Early June Garden Update

Some oca shoots poking through the soil.

It’s been nearly three weeks since our last post and a lot has changed since then. Shortly after going to press our young Court Pendu Plat apple came into bloom. As noted in our last post, this tree was historically known as ‘the wise apple’, because it blossoms so late in the season that it never loses its blossom to late frosts. This then signified that it was time for our mostly hardened off tomatoes and curcubits to be planted out into the miscellaneous crops bed. But then disaster struck. In quick succession strong winds and unexpected hot weather devastated…

Beautiful blossom on our dwarf quince tree.

Spring has well and truly sprung here in the East of England. We’re surrounded by beautiful blossom in our garden. We’ve also been busy planning this year’s crops, preparing beds and sowing seeds. It’s strange to think that we’ve been in this house for a year now. This time last year we were just sowing the first of our seeds – a very late start due to the move. Despite this we still had a very successful growing season. This year we’re better placed as we’ve started earlier – so we’re hoping for another bumper harvest. The many plum trees…

Delicious garlic bread balls to tear and share!

This recipe has evolved from something that Liz came up with last year as a fun way to get the kids to enjoy our homegrown garlic. It’s since become a family favourite, and so we decided to share it. So here it is: our tear and share garlic bread recipe. Ingredients 500g strong flour About 3 cloves of garlic, minced. Use more if desired 50g mature cheese, grated 5g salt 7g yeast 1 tbsp Oil 5g dried herb of choice* About 325ml warm water *We tend to use 5g dried oregano, or about twice as much if using a fresh…

Some of home-grown pea beans. These are without a doubt our favourite bean that we have ever grown.

We’ve mentioned them several times in passing before, but today we are dedicating an entire post to what is undoubtedly our favourite bean that we have ever grown or eaten: the pea bean. We first started growing these five years ago, purely for their looks. But when we came to cook them we were won over – we’ve never gone a year without them since. Although older textbooks sometimes classify them otherwise, pea beans are now categorised as Phaseolus vulgaris: French or ‘kidney’ beans. Pea beans are climbing beans that produce white flowers followed by short pods. The pods start…

River Cottage Handbook No.2 - Preserves

Like all of the books in this series, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall writes the introduction to this book, but the actual subject matter itself is written by the relevant expert from the River Cottage TV series. In this case Pam ‘The Jam’ Corbin. Corbin and her husband founded and owned the jam manufacturers Thursday Cottage, and she is still heavily involved in the company. She has also appeared in several episodes of River Cottage, as well as running the preserve courses offered by River Cottage. Having long been fans of the River Cottage TV series, a few years back Liz and I…

How to prepare spaghetti squash.

Spaghetti Squash Recipe Introduction I’ve posted before about just how excited we have been to try a spaghetti squash. It is certainly a crop whose fame has outspread its availability, at least here in the UK. We first read about them years ago and ever since have wanted to grow them. But due to the sprawling nature of squash plants and our lack of suitable growing space, we’d never had the opportunity. We have never seen them for sale anywhere, so they were off the menu. That was until last year. When we moved into our new home and discovered…

Just some of what we grew and produced this year. Top left - bottom right: winter squashes, parsnip, kohlrabi, a batch of jam, mushrooms, spiralised courgette ('courgetti'), plums, tomatoes and courgettes, squashes in our pumpkin patch.

This year was our first in our current home with our rather large garden. We moved into this house in May, and although we were late out with many of our crops, we’ve had a very successful growing season. In this post we’ll look back over the year and share where we feel we were successful, and where we were not. Soft Fruits By far our largest and most used soft fruit crop was our plums. We can’t really take much credit for this crop, as all of the trees were already here when we moved in, and we have…

A jar of homemade pickled runner beans.

In previous posts we detailed how to freeze runner beans and how to salt runner beans. In this post we look at a third method of runner bean preservation: pickling. How to Pickle Runner Beans Equipment: Large saucepan or preserving pan 1.5 litre jar Ingredients: 500g runner beans 2.5 pints distilled vinegar Spices for spice bag Method: Choose your spices and make up a spice bag. We used 8 peppercorns, 6 cloves, 5 all spice and a stick of cinnamon. Tie the spice bag to the handle of the saucepan and pour in the vinegar. Bring to the boil…

Strawberries starting to fruit at the end of December

December this year has been very mild. Indeed, the Met Office are reporting that here in England it has been the warmest December since records began in 1910. We have certainly seen that here in our garden and elsewhere. With daytime temperatures between 10 and 14°C, many of our strawberry plants are convinced that it’s spring, as the photo above shows. With no threat of frosts we have left many of our beetroots to be harvested and we are still picking them fresh as and when we require them. Even our dwarf clementine tree still sits in the front garden…

The 2015 winter squash harvest - more variety than you'd find in your local supermarket!

With the squash growing season now well and truly over here in the East of England, we are delighted to be able to able to share some photos of our very successful 2015 squash harvest. As long time readers will know, we only moved into our house and had use of its garden from May this year. We got off to a bit of a slow start due to other demands such as unpacking, work and raising children. But once we got the time we really went for it in the garden. One of our biggest projects was removing the…

Slightly Self-Sufficient

Tasting The Good Life

Early June Garden Update

Our Growing Plans for 2016

Tear And Share Garlic Bread Recipe

Pea Beans

River Cottage Preserves Handbook – Review

How to Prepare Spaghetti Squash

2015 – The Year In Review

How to Pickle Runner Beans

Late December Garden Update

The 2015 Squash Harvest