This week’s meal plan: returning to normal

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 12 April 2011 in weekly meal plans | 2 comments

So last week was pretty chaotic – but by and large, I did avoid resorting to junk food — by missing dinner just about every night. I underestimated how long I’d be at the theatre each night and was rarely home before midnight – so I was grateful that I’d planned decent sized lunches! The show went surprisingly well – after three less than promising dress/tech rehearsals, we and the kids were all really thrown when they did a stellar job on opening night. We had lots of good audience feedback too, hurrah. :)

Anyway, this week, we’re back to normal – actually better than normal since my classes are cancelled over Easter – so hopefully we’ll stick to our plan!

Monday lunch: toast & cheese
Monday dinner: pasta carbonara

Tuesday lunch: bread & hummus, and pickles
Tuesday dinner: sweet chilli turkey & veg stirfry with noodles

Wednesday lunch: sandwiches
Wednesday dinner: homemade pizza

Thursday lunch: leftovers from either lunch or dinner on Tuesday
Thursday dinner: roast lamb with green beans & carrots

Friday lunch: egg mayo ploughman’s salad thing
Friday dinner: chicken enchiladas with salad

Creating miniature forest gardens?

Posted by louisa on Friday 8 April 2011 in growing | 9 comments

On Wednesday Linda pointed out that my sawing wood avoidance isn’t lazy but “efficient”. Yes, *cough*, efficient, I concur.

I’m trying to be as efficient as possible in the garden this year – both according to that meaning and the conventional one — and from that and some recent reading, I’m thinking of creating two small forest gardens spots in my garden.

For those not familiar with the idea, forest gardening is a way to multicrop one area – growing (usually) edible plants, shrubs and trees at up to seven different levels, from the treetop canopy levels to ground cover and even root veg. You can create them at a forest scale or even just in small container. It’s efficient in terms of space – a variety of potential food from one area – and can be efficient in the not-sawing-really-lazy sense too if most/all of the layers are perennials or self-seeders.

Both spots I’ve thinking about are in raised beds underneath trees – the first underneath a super tall 100 year old silver birch, then second under a recently planted (currently 2 years old) morello cherry. The silver birch would be canopy layer-plus-plus as it’s miles away from anything else. The cherry, which is on semi-dwarf rootstock, will grow to no more than 2.5m-3m tall so is more at the second layer, the “low tree layer”.

The idea is to have a wedge shape if at all possible – the tall things at the back, the short things at the front, so everything gets sufficient light. The trees are, usefully, in just about the right position for this – towards the back of the space (or at least with ample space to the front) and positioned so that they won’t block the sun. (The back of the house, and thus the garden, is east-facing but the southern facing aspect is completely open too so the silver birch bed gets full sun from about 10am until 4pm-5pm in the summer, and the cherry space from dawn until 2pm.)

Both spots are small and both trees will be pretty thirsty, so I probably won’t be able to plant a full set of layers of demanding fruit & veg but I think there is potential for some stuff. Even if I’m not growing huge amounts of anything in particular, as long as it’s not taking me a lot of effort, it seems to be a good use of space – especially as they’re underused/used as a dumping ground as the birch bed (at the top) is used now.

I’ve already started to plant some shrub-layer fruit bushes under the silver birch – some raspberries that’ll hopefully grow to 3ft-4ft tall. I don’t think the bed is deep enough towards the front for root veg but it’ll certainly be fine for herbaceous things — it would make sense to put borage in there (which grew to between 2-3ft last year) because it’s near the chickens who love borage and I’ve got some chard just starting off, which could go in front of that. Finally, I’m not sure I’ll have any spare plants this year but hopefully once my strawberries start multiplying, I could plant some runners as ground cover/to topple over the edge. Borage self-seeds, chard can (can’t it?) and strawberry runners will last a few years before needing swapping out – so that, in theory, sounds like it could be a lazy efficient bed.

There is only about half that space around the cherry tree so I can’t pack it out. I think big berry bushes would overwhelm the space and clash with the lower tree branches but might get away with some shorter fruit bushes – possibly a small blueberry bush (I’ve seen some that are only about 2ft tall), and when I can propagate children from my cranberry & lingonberry bushes, I could include their offspring there too (the cranberry “strands” could flop over the side of the raised bed). I guess I wouldn’t be adding either of those things this year – which would probably be good as it would let the cherry tree get established in the meantime. I wonder if there is anything not resource crazy that I could put in there now… possibly some not-moisture-crazy herbs? Rosemary? Lavender? I have some little lavender plants in the nearby herb bed which could be transplanted without too much disruption and some other rosemary plantlets nearly ready to be planted out too.

One layer I’ve not talked about is climber/vines – which is the seventh layer. If I thought kiwis or grapes would grow well enough this far up north, I’d possibly consider them for climbing up around the silver birch. Is there anything else in that category that would work? I guess I could leave some space for annual vines – “climbing” squash or something but they are very resource intensive. I’m going to make sure the beds are well enhanced with organic matter before I start but it seems silly to overload them straight afterwards.

Has anyone else created any really small scale “forest gardens”? Is there anything to watch for or need to consider? Any suggestions/advice about my initial plant choices?

Things I’m getting unduly over-excited about this week

Posted by louisa on Thursday 7 April 2011 in growing | 6 comments

1. The sunny weather
It’s just glorious out there.

2. The sunny-yet-windy weather meaning clothes line dry super quickly
I put out a load yesterday morning and another this morning – and both lots were dry by about lunchtime. Smashing!

3. All the green halos appearing on the trees
The sycamores started last week but the silver birches just yesterday – the leaf buds are at the ends of such spindly little branches that the buds look just like a green haze.

4. The elderflower buds are thinking about taking shape
I noticed this while having a cup of tea on the balcony earlier – the tree next to the house is budding up. Elderflowers fritters in a couple of weeks, yay!

5. That cup of tea on the balcony in the aforementioned glorious sunny weather
We generally have good tea but then perhaps, say, one in 20 cups of tea are just perfect. Perfect temperature, strength & sweetness. The sunshine & animals accompanying me at that time just added to it.

6. My previously floppy-leaved lettuces are pulling themselves into heads
I mentioned this on Twitter and ViksterBean said: “Isn’t it great when veg suddenly starts to look like veg, if you know what I mean?!” I do know what she means and it’s just jolly marvellous!

7. My first batch of tomato seedlings
I lost loads of baby tomatoes to the Great Damping Off Crisis of 2011 so I’m feeling very protective of the ones that made it through – and my babies are doing well.

8. The first early potatoes are starting to peek their heads through the first level of soil
Nearly time to level up! (Oh and to plant out the rest too.)

9. The fact we just had toasties for lunch
John and I both get over excited about toastie-maker toasties considering it’s just beans, cheese & crappy white bread (well, and peanut butter for him, and tabasco sauce for me). I think it’s a residual thing from childhood when we weren’t allowed them often because our mums considered it too much faff to clean the toastie maker afterwards (and cleaning it ourselves would be unthinkable). Today’s toasties were especially exciting as I had a nutella one as a lunch dessert. Mmm, vegetable oil.

10. Anticipation for 10pm on Saturday night
When our last performance comes to an end. Last year, my fellow tutor Karen and I were dancing/singing along backstage due to hysteria/relief on the last night of the show; this year, the hysterical/nervous dancing started last night, the final dress rehearsal. It’s the first performance tonight. I’m not on stage but I’m the stage manager so that means I have to make sure all 43 hyper teenagers are where they’re supposed to be when they’re supposed to be there. 10pm on Saturday night will be sweeeeeet.

Are you unduly excited about anything this week? What’s got you embarrassingly giddy?

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 6 April 2011 in chickens | 2 comments

In our chicken coop today, you’re either evil or slightly gormless.

More scrap wood planters

Posted by louisa on Monday 4 April 2011 in growing, making, wood stuff | 6 comments

These are WIPs rather than finished articles but I wanted to mention them anyway because it’s pretty much all I achieved over the weekend – I had a nice quiet weekend, just not as productive as normal.

On Friday afternoon, I had that “I must make!!” craving so I went to hunt around in the (supposedly for burning) wood store for scraps to planters – I found 30 plank offcuts, roughly the same length (about 25cm/10ins) and width (13cm/5ins) and 12 batten offcuts, about 15mmx30mm. I’d intended to make another long trough but I realised those pieces would make three 25cm/10inch-cubed planters without having to saw anything at all – win!

(I don’t mind sawing now that we have a decent saw that treats everything like butter – but I like to avoid it whenever I can because I’m lazy and always end up with wonky cuts :) )

As with the other planters I’ve made, these aren’t exactly working examples of right angles or beautiful to look at but they’ll do. They’re finished in terms of building but the planks were all untreated and while I’ll line the inside anyway, I think I’m going to have to treat or paint the outside to make them more weather resistant. As we’re painting the bathroom soon, we should have some paint leftover from that which I can use.

The other planter I started yesterday afternoon before I had to rush off to a not-great dress rehearsal. I went down to the bottom of the garden to look for pallets (to make a vertical planter like the one Emma suggested) but the only ones down there are too big/heavy – but I did find some old, weathered fence boards/paling, which John’s dad had salvaged & brought over at some point, so I decided to make another long trough planter from them. I’ve made up the long sides – using a salvaged/scrap 2by4 cut into quarters for the corner supports/feet – but haven’t attached the short sides or base yet. It’s going to be 120cm/4ft by 60cm/2ft when it’s finished so I might end up removing the feet and resting the base on the floor so it doesn’t have to be strong enough to support all that weight. I’m going to enlist John’s help with fixing on the sides – I’m hoping that two of us working together can actually get the angles square for a change!

While I was doing that yesterday, John was at his mum and dad’s house for lunch and his dad excitedly told him about his latest find for us — apparently the sawmill/joinery place he gets a lot of offcuts from had some 5m (16ft) lengths of decking going begging this week – salvaged from a replacement job or something. According to John, his dad now has a crazy idea for us to make some 5m long planters – that might be a little nuts! Perhaps I should work on my sawing skills after all…