Rich plants a sprout plant
It’s been a long time coming, but we finally planted out the vegetable patch today. Now that the railway sleepers are in place it’s a proper raised bed, with plenty of room for root growth and space for branches and leaves to spread out.
So we started digging at the back wall and worked our way forwards, opening up little holes with our trowels and dropping in the sprouts, broccoli, beetroot and pepper plants that have been quickly getting more and more waterlogged on the patio.
It took us about three hours all told, by which time we’d not only transplanted the most vulnerable plants, but also seeded the carrots and leeks that will one day - hopefully - become soup, and the lettuces that will join the rapidly advancing tomatoes in a salad.
Stepping back to admire our handiwork was very satisfying. Now we just need to fight off the slugs, and await the fruits of our labours. Quite literally.
The patch, fully planted
This story was posted
on Saturday, June 23rd, 2007
It is filed under In the garden.
Leave a comment
I know I’ve been writing a lot about the garden lately, but with the house still only half finished it’s been the main focus of my attention.
So, it was a nice surprise as I was putting my bike away one night this week to notice than the bush beside my front door that we’d all so admired for its red blossom in the spring is now bearing a considerable amount of fruit. Even better that that fruit looks like quince, which makes for a very nice jelly. I had thought that bramble would be my first jam, but this puts a very different slant on things.
It’s fortunate, really since after giving around 24 fruits between them the strawberry plants have done nothing for the last three weeks. Less than impressive.
This story was posted
on Friday, June 22nd, 2007
It is filed under In the garden.
Leave a comment
With vegetables you get the best of both worlds. Something to eat at the end of the season and, before that, blooms as good as anything you might find in a cultivated garden.
The beans are now brightening up the patio with red flowers on the runners, and a delicate pinky purple on the French. The tomatoes are already starting to open tiny yellow blooms, the bramble is a riot of white petals (and already some green fruit) and the potatoes are budding well, so it won’t be long before they, too, are flowering outside the patio doors.
My favourites, though, remain the beans, which I have found the most interesting and curious veg of all those I am growing, right from the day I looked in the greenhouse one morning to discover that they had gone from nothing to 10cm tall overnight. They have continued their extraordinary rate of growth ever since.
French bean flowers
Runner bean flowers
This story was posted
on Wednesday, June 13th, 2007
It is filed under In the garden.
Leave a comment
Very exciting. We haven’t had any new home-grown arrivals in the greenhouse since the beans poked through the tops of their pots (and they’re going on for seven feet tall now and showing no signs of slowing down).
So it was good to see that the two strawberry runners I’d poked into some pots of compost in the slim hope they might do something special have rooted and become plants in their own right. They’re already larger than the seedlings I’d bought to start the crop, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they started producing fruit in their own right in another month and a half.
Spurred on by two small successes, I’ve poked another five into compost in the hope they’ll do the same. If they do, I’ll already have doubled my initial investment.
Two new strawberry plants
This story was posted
on Monday, June 11th, 2007
It is filed under In the garden.
Leave a comment
Mixed news from the Blagger plot today. We harvested and ate the first tiny crop of strawberries on Saturday; they were juicy and so full of flavour that they made the shop-bought ones we had yesterday taste watery by comparison.
And good news on the patio this morning, as the first dozen of so flowers have started to bud on the runner beans. Bright orange and clearly ready to blossom, they take us one step closer to harvest time, trimming time, slicing time and freezing time, as by all accounts they will produce more veg than I could ever hope to eat.
But it’s bad news for the broccoli. It’s still sitting in pots in the greenhouse, waiting for the vegetable plot to be boxed in, which is happening today. That means they need a lot more care and attention than they would if they were outside, and although they were watered on Saturday lunchtime they missed out on a drink yesterday, as I was away from home.
I visited them again this morning, and they were limp and badly drooping. They had sucked their little pots dry and all the soil had pulled away from the sides.
I gave them a good drink, of course, but I think the next couple of days could be a little bit touch and go for my brassicas. I’ll be keeping my green fingers crossed.
This story was posted
on Monday, June 4th, 2007
It is filed under In the garden.
Leave a comment
Welcome to Blagger, where we document our move towards a self-sufficient lifestyle, growing our own crops and, eventually, keeping poultry in a suburban back garden. Hop onboard and subscribe to our 
RSS feed.
| Growing food |
With a small plot of land, some simple tools and a few seeds, it's easy to grow enough food to keep you self-sufficient all year round.
 Our various salad crops are approaching readiness, and with 23 tomato plants of four different varieties to choose from we’re hoping for plenty to eat, and even more left over for another batch of chutney to see us through the winter.
 An early morning picking session bagged us a bumper crop of beans, taking our total for the year so far well beyond what we produced in the whole of last summer, and it appears there are still more to come.
 We had our first proper harvest at the weekend. Three types of beans: French, runner and broad. Not a huge amount of any variety, but enough to cook ourselves a three-bean risotto for dinner.
We had a bumper picking session, and the most prolific crop wasn’t even one we were after. After a hunt for more elder flowers for a second batch of champagne yeilds few returns, we come upon an early apple tree ripe for picking.
 With summer in full swing, the plot was due some mid-season maintenance. We moved the tomatoes outdoors, built a climbing frame for the cucumbers and pulled an impressive number of weeds from the carrot runs.
|
| Keeping chickens |
Chickens take up very little space, are cheap to keep, and will reward you with a prolific supply of eggs throughout the year.
 The chickens’ future home arrived last week. Very exciting. Having got permission from the council’s environmental health people to keep chickens in the garden, it was great to finally have their home arrive, despite the missing bolts and the fact they’d tried delivering it a day too soon.
 I’m about to launch myself back into the world of poultry and eggs, as I’ve put in an order for a coop. It won’t be here for another month, which gives me plenty of time to source my laying ladies, which have been named Margot, Gerry (Geraldine, not Gerald, natch) and Barbara even before they arrive.
Fresh eggs every morning. You can’t beat them - especially not if you plucked them from under the chicken yourself. Here’s Blagger’s rundown of the first sites you should turn to on the road to egg and meat self-sufficiency.
 This book delivers exactly what it says on the cover starting out with an extensive and balanced list of the pros and cons of keeping your own home flock. Right from the off it’s a realistic, if slim volume that’s not afraid to admit that chickens in the garden might not be right for you. If they are, though, then this is the only book you need.
‘Our first cockerel was an accident called Yvette…’
Imagine Peter Mayle was rewriting A Year in Provence, but from the back of a hen coop, not France. Just as he followed his dream of a life in the sun, so Martin Gurdon followed the dream of daily fresh eggs and chickens in his garden. This slim [...]
|
| In the kitchen |
Simple recipes give you more control over the meals you eat. Here we use our own produce, and supplies bought from the local market, to cook up a treat.
 This is what the 15 jars of our finished apple jelly looked like. They’re much darker than crab apple jelly, which is a light pink. The rich red brown of this batch is most likely down to the variety of apple we picked.
We finally got time to make jelly with the apples this weekend. They take a little bit of planning, but jellies are easy, and so long as you can spare a couple of hours on two consecutive days they are an easy weekend project that leaves you with a stash of fruity jam to enjoy at the end.
We had our first proper harvest at the weekend. Three types of beans: French, runner and broad. Not a huge amount of any variety, but enough to cook ourselves a three-bean risotto for dinner.
The key to successful blanching is to have everything ready in advance so that you can create a kind of one-person production line.
 Chilis not only taste great - when used appropriately and in moderation - they look good, too. Growing as colourful fruits on small bushes, they make an attractive addition to a windowsill or conservatory or, if you have a suitably sunny spot outside, a pot in the garden. They’re also the perfect crop for the self-sufficientist without a garden of their own.
|
| In the home |
Self-sufficiency can manifest itself in many ways, from using less electricity to saving water. We're working on cutting down out consumption in the home, and producing less waste.
As inflation takes a hold, there are better reasons than ever to move towards self-sufficiency.
 Self sufficiency doesn’t all have to be about growing your own vegetables, keeping chickens in the garden or screwing a solar panel to your roof. Sometimes it’s the smallest things that make the biggest difference.
 My electricity supplier actually wants us to use less energy rather than more, with the help of a free energy monitor that tracks your usage and costs. Watching it change as you switch lights on and off is proving strangely addictive.
Wind turbines generate more controversy than electricity. While recent research suggests that some generate less power in the course of a year than it would take to illuminate a lightbulb, your decision to erect one in the garden can have neighbours up in arms. Hopefully things should get easier as more efficient, smaller and quieter models are rolled out.
We all know you should unplug your mobile the moment it’s finished charging, but if you plug it in when you go to bed and then undock it next morning as you head out to work, the chances are you’ll have left it trickling all through the night. So why not cut the current after [...]
|
|
|
|
