And it comes back around again…

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 29 June 2011 in growing | 6 comments

I know it’s pretty obvious but it’s still nice to see it in practise.

Yesterday we had broad beans as part of our dinner, and a few minutes later, the chickens got the pods to snack on (they LOVE them); tomorrow we shall have manure (in the garden, not for dinner), and next year we’ll have more broad beans.

We should also get eggs out of the system too but it was too complicated to add that into my diagram ;)

This week’s meal plan – garden a go go!

Posted by louisa on Monday 27 June 2011 in weekly meal plans | 8 comments

Our first Swillington Farm meat box arrived last Thursday night – all the (fresh) meat we’re eating this week (and hopefully for the next three weeks!) will come from that. Most of it went in the freezer so we’ll have it across the month and like a veg box, we don’t have any choice in what’s in there, so it should encourage us to some try different things. We had some of the bacon & some of the sausages for breakfast over the weekend and I also jointed the chicken – we froze the breasts (which each weighed over 250g/half a lb!) and had the rest on Saturday/Sunday. Tuesday’s soup comes from stock from the carcass – it was supposed to be for eating today but it’s far too hot for that today!

As for the title for this one – the garden is finally providing! We’ve been having spots of salad for a few weeks (much later than last year for some reason) but various things are finally starting to shine. I think there is something from our garden – either veg or eggs – in every meal, hurrah :)

Sunday breakfast – eggs & sausage
Sunday lunch – leftover chicken & potatoes, with homegrown garlicky broad beans & salad
Sunday dinner – dining out – curry

Monday lunch – marrow flower fritters with salad
Monday dinner – rump steak with purple sprouting broccoli, homegrown potatoes, broad beans & salad

Tuesday lunch – chicken & sweetcorn soup
Tuesday dinner – pasta with chorizo, pepper & homegrown courgette

Wednesday lunch – leftover chicken & sweetcorn soup
Wednesday dinner – chicken jalfrezi with lemon rice

Thursday lunch – bread & meat with broad bean salad
Thursday dinner – leftover chicken jalfrezi with lemon rice

Friday lunch – curried egg mayo with bread
Friday dinner – homemade pizza, with salad

Already making plans for next year?

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 15 June 2011 in growing | 5 comments

I know it’s not even midsummer yet but I’m not the only one making growing plans for next year, am I?

• More strawberries: As I said the other day, our current strawberries should give us a long season of fruit but strawberries are so damn useful that I’d like to expand our crop. While hopefully our current ones will send out runners which will we can cultivate, I’m thinking about adding another variety to result in more of a summer glut for turning into jam etc. I’ll be reading the Which results reposted in brief by Gillian on My Tiny Plot for inspiration. They’ll be planted in the “mini forest garden” beds to add more low height crops. (The silver birch bed is doing very well, btw – four levels so far, a fifth to go in, and the strawberries would be a sixth.)
• More soft fruit bushes: John’s dad has been building us a Lily-dog and hen containment fence on the shared boundary between our garden & our neighbours – and it’s made me think more about the stuff on that border. I’m going to pull up two shrubs and replace them with fruit bushes. I nearly bought a couple of (presumably 2 year old) redcurrants for cheap at Focus at the weekend but think I’d prefer more raspberries.
• Another cherry tree: Just near those bushes is a taller treelet, which everyone asks is fig because the leaves look like fig leaves. I don’t think it is – and even if it was, it’s not the right climate here to it’s a bit pointless. So I think I’ll replace that with a cherry – perhaps a sweet cherry to complement the sour morello we’ve already got.
• Even more fruit bushes or trees: On the lowest level of the fence, there is a narrow bed underneath the fence – that could be used for more fruit bushes or even espalier fruit trees.
• Another raised bed? We currently have two semi circular raised-with-stone beds with a space inbetween them. I usually fill the space with containers but it would be more efficient to wall the front of the space into a third raised bed. The builders who’ve just finished work on our house freed up a load of suitable stone so I might do this one this year. It would be a deep, south-east facing bed — even if it’s not vast, it could certainly be useful.
• A long bed at the front? I meant to make the front garden more useful this year – it’s currently being used as a dumping ground for non-useful rubble (from the building work) and random stuff from use clearing out the garage — not quite what I imagined! In time for next year, I’m going to try to build a really long bed along the side of the porch (about 4m). I’ve got some salvaged long lengths of decking which would be fine to use from both a structural and aesthetic point of view – even if it’s just for perennial herbs, it’ll be useful.
• More shade-loving things: I meant to start making better use of the shaded bits of our garden this year, but didn’t get around to it. I wish I’d put in some rhubarb, and some more herbs.
• And that’s all before thinking about what annuals I’ll grow…!

Are you getting ahead of yourself too?

Overexcited about baby fruit & vegetables again

Posted by louisa on Friday 10 June 2011 in growing | 6 comments

Buff aside, things are going well in the garden at the moment. I had a nearly full day out there yesterday – digging, potting on, planting out, sowing more successional stuff and staring into space under the pretext of “planning”. I also spent a lot of time checking out how things are progressing…

Weeee! our first pinkening strawberry!

We’ve got quite a lot of fruit but this one is the first to go red. They’re Flamenco strawberries – starting a little late but should fruit right through until the autumn — a few at a time for a longer season will be better for us this year, although I think I might add an early crop/June-July cropping one for a jam-making glut :)

I also spotted my first set of to-be-courgettes this week – they’re only about 15mm by 5mm at the moment so we might need quite a few to make a ratatouille…!

They don’t need pollination so should just grow now – and knowing courgettes, by tomorrow they’ll be marrows ;)

In the winter squash department, I also spotted some round-bottomed female flowers on a few of the pumpkins – I think they will need pollinating when the flowers open up. There are plenty of male flowers open but I’ve not seen many bees around over the last week, so I might get in there with a little paintbrush, just to be on the safe side.

There are little tiny bumpy baby cucumbers appearing up too.

We’ve also got a few apples starting – it’s the trees’ first year here so we shouldn’t really let them grow apples (they should concentrate on growing up and out first) but we’re going to let each tree grow a couple, just to see what they’re like.

I think I’m especially excited about all these things because, aside from the courgettes, they’re all first for our garden – never grown strawberries, pumpkins or cucumbers before, and there is always the “what if they don’t grow?” worry.

How’s your fruiting going? Any suggestions for an early/summer glut strawberry type?

May – end of month review

Posted by louisa on Thursday 2 June 2011 in goals, meta | 5 comments

Another month that seems to have lasted ages but in a good way. Lots of long weekends too – but enough stuff going on to fill them with. I meant to write this post yesterday but was in the garden ’til past 10pm — so much to do!

Goals in 2011 progress

Things are still progressing in the garden – but slower than I thought in some areas. I only had my first fully homegrown salad last week – compared to regular salad from the garden in April last year. (I’m saying “fully homegrown” because we got two tubs of living salad from Lidl at the end of April and have cut-and-come-again from them several times – really been good value for money but not the same as growing from seed.) I’ve successfully taken cuttings from two perennial herbs too, so that’s another step – and I realised I should make that goal more measurable by coming up with a list of applicable plants/shrubs.

We’ve baked a good few times so are probably almost on track for the “once a week” goal, I’ve been making more stuff from wood so again improving those skills, and we went on a “learn to fly-fish” course while we were in the Lakes the weekend before last, which obviously isn’t the same as fishing in the North Sea but again, steps in the right direction. I like the idea of trying out the various different styles of fishing – see which one suits us/me best.

Not great goal progress but not bad :)

Mini goals

I set myself a few mini-goals this month – just a to-do list for myself really. Out of the five goals, I managed to complete one of them (pressure cleaning the coop) and half do two others (spent a lot of time looking at phone options and have decided I have to go see some in the flesh now; and, also I’ve sorted through nearly all of our kitchen cupboards). The other two things have been, um, forgotten. Will have to add them to my next to-do list…

Buy less than 12 items of clothing in 2011

I actually bought something this month! I bought three second-hand but BNWT bras on eBay – they are pretty but the focus is on functional, and they’re all replacements: I ripped one bra at the start of the month (not sure how), which spurred on my purchases, but earlier in the year had mentally retired two others because they were old and uncomfortable — so they’re on my exemption list.

Perhaps that purchase sated my previous “want new clothes” desires as I haven’t really been bothered about looking/thinking about buying anything else. Still no new clothes for six months now!