-law and I have cleared weeds from several beds  as well as around the outside of the plot, as we were told by the allotments officer they were our responsibility too. We have also cleared out and cleaned two of the sheds which we are going to keep, the other two sheds will eventually be demolished.

One of the difficulties we have encountered as well as the weeds is the heavy wet sticky soil, the stones, and the drainage problem which became apparent last week after the torrential rains.  My husband is now building two raised beds at the front of the plot and putting in drains using many of the stones we have found.

 There is also an awful lot of rubbish lying around the plot, wood, paving slabs, bricks etc. Some of it is useful stuff which we will  keep and can use in many ways around the plot. My husband found scaffolding boards in the big cabin, he is using them to make the raised beds and the stones are being used to make the drains. We have found tools--a big lump hammer and two huge scythes ( useful for chopping all those weeds down with). I'm trying to make a storage area next to one of the sheds for all this reusable stuff. It's quite a treasure trove of recyclable materials.

Despite all these problems we love going to work on the allotment and every time we go we make a little bit more progress. Our main priorities for growing at the moment are to create a permanent growing space for the fruit which we will bring from our old allotment in the autumn and another space for the winter veg--purple sprouting broccoli, kale, swede, spring cabbage and leeks etc.

These are the next areas to be cleared. It's a bit daunting.

Shed love

I have to admit to being a bit of a shed lover.  There's nothing I like better than to visit a garden and peer into the shed to see how it's all set out. I love to see how other people use their sheds. Sheds have all sorts of uses these days, for offices, studies, hobbies rooms, places to write, rest, retreat to etc.

One of our local bishops when he was first appointed and moved into his Bishop's house had a shed put in the garden to use as a chapel. He needed a quiet space away from the distractions of the telephone which he could use for his regular morning and evening prayer.  I had the privilege of seeing his shed once. Fitted out with a small altar and a few chairs, icons and christian symbols, the shed had a quiet, prayerful atmosphere, it was a very special place.

At our allotments there are some 'interesting' sheds made out of old doors, windows, fence panels, corrugated sheets. They are really ramshackle looking places, but great examples of recycling.  They are places to store garden stuff, sit and drink tea, shelter from the rain, but they are also well loved places.

At the RHS garden Harlow Carr there is a shed which I drool over whenever we go there. It's a lovely old fashioned Victorian gardener's shed. I'd love a shed like it, but, it's probably a bit too showy, too neat and tidy for me. My shed could never be so tidy.

 

This is a quirky sort of shed we spotted on a walk whilst visiting our daughter in Bedfordshire.

It's often said that men love their sheds and it seems to have started at an early age in our family because our 6 year old grandson, ever since he could walk, has had a thing about our shed.  Whenever we were out in the garden he would (and still does) make a beeline for the shed and would emerge brandishing mine or grandad's tools, much to our horror! Now he has his own tools in there and is a bit safer.

So what about my shed?  It's not very big and we have a lot of stuff to store in there, so it can get untidy.  But it fulfills all my organising dreams with hooks to hang tools on, shelves to store garden stuff and a bench to work on.   It gets an annual clean up in the autumn and then it's ready for winter projects, like making Christmas wreaths. 

I would love to have a big enough shed to be able to sit in and use for other things, like reading gardening magazines and drinking tea.  I think I really need a summer house!

Because it's not so big, outside of my shed is also a very special area.  That's where my potting bench is. It's home made by my husband out of an old kitchen table and it's perfect.  It's where I sow seeds, transplant seedlings, pot things on. But it's also a place where I can escape to. I can sit there in the sunshine with a mug of tea, listening to the birds singing, looking at the garden.

Are you a shed lover? What's your shed like?

                         

Loads of lettuce

I've had a few ups and downs with my salad growing this month. The wet weather has brought out all the slugs. Well you'll know that of course, everyone is complaining about the slugs. So I am beginning to see holes appearing in my salad leaves.

We went away for the weekend and I came back to find all the mizuna tops nibbled at. The lollo rossa seedlings have disappeared and so has the watercress.

However I am still pleased with the progress of the rocket, red salad bowl, tom thumb and little gem lettuce which were further on than the other stuff so could cope with a bit of slug damage. At the time of planting I thought I may have put too many in for our needs, but at least now I have enough leaves to be able to pick around the slug damaged ones. When I look back on last month's photos of my salad bed I can see how well everything has grown.  I'm still growing pea shoots, those are in a tub by the back door.

I'm so enjoying going out into the garden with a bowl to collect a few salad leaves to go with our lunch or dinner. And I haven't bought any lettuce for weeks now.

I don't seem to be very good at growing radish. I notice every year, that I get some pathetic looking radish, so I think it must be me who can't grow them. I've sown some at the allotment to see if they do any better there.

The herbs I planted in pots are romping away too, I've used the red veined sorrell in salads.

The second lot of outdoor cucumbers seem to be doing fine (the first lot died). I shall pot them into bigger pots before finally planting out into the cold frame

So now I just need to sow more seeds to replace all those slug eaten seedlings.

New allotment--getting started

If you've been following my allotment progress you will know that my daughter and I have had a mini allotment in the form of  a council run scheme of raised beds. The good news is that we now have our own 'proper' allotment. We, along with some other people who were near the top of the allotment waiting list were invited to an evening viewing of the vacant allotments. I have to say that none of them were very inspiring, but the one we finally decided on was plot 10b.

The previous tenant had been keeping chickens on the site. Unfortunately all his chickens had been got at by the fox so he decided to give up. The new plot is L shaped  and has one large stretch of weed filled area. The other bit has chicken sheds on it. There are 3 rather ramshackle looking sheds and one huge metal cabin.

We are still keeping our raised bed plots on until the end of the year because we have planted them up with summer veg. This will give us time to get some growing areas dug over in the new allotment to plant up with winter veg.

Last weekend we started work. We cleared out the rubbish from the best of the sheds, swept, cleaned and disinfected it. Then we started clearing some of the areas in which  we want to grow things.  There are a lot of stones as well as huge weeds.

We worked really hard, even the grandchildren, who seemed to enjoy themselves. Our grandson likes to help grandad so he (assisted?) him as he attempted to build a compost bin area using wood which had been kindly dumped nearby for any of the allotment people to use.  

The new plot has come complete with a cat.  The previous owners were unable to catch it to take it with them, so we agreed to look after it. It's very elusive, sometimes we see it watching us, then it disappears.  We leave food for it, which gets eaten and there is access into the shed for it to sleep. We hope she will eventually accept us as new owners.

There's a lot of work ahead of us, but we were really pleased with the progress we have made so far.