Big winners

I am considering making a living our of showing as we won three prizes in the Basingstoke and District Chrysanthemum and Dahlia Society.

Two seconds and a third gave us the fantastic sum of £2.80.

I think this was a fix as our little pink ones are much more impressive than the others.







We did quite quickly realise that we were real flower display virgins as everybody else had all the equipment necessary for professional showing where we just stuck them in a bucket. Aparently, they have to be 'staged' and supported in the vase so that they face the right way. Luckily someone spotted that we were looking a bit confused and came to our help.





Anyway, back to the serious business of getting provisions in for the winter so it is bean hanging time. I have had to shuffle the garlic and onions around a bit and put a load of onions in the shed but this is the next batch which I decided to pick as we appear to be heading for an Indian summer so it will give a chance for the plants to keep growing and give another crop.

I also have three trays of beans that I have shelled already with beans drying so we should have quite a few boxes this year.


I have also cleared out the last of the beetroot. I have made 8 jars so far with about half of them and will try to get the others done this weekend.






There are also three jars of pickled red cabbage with the left over bits. I decided to make colcanon using red cabbage instead of white forgetting that the red coloured everything. Saying that, when cooked it is a bluey purple so the potato looked like the blue ones from Kent.



One final picture is the pullings from a row of carrots just in case you are used to those funny soilless supermarket things. I can't describe how wonderful these taste (once the mud is washed off and the slugs removed)

Oops

It doesn't matter how many times you check your calculations, there is always one measurement that you don't spot.

The Boyd's are notorious for being short but there is always one oddity.

Kentish Life

Greetings from Tonbridge!

We thought it was about time for an update from out little garden in the Garden of England, lots has been happening in the 6 months since we moved in!

As you can see from the before and after photos, our vegetable beds have been quite successful!





In the new photo, which I took this morning, you're looking at tomatoes, sweetcorn, courgettes, globe artichoke, strawberries, raspberries, potatoes, peas and chard on the left and cabbage, jerusalem artichoke, beans (broad and borlotti), herbs, blueberries, lettuce and garlic on the right. Considering we only started our garden 4 months ago I think we've done pretty well!

Our best harvests have been courgettes and chard as you would expect and our giant cabbage, which you can see Matt holding in this picture. We made an indulgent cabbage casserole (cooked with garlic, blue cheese and bacon) and bubble and squeak burgers (mashed pots, cabbage, onions, garlic and peas browned in some oil).



The only vegetable that we brought with us from London were broad beans and they did quite well until the aphids attacked but we have a second lot in now which I sowed about a month ago. They managed to fight through the slugs and get to a suitable height and we don't have the pigeon problem here that we had in London so they should give us a little crop before it gets too cold for them.

Speaking of slugs. We've found a secret weapon...Matt! Every evening he goes on a slug hunt and collects all of them (from the giant orange to the tiny brown) with his bare hands (yuck!) to be disposed of.

When mummy and Nick were last visiting we went on a walk and found lots of elders heavy in berries so Matt and I went on a collecting mission at the beginning of the week and came back with two tubs. We now have 4 jars of elderberry and blackberry jam (blackberries from the freezer that we collected from the garden in Wimbledon). We haven't tried it yet but it smells lovely!

The final update is on our potatoes, which are a beautiful purple colour (very me!). This is the first year we're tried to grow them. We used 6 large tubs and this is the crop from 3 of them. I didn't chit the seed potatoes for very long and I only put one in some of the tubs where they could have had 2 or 3 but for our first effort I'm delighted!

Finally some dahlias

We decided that this would be the year of the dahlia. That we before we discovered that it was actually the year of the slug.

It seems that slugs love young dahlia shoots so as soon as they peeped above the surfact of the soil, the slugs nibbled them down again. We did manage to get a few to grow large enough to succeed so here are a few for your enjoyment.

Actually the pictures are better than the real thing as there is not a hint of scent anywhere so you are not missing anything there.












To finish today, we do still have food in the form of bean, tomatoes, eggs, raspberries, courgettes (or is it marrow, or maybe banana)and the last of the sweetcorn.