Our Family and Other Animals

And now, over to SW19, for the latest from Wimbledon...

As it’s been so long since I sent news from the big smoke I thought I would take this opportunity to update you on our garden. We have now dug three beds down the left hand side of the garden. The one nearest the house is onions, garlic, salad, beetroot, radishes and spring onions. The middle bed is mainly tomatoes, but also celery (because mummy gave us sooooo much, thanks for that), a globe artichoke, brussel sprouts and a snowman pumpkin. The far bed is mainly beans (broad, cannelino, borlotti, climbing French and kidney) plus more celery and another pumpkin.

In addition to this in pots we’ve got another 20 or so tomato plants, about 15 cucumber plants (although I keep finding more that I had forgotten about!), some peas (which look very pathetic), 6 butternut squash plants (grown from seeds from a squash from the supermarket), some chard, lots of herbs and about 20 peppers/chillis (they got mixed up so I don’t know which is which), an aubergine and 3 window boxes full of salad. We’ve also got our fruit – 3 blueberry plants (which we planted last year), 2 raspberries, 2 strawberries and a blackcurrant.

I can’t quite believe we’ve got so much and we are constantly fighting with our menagerie of pests:

• Slugs
• Aphids
• Black fly
• Moths (giant ones, they can definitely smell my fear)
• Rosemary leaf beetles (apparently new to the UK but thriving in Wimbledon)
• Wood pigeons
• Cats
• Foxes (Geraldine, who lives at the end of our garden, and her cub)

You wouldn’t believe we’re in London! Added to all of this is the fact that we are going on holiday for two weeks so we are hedging our bets and asking 2 separate friends to water for us in the hope that they will remember at least once each. I hope it all lasts!

We haven't got any up to date photos but this is our bean patch, before the beans started growing like crazy...

Strawberry Fields Forever

Hello! It's guest blog time again.

This week sees a brand new collaboration. Pyotts Products have been producing a high volume of summer fruits so it’s sister (or should that be daughter) company “South Wimbledon Organic Foods” has come to the rescue. The fruit survived the tropical temperatures of Long Sutton and a completely different type of jam on the M3 to make it safely back to London. Matt has now expertly turned the strawberries (even the squishy ones) into 3 jars of “fridge jam” which, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall assures us is “a sort of halfway house between a full-blown preserve and a fresh fruit sauce”. This is Hugh’s recipe:

Makes about 2kg (about five to six 340g jars).

1.5kg strawberries
The juice of 1 lemon
750g jam sugar with pectin

Divide the fruit in half, putting the smaller berries in one bowl and the larger ones in another (if the small ones are nevertheless quite big, cut them in half). Roughly crush the large ones with a potato masher (or by hand), then combine the crushed and uncrushed strawberries, and add the lemon juice and sugar. Stir to combine, then leave for an hour to draw out the juices.

Transfer the mixture to a preserving pan. Bring it quickly to a rolling boil, then boil hard for exactly five minutes. Remove from heat and leave to cool a little (this stops the whole fruit rushing to the top of the jar when poured).

Pot in jam jars that have been sterilised by being washed in hot, soapy water and dried in a low oven (or put through a dishwasher cycle). Seal the jars while hot, and label them when cool. Once opened, refrigerate the jam and use within two or three weeks.

I can’t take any credit for the jam, Matt did that all himself, but I did bake some yummy scones to put it on. Here they are together:

Pyotts Products

Pyotts Products has opened for business again, this time due to the excess of rhubarb. 8 jars of rhubarb and orange chutney and 12 of spicy rhubarb chutney are up for grabs so put in your orders now while stocks last. A couple have already gone missing and I think the crumbs and sticky drips on the worktop indicate that Nick approves of this batch.

Another date for your diary

We are starting to prepare for the show and are going to enter every class possible this year, although I am not very confident in some classes. We are going to try to exceed our success of last year.

It is too early to tell with the veg classes, whether we will have anything worth showing, but certainly in the hanging baskets we have a fantastic entry at the moment but maybe they have peaked too early and will not be as good in a couple of months time. We ae going to have a try at every cookery class and are fairly confident we will have some good roses to show. I am going to risk putting in a bottle of runner bean and grapefruit and hope that the judges survive the day.

Black gold

The bucket under the bath is working wonders and now that I am watering the pumpkins regularly, it is filling up well. It really is black gold and the hanging baskets and melons love it.

Looking like a record week coming up

The latest report from the egg-log is that we had 20 eggs in the first month of having the ducks. Last week was a record with 11 eggs and it looks like this week is going to smash all records as we have 5 already and it is only Wednesday.

broad bean and spinach omelette for tea tonight - yummy!

Summer is coming

The big clear up has started on No 53. We have rather neglected the plot as we have been concentrating on the ducks so much. Ther are loads of apples forming on the trees although I would imaging that they will shed most of them as they are such young trees. The currents have quite a crop that we didn't expect and the gooseberries are plumping out nicely.


The strawberries love their hay bed courtesy of the duck bedding. It smells a bit as you come in the gate but is self fertilising. It seems that duck poo is good for strawberries.





Nick and Matt did a fantastic job finishing the duck compound and I can sleep well now knowing that they have a netting roof to stop the pigeons and magpies getting in a pinching their food. It also gives them greater protection form unmentionable preditors.




Back to gardening on 51 and 52 and the pumpkin, two butternut squash and two scallop squash have gone into the bath. I am confident of a bumper crop as they are growing in pure manure. The rain has done its job and the bucket under the bath plug-hole is steaming away with a lovely dark, thick liquid manure which will be used on the squash that is being planted elsewhere.



Not everything in the greenhouse is edible. I have also been thinking ahead to Basingstoke Gardening show and trying to exceed out rosette number from last year so I am cultivating a couple of hanging baskets to be able to enter one in the show. This is the pink and purple option. There is also a red and yellow, a red and while and an everything that was left over option. I am not sure that they will keep going until the end of July but fingers crossed there will be one that will make the grade.



Rebecca and I had a bottle and tomato planting session. We got 14 in the bed next to the small greenhouse, interspersed with marigolds to keep the greenfly away. There are also 30 in the big bed that has been heavily manured. I am worried how we are going to keep 44 tomato plants watered in the hot summer that we are expecting but we will do our best.




We also planted 48 celery plants in the space between the canes from the beans. There is one bed of butter beans and another with the barlotto beans and black and white kidney beans. The theory is that the celery will grow more slowly so by the time the beans are finished the celery will be growing well underneath and ready to pull lush heads of crunchy celery. That is the theory anyway.





I have been showing off my heritage purple podded peas. You may remember that I got the seeds at the potato festival. You will need to click on the image to see them properly but they really do look unusual.









Back to 53 and we cut the lovage back to find that the fig has about a dozen figs forming. It is at the bottom of the plot where the water drains so fingers crossed they will not drop. The size that they are now would indicate that they will ripen well and we will have fully grown ripe figs by August.




That is about it for the update from this weekend except to add that there is someone on the allotment who has the right idea - Molly the allotment cat. She lives here and who can blame her as Ted feeds her such luxuries as chicken, salmon and gammon to supplement her diet of baby rabbit which she seems an expert at catching and depositing outside peoples gates. She has found that black membrane fabric absorbs the sun and it is her favourite place for her afternoon nap.

It's good to be back

I spent last week away working, two days in Leeds and three days in Edinburgh. It was a long way from the allotment so I was glad to be back. I really had missed seeing the girls and they were making the most of the sunny start to the weekend.

They did us proud last week by producing a total of nine eggs.


We are having a bit of a courgette moment with Old Basing allotment at the moment but this time it is rhubarb. I keep giving it away but it keeps on growing. I left Nick with three rhubarb crumbles but he only managed to eat one and put two in the freezer.

I have had to resort to searching for alternatives and came up with:

RHUBARB AND ALMOND CHICKEN

Serve with rice and salad for 4

Enough chicken parts to serve 4 (thighs, breasts etc)
1 tablespoon flour, very lightly seasoned with pepper, paprika, salt and chilli powder
3 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil for frying
3-4 stalks rhubarb, cut into thumb-length pieces
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon chopped thyme, or 1 teaspoon dried
200 ml white wine
1 handful slivered almonds, lightly toasted

In a large bowl, toss the chicken in the flour mixture. In a large, heavy pan or high-lipped frying pan, heat the oil over a medium-high heat until it is hot then brown the chicken for about 5 minutes on each side. Add the rhubarb and onions and cook for about 8 minutes, stirring, until the onions are brown. Add the garlic, thyme and wine, cover and reduce the heat. Simmer the chicken for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally, until cooked through and tender. Serve sprinkled with almonds.

MACKEREL WITH RHUBARB AND CIDER

Serves 2

Fresh mackerel fillets
4 bay leaves
salt and black pepper
120 ml (4 fl oz) dry cider
12 g (1/2 oz) butter
225 g (1/2 lb) fresh rhubarb, chopped
1/2 teaspoons lemon juice
25 g (1 oz) brown sugar
pinch nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 180°C, 350°F, Gas mark 4. Season the fillets with salt and pepper then place a bay leaf on each fillet and roll up. Place the fish rolls in a shallow ovenproof dish, pour over half the cider and dot with the butter. Cover with aluminium foil or a lid and bake in the oven for 30 minutes, until tender. Meanwhile, place the remaining cider, rhubarb, lemon juice, brown sugar and nutmeg in a pan. Bring to the boil then simmer for 20-25 minutes, stirring from time to time, until soft and puréed. To serve - transfer the fish to a warmed serving plate, drizzle some of the rhubarb sauce over the top of the fish and serve the remaining rhubarb sauce separately. Serve hot.



Churchill Way is providing us with our first crop of broad beans, and they are so sweet and delicious we both stood and ate them straight from the pod. They are so young there is more broad than bean but it is much better to pick them young.

We are going beans and peas in a big way this year and have loads of peas growing already and this weekend we planted out the butter beans, kidney beans and barlotto beans that had been growing like mad in the little greenhouse. We used a total of 60 canes on the beans which indicates how many we are going to have. I have now started off the dwarf french beans and runner beans which will go out at the end of May when there is no fear of frosts.

I am making a much greater effort at inter-cropping this year, so have planted the chinese artichokes in the spaces between the peas, and am going to put the celery out inbetween the butter beans.

Finally, I must share with you our wonderful sunday night supper. If I had the time to make bread, and ignoring the ham, it would be all home grown. Delicious scrambled duck egg with chives and broad beans. Yummy!!!

A lovely swim in the sunshine

We spent a vey relaxing two hours duck watching this morning as they splashed around in their new pool. We took a video on the camera which is below. Click on the arrow in the centre to start the video.

It takes quite a long time to load so be patient.



After their bath there was lots of stretching and drying....
... and then they decided to go back to bed for an afternoon nap.

Three ducks, three eggs

One egg today so we now have three eggs, all different colours but which egg matches which duck?

Back to gardening

We have become a bit obsessed with ducks over the last few weeks but there has been some gardening going on as well. Nick has totally weeded the strawberry bed, I have been busy sowing in the greenhouses and in the ground, and yesterday I put a load of peas out supported by the hazel twigs that I cut from the hedge.

The small greenhouse is full of loads of different types of beans which are bursting through the surface of the compost. There is also tomatoes, celery, cauliflower, sprouts, celariac, salsify and sunflowers. The large greenhouse is bulging with more tomatoes, chinese artichokes, globe artichoke, salad crops, more celery and loads of flowers as well as three hanging baskets that are so far advanced they think it is summer.

Duck egg blue

Well Mike Hatcher was right, we did get white and green eggs. When we let the girls out this morning there was a beautiful green egg sitting in the straw in their house. We think this must have been from Ebony as she is the darkest duck. Although I say green, it is more blue and you can see where the colour Duck Egg Blue came from. I have shown it with the white one from Wednesday so you can see the contrast. Guess what we are having for breakfast tomorrow.

The first egg

You can imagine our disappointment when letting the ducks out this morning, we searched for any egg laying and nothing at all. They were very lazy again and it took ages for them to come out with Emily being the first. She stood in the doorway for ages until the others joined her and they all ventured out together. There was the usual ritual of stretching and shaking before the dabbling started then suddenly there was an egg lying on the ground. Nick and I were sitting in their garden with them and didn't notice which one laid it but we have a feeling it was Emily.


It was a wonderful sight and a lovely white egg. Hardly a meal though, but we are hopeful that there may be others before the day is out as Elena looks a bit egg bound.
They were far more relaxed this morning and had a good breakfast before we left them in peace.

Mike Hatcher

If anybody is looking for a birthday present for me, a subscription to Practical Poultry will not be a disappointment. For further information go to http://www.practicalpoultry.co.uk/ which is an introduction to where the girls spent Sunday night. They were lucky enough to be the guests of Mike Hatcher who is described by Practical Poultry as a ‘poultry guru’. It was indeed an honour and a pleasure to meet him and a fascinating person to talk to.

A good first night

It took us half an hour to get the girls into their house last night and it was dark by the time we left the allotment, but this morning they looked quite content and seemed to have had a good night. Nick said that I gave them too much straw, and it did seem as they were very comfortable as they were reluctant to wake up and they eventually came out to a lot of stretching and shakeing of tail feathers.

They are still quite scatty today but less than yesterday so progress is being made albeit slowly.

Ducks over Basingstoke

The day has finally arrived and we have ducks.

They came from Oswestry via Coventry and spent last night in Newbury/Wantage before coming home this morning. They were very nervous at first but are settling down now.





They are real time wasters as Katy and I sat all afternoon watching them. We were also watching Nick work but he was not as interesting.






Emily
Emily was named first as it seemed a natural name for her. She is the smallest of the three and we think the youngest. She is also very gentle and timid. She is also the most perfect as show standards go, very good posture and perfect manners.



Elena
Elena was named after the female lead character in Zorro as she is wearing a superhero mask. Elena is the Greek version of Helen which was also the off duty name of Elastigirl in The Incredibles. She is a colour created by her breader which is a white and blue so farily unique and I think will turn out to be the most inquisitive. Although not the tallest, she is the sturdiest and was the first to find the food.



Ebony
Ebony is the leader of the pack. Wherever she goes the others follow. She is the largest and oldest with tinges of grey in her feathers. She was the first to swim in the pool and the first to explore the whole of their garden, finding the way round the back of the house.

Scoop

Plastic bottles are greatly underestimated. I have been getting very frustrated as how difficult it is to get compost from the bag to the potting tray on the bench in the greenhouse. No longer with my special compost scoop!

Master Rebecca Hewett

The biggest news and a great relief to finally get the hear after a long wait, is that Rebecca has gained a massive 77% and a well deserved distinction for her dissertation.

As well as her BA she now also has a: MSc HR (Consultancy) with distinction


What a clever person she is, and an up and coming gardener as well.

(Please ignore the title of this post, it was the best I could think of. Also, for those of you who don't have Batchelors and Masters but are good at grammer, should it be 'a MSc' or 'an MSc'?)