25th October

The hens are enjoying the rainbow chard that has now gone to seed.  The cockerels have grown a lot recently, at least one of them crows!

Little shoots appearing in the raised beds - I think these are onions.

Broccoli plants.

Our new blueberry plants all potted up - they arrived in the post this week.

A raised bed full of turnips.

Our Comfrey is now dying back - but we have a couple of water barrels full of Comfrey tea, (which is a great liquid fertiliser)tea to keep us going for a while.

Our strawberries, some of the plants have sent out runners which will enable us to have a few more strawberry plants for next year.

We trimmed our fruit bushes recently - already we can see that there are some new green shoots appearing on the stems.

These are the lovely tubs which were planted with Sarah on Wednesday.

Here is a picture of the pond, the students have measured some of the re-claimed decking boards and cut them to fit.  We were rained off our RHS morning this week - but hopefully after half term the weather will allow us to get on with the pond.

Here are our fruit trees we bought and planted in the spring.  We planted them in large pots to give them a bit of a start before we plant them into a orchard area we have planned in our extension to the garden.  

The raspberry canes have now finished and are starting to be cut back.

Here are some lovely narcissus bulbs which were planted a few weeks ago - they small beautiful.

The sweet peas have started to sprout in the greenhouse.

And lastly - here is another picture of our cosmos from the wildflower bed.  It is all starting to die back, but we have managed to save a lot of seed, so hopefully we will be able to replicate it next year.

Look what we found in our shed today

Discovered that the Woodland Trust are giving away free trees to community groups and schools, they arrive in Spring.  Hopefully we will get some Wild cherry, Silver Birch and Rowan which should look great in the garden.

Today we were surprised to find a couple of field mice trying to make a home in our shed.  They were very tiny and very fast moving too.  Hopefully they will find somewhere else to call home for the winter!

Fruitshare - Fruit Trees for Schools

After watching the New River Cottage show we have registered with the Fruitshare scheme to hopefully get a few more fruit trees to add to our little orchard.

http://fruitshare.channel4.com/crowdfunding/

23rd October - A rainy day in the garden

Today was a very wet day - so we worked inside.  Sarah from the RHS had brought some planters which the students planted with conifer, ivy and heather.  They made a great job and hopefully will provide us with a bit of revenue later next month.

We spent the rest of the morning today planting our blueberry plants in pots and carving our pumpkins - photos to follow tomorrow!

We also searched around for a recipe for something to cook with our parsnips.  This is what we came up with.

We grated 12 oz of peeled parsnips.

Cracked and whisked 3 of our eggs with 9fl oz of oil.

9oz Self raising flour, 6 oz sugar, orange zest from 2 oranges (which we forgot to put in), and 1 tsp of ground ginger.  We mixed all the dry ingredients together and then added the wet ones, gave it a good mix and added a couple of handfuls of sultanas.  We put the mixture into two lined loaf tins and baked at 180 for about 30 - 35 minutes.

Here are the finished loaves - we are probably going to ice them with a bit of butter icing or cream cheese icing if we have some.  They were really nice when we tasted them!

18th October - Shopping for herbs, chili jam and green tomato marmalade

 Making green tomato marmalade - which sounds really weird, but is actually very nice.

                                                                                                                                                  GreenTomato Marmalade

1 lemon

1 orange

1 grapefruit, all sliced very finely

Put in a large pan and cover with water - simmer for about 30 minutes until the rind is tender.

Slice 1 1/2 lbs of green tomatoes very finely - add to pan

2 cups - about 16 oz sugar - add to the pan

Simmer the mixture until it has reduced and is thick and syrupy - this can take a few hours

Store in clean sterilised jars.

 Some of our winter peas have sprouted through the soil.  

A trip to the Garden Centre to buy some herbs and tools

We spent some of the garden centre vouchers we won at the North Tyneside in Bloom awards last month.  We bought lots of new herbs for our new raised bed, mint, thyme, dill, rosemary. sage, chives, apple mint and some rosemary too.

This week we also made chili jam using our own tomatoes and a selection of our chilies.  We have sent a jar off to Jamie Oliver's 'Jamie' magazine to enter into their pickle competition - wonder what he makes of our homegrown entry?

Chili Jam

8 peppers - de-seeded and diced

about 2lbs of tomatoes - skinned and diced

8 cloves of garlic, finely chopped or crushed

about 5 chilies - we used a variety of different ones

750 g sugar

250 ml vinegar - white or cider

We chopped and diced everything and put it in a large pan.  We simmered it for a long time - 2 - 3 hours, until the mixture had reduced and was thick and 'jammy'.  We taste-tested it and decided it needed a bit more heat so we put a whole small scotch bonnet it, simmered it a while longer, removed the chili and put it in clean sterilised jars.

We are having a go at drying some of our chilies - here are some strung up in our larder, ready for drying.

16th October planting and working on the pond

Preparing one of our raised beds for planting.

Using a dibber to mark spaces for planting garlic.

Planting garlic

Marking where we have planted using string.

The finished raised bed.

Getting ready to plant some onions.

 Using some of the wood chippings on our paths between our raised beds.

Some more work with the RHS on our pond.  Cutting some of our re-claimed decking boards to use on the sides of the pond.

Maths outdoors - measuring the distance between the posts.

Pasta sauce for Golden time this week - our own tomatoes, onions and garlic.