My head is about to explode but....

I feel terrible today and these blasted headaches are not helping - argh! the weather is driving me bonkers. How are these cold, grey, windy and intermittently wet days supposed to make the Depressed person feel? It's not fair.

Anywho, thought I'd quickly write about Sunday as, at the time, it made me feel a bit happier. (Ecotherapy in action). That feeling has disappeared now, believe me ~ but let's try to recapture some of the joy of.....planting out our first new crop!

Yes, it happened. I planted out 8 beautiful Broad Bean plants ('Aquadulce Claudia') in A1. I admit they aren't planted in the most perfect lines, but I blame my Double Vision for that. The wee plants had the best root systems and were sturdy little things. I hope they survive; they're my wee babies. I have a cover ('sun tunnel' sounds so silly) over them, stuck firmly into the ground to give them the best chance in this awful weather. We'll be sowing more soon, a different variety 'The Sutton' I think, so we do have back up, but fingers crossed everyone for my babies.


I also planted my Hellebores into a long trough, but again the weather was so bad I just put them back in the cold frame for now. If I hadn't they'd probably be miles away up the Beltoy Road come the weekend! Hahahaha (maniacal laugh or cry moment). This weekend will be better!

I'm a messy planter, I know.

Baby Carrots, Manly Scallions and the Case of the Disappearing Beetroot

It's all about that process of planning for a new year (stops me going mad in the winter); picking seeds to order, looking into brand new areas of Allotmeentering (Apple/Pear/Plum Arches!) clearing out beds and the soil given a bit of tender, loving, care. We've been doing this slowly for the past few weeks, but Saturday saw us clearing out, pretty much, the last bed. We still have a few Parsnips in one, Leeks in another and Spinach in one.

The 3rd bed on the right contained some Cabbages, Beetroot (Holy Moly what did he do with them????), Baby Carrots and Scallions (which where under a poly tunnel) and Parsley.

Andrew cut out the Cabbages (4 or 5 of them) before I could get near the place with my camera and I am guessing he also did something with the Beetroot at this time too. He had me distracted, in the shed or something - what happened to the row of Beetroot??~ I fear it may be in the compost bin! But no, surely not!? Then where are they all????? There must be a perfectly good explanation, I'll find out when he gets home.


(open picture for notes)

And then we started to lift all the remaining Carrots (they weren't going to grow much more) and we were surprised that some actually looked good. They ended up in the Lottie Soup, which I still have to tell you about and I swear they were packed with Carroty yumminess; as if all the carrot flavour they would have had as big specimens was concentrated down into a tiny root.

The Scallions however were wonderfully tall and as good as any we've had from the Lottie. I highly recommend the mini Poly Tunnel (or they might be called Sun Tunnels officially, I can't remember) to any and every Allotmeenter out there. A good buy indeed.

The Parsley plants are still there, though I cut a big one (that had been under a large water bottle) right down and Boy was it good. Again it went in the soup but we also had some with a stir fry - fresh herbs are the way to go, if you can get them to grow in our climate (I'm still upset about my Basil and Coriander disasters!).

So another bed ready for thinking about. I think it will be all Root Vegetables next year, if my hold on the rotation scheme is right. It was a Brassica bed last year, with some Squashes but they didn't do very well. I'll have to draw out some better plans so I can explain things clearer, eh? And I will get that Lottie Soup written down....

Planting the Raspberries

First thing I did when we got to the lottie on Saturday was check my baby Broad Bean seedlings - oh, they look great - don't they look great! I think they look great.

Andrew and Maggie were a little less excited than myself - can't understand why. I think Maggie was just plain COLD and Andrew was busy doing 'manly' stuff: we had a leaky window seal - so he fixed it - just like that, fixed.





Then we got down to work - well, Andrew did, planting the Raspberry canes. I flitted about looking at stuff growing and taking the usual million photos of everything that doesn't move. As the Hubby prepared the ground etc., I was over the moon to see that, finally our Garlic had begun to sprout, it took a little bit of staring like a mad woman before I saw the glorious shoots through my cat barrier of bramble twigs, but when I saw them I let out a little yelp of joy. In amongst all this dying back and end-of-harvesting, it is great to see new life. Also, through the poly-tunnels I can see little baby carrots doing well, scallions doing brilliantly and in the other tunnel I harvested about 5 nice lettuces.

But back to Andrew and his 'Joan J' exploits. The ground here had been well prepared over the last month and Andrew only needed to dig out a nice big trench for the canes. The soil was lovely. He carefully pulled apart the roots of the 6 canes from each other and laid them down roughly where they were to be planted. Then a short 'looking' break. Happy with placement, they were planted, watered, the tops cut back and a lovely layer of mulch put over the top. Eh, viola, the permanent bed is shameful no longer! I have high expectations for these girls - I want fruit galore - my inner Domestic Goddess wishes to make her own jam (and therefore become a 'real' woman/allotmenteer). Fingers crossed everyone.


Also, don't forget, in time.....(open this pic up)

Random Harvest (I LOVE that film)

This isn't about the film though, it is about the glorious harvest our wee plot gave us as a welcome home present. Here is the now standard harvest photo, but wait til you get the full run down of what's in there...

2 Pak Choi, 4 baby Lettuces, 3 Parsnips, 1 Leek, a massive handful of Parsley and 4 gorgeous wee Turnips. I was very happy, let me tell you.

The Pak Choi was used in stir fries (I was heard to proclaim "It's like real Pak Choi" - what an eejit) the Lettuces were eaten by me with a little cranberry sauce (more about that later) and last night Andrew made the best dinner ever with the rest and some couscous (which we'd grow ourselves if we could darn it!). He simply roasted the parsnips, leek and turnips and mixed it all up with couscous and lots of lovely flat leaved parsley. The only other ingredients were Ras el Hanout (Moroccan spice mixture) and a little salt and olive oil - Heaven!

So to the lettuces. They are growing away beautifully under one of our little mini polytunnels and are so tasty, especially lifted young like this. I am genuinely surprised at how well these little tunnels are doing, they were a good buy alright and to think, I almost doubted their necessity (apologises Andrew!).

Yes, the cranberry sauce and lettuce mixture. This comes from the 1st meal I had when we arrived in Krakow, I was so impressed by this dish I wrote it down in a notebook whilst eating it (never done that before). It had a Lettuce mix of course but added to that was grilled chicken strips, cashew nuts, Sunflower shoots (!) Basil mousse, a few perfectly ripe cherry tomatoes and Cranberry sauce. My socks were blown off - simple but my my so tasty. (If you've never had Sunflower shoots before - they taste a little like firm/ripe melon, beautiful.) Poor me I had hardly any of those ingredients but I made do.

We aren't the only ones to be enjoying the success of their lettuce. These ones are so cute in their little rows; they were planted in between corn until recently. I don't know the names of this lovely couple but they gave us a very big handful of said baby sweetcorn a few weeks ago and it was gorgeous - green fingers on that plot alright.

They aren't 'real' polytunnels but Andrew brought home some used Water Cooler Butts from work and cut their bums off. They have been very effectively used as cloches for 2 of our Parsley plants. Look how this plant was trying to escape (that's before I chopped it down for dinner, hehe), goes to show you don't have to pay for purpose made stuff, eh?

Lastly, for today, I'd like to mention our Leeks and how we've been blanching them with bits of drainpipe. It was found way back in the spring in a little stream along with lots of other dumped household stuff and we thought it might come in handy - we were right. I have an intolerance to 'real' onions but can eat leek, so it's an important crop for us. Using the collars around the young plants makes them grow up to have a longer, thicker white bottom half, where most of the flavour is. Gosh, I'm full of tips today! (This pic doesn't show our best ones but it gives a good idea).

Little Poly tunnels

It has just been brought to my attention that I haven't put up any photos of our lovely, great value poly tunnels. My apologies to Andrew. I shall, henceforth correct this oversight.....


I did talk about them, after buying the first one, from B&Q, back on the 22nd October. But here they are in all their glory. They fit our beds absolutely perfectly and with the weather the way it is, they will probably prove themselves very valuable.

Composting and Pumpkins

Looking back at the weekend's photos, I was reminded that Andrew turned the compost. It looks great - seems the mix is prefect and is rotting down extremely well. We'll have to get more seaweed soon, I think. Andrew is giving it a good sniff here and a rub through his fingers - he loves his compost. There were loads of worms in it too; remember always put the bins right onto the grass/soil so our wormy friends get good access! The other bin was also emptied (completely now) into the beds before the Spring Cabbages were planted and into the area where the Asparagus will - eventually - go, when we get some. As much as I love Sunnybank, our local nursery, it feels so good to not have to buy soil conditioner of this quality.

Unfortunately the same can not be said about our recent pumpkin dinner. We had to buy that beauty (from bloomin' Tesco, argh!) since all our pumpkins and squashes failed this year. There is still half of it left in the fridge to be used tonight; it hurts me to say, it is gorgeous. On Monday night we had it simply roasted with a little seasoning and some chicken - divine. Tonight there is a lovely pumpkin risotto coming my way and I can't wait. So comforting. There isn't any label on this one so I have no idea where it's from or of course which variety it is....

Sunday was a bloody horrible day, in my head. Andrew made me go out though and fair play to him, it was better than sitting in the house all mopey. We visited B&Q and finally got a long (raised bed length) plastic cloche. It was £8.99 but there was 25% off on Sunday - yippee! Then we got caught in the evil seeds section, it just gets us all confused, we want to grow everything and they have a lot to offer us, never mind all the catalogues here at home. We left with only our cloche and took it straight to the lottie. Andrew took it down, I only got as far as the car park - panic attack hit me over the head like a mallet.

Look at our lovely, picturesque power station in the background.