The shape of time

Well I said I'd draw my day and month forms, so here they are.

Apologies for the poor quality, i used my new digital pen and I haven't had chance to play with the software much yet.

What's for dinner?

Garden veggies!

Peas, the first few little French beans, Charlotte potatoes, beetroot, and carrots. Plus some lavender and mint.

We had salmon fillets pan fried with lavender and a little lime zest (worked well), boiled potatoes with mint and butter, and gently boiled beans, peas and carrots. Lovely fresh summer flavours.

In the process of harvesting I discovered more of Summer's weirdness.

Picture me with a wooden bowl which I'm filling with peas. I worry when I'm pulling the pods off that I'll pull off half the plant with the pod so I pick two-handed, one hand supporting the stems. I put the bowl on the floor.

So I'm reaching though the trellis (which is there so I can train the pumpkins and buttercup squash up it - didn't really think it through) to grab the peas. And the bloody dog's putting her nose into the bowl of peas and grabbing some and eating them with obvious enjoyment.

I mean, raw peas! And while I was shelling them she was sitting by me looking expectant, so I let her have a few empty pods. Typical bloody Labrador. She likes raw broccoli and carrots too.

We have an orchid in the orchard. Not on purpose, it just turned up there, looks very pretty. Michael has pics of it which I'll have to steal from him. And I saw a frog earlier, and we had a couple of nuthatches the other day (along with 20 or so regular bird species). And there are loads of common red soldier beetles which I've never seen before (they like to eat aphids and other small insects so they are good guys). Guess my somewhat laissez-faire attitude to weeding is paying off for the wildlife.

Carrot wars and rainbows

I'm growing two types of carrot in the veg plot at the moment. I bought the seeds a few years ago to sow in pots, therefore I picked varieties that I could harvest as baby carrots.

Not knowing then of course that you can use any type of carrot as baby carrots, you just pull them up before they're fully grown. Ah well, I'm better informed now. Still with our clay soil it's a good idea to stick to the shorter ones anyway.

So I grabbed some of each for dinner today, to do a taste comparison. Boiled for just a couple of minutes, then served with a little butter and parsley.

In the blue corner... Parmex. In my stupidity I didn't get a pic of these guys, so here's one from Thompson&Morgan instead. They can afford the bandwidth.

Designed to be very stumpy and ball-shaped. Mine are slightly more traditional-carrot-shaped than that (although the smaller ones are pretty round), maybe an inch in diameter and a little bit longer than that with a pointy end.

And in the red corner, the catchily-named Amsterdam Forcing 3-Sprint. Looks basically like a normal carrot. I did get a pic a few days ago.

The Parmex pic makes them look really dull (since it's obviously photoshopped), but they are a lovely orange colour, with a great perfumed carrot smell when you pull them up.

My prediction before the trial was that Amsterdam Forcing would taste better, based on the intensity of fragrance.

Michael had no such preconceptions, but we both agreed on our favourite... sure enough, the Amsterdam. Tastes sweeter and more "carroty", and the texture is better too, firmer. We have a winner!

* * *

Thinking about carrots made me remember that you can get purple carrots*, and I thought I'd have a look for some kind of mixed pack of seeds of different colours. I was disappointed. All I could find was mixtures with orange, yellow and white. Almost all were F1 hybrids (bah).

So instead I bought separate packets of red, purple, yellow and white from eBay, at a total cost of about £4.50. I'm intending to mix them with the Amsterdam Forcing I already have and sow them all together to create my own rainbow carrot mix. I'll happily swap some of them if anyone's interested.

And completely randomly, here's a dish I prepared a few days ago using garden veg. It's a stir-fry with chicken, noodles, purple kale, spinach, chard, rapini and mangetout peas. Wasn't bad at all.

*Carrots also come in yellow, white, purple and as I discovered today, red! How pretty!!

Notice anything new?

Like, my header?

Now try refreshing the page.

Hopefully you'll see a different image.

Theoretically you should see one of seven images...







...which will change randomly every time you visit the page.

Cool huh? Well I like it anyway.

Garden update, day...er... I've lost count of what day it is

Had a nice day today, spent the afternoon in Weston Park in Sheffield with some choir people having a picnic and playing frisbee and enjoying the sun.

We took Summer, and she enjoyed meeting Pete's dog Fitz again (they met carol singing last year, although neither of them sang for some reason). Bless.

Have some garden pics. Excuse the poor quality, I used my phone - you get the idea though.

The greenhouse, which currently contains squash/courgettes (which need to go outside), tomatoes, peppers, chillies, melons and cucumbers. And spiders.

Potatoes, with sunflowers visible to the right. Completely recovered from the frost, just a few slightly browned leaves.

Carrots, beetroot, sweetcorn, salsify, spring onions, fennel, edible wild plant mix (yum), cucumber. Some lettuces and salad mix on the right.

Salad mixes, currently occupying the spaces allocated to tomatoes (in the greenhouse at the moment). The spirally poles will support the tomatoes. Not visible is the new asparagus I sowed, because it hasn't germinated yet. Fingers crossed for it.

Nasturtiums (for leaves and flowers for salads, to attract beneficial insects, and for butterflies to lay eggs on so they leave my brassicas alone), purple sprouting broccoli, red cabbage, romanesco cauliflower, calabrese, squash/courgettes.

Peas, which I think are beautiful. Just visible in front are dwarf French beans, and not at all visible behind are more dwarf beans, pole beans, pumpkins, buttercup squash and melons.

Onions, rainbow chard, garlic, spinach. Not visible is the quinoa behind the chard. You can just make out the new salad leaves seedlings top right.

We've already eaten loads and loads of helpings of salad leaves (3 different mixes), cut-and-come-again lettuce, chard, leaf beet and edible wild plants (dandelions are rather good, I have to say). I'm almost sick of leaf salad! We haven't bought any of the bagged supermarket stuff for at least a month, and we eat salad practically every day - some has also found its way to our respective parents.

Next vegetable to be harvested? See if you can guess...


.... yeah, it's a pea flower! I never realised they were such lovely flowers, looks very like a sweet pea to me. Shame I couldn't get the actual flower in focus, but it's not a bad macro for a phone really. I'll go out with Michael's camera tomorrow.

So yeah, everything's going well. I have to say I'm pleased so far with my first proper veg-growing experience.

Oh and check this out... a red-podded pea!!!

Veg plot - day 11

Nothing much today really. I know, I lied, and didn't post anything yesterday. Mostly because I forgot about taking pics until it was too dark.

I meant to move soil today, but Emma came round and didn't fancy anything heavy - she's stressed about work stuff and not sleeping well - so we just put in some lettuce seeds and transplanted some sweet peas instead.

So here's what's happening inside, and in the greenhouse.

Aubergines.

Beetroot.

Broccoli.

Cauliflowers.

Carrots (sown maybe a month ago).

Dwarf French beans, which have shot up really fast.

Huckleberries.

Lettuce, also from a month ago. It'll grow much quicker now it's warmer.

Melon.

Peas - also grow very fast.

Peppers and chillies.

Pumpkin.

Spinach.

Squash. There's 28 of these, in 6 varieties. I was hoping that maybe 2 of each would survive, but all except two are still with us (the two never germinated). Looks like some might be given away...

Tomatillos - the second attempt. Fungus killed the last lot.

Tomatoes, which just came through the other day.

Watercress.

So there you are, some green stuff for a change!

I'm hoping to be able to harvest the first crop (mixed lettuce/salad leaves) in 3-4 weeks. Won't that be fun?

Veg plot - day 10, where I actually get to plant stuff!!

Another beautiful day - and I did get up earlier than I thought I might. Still not actually early, but never mind.

I thought I'd show you what the different seeds I planted look like, because there isn't much else to see really. So here are the seeds...

Asparagus.

Potatoes (I know they aren't seeds).

Beetroot.

Parsnip.

Carrot.

Salsify.

Spring onion.

Lettuce.

I also sowed a mix of wild edible plants, which I couldn't help including in one of my seed orders. And some companion plants - flax, marigolds and marjoram.

Sayre asked if I'm going to sow direct, or sow indoors then transplant. The answer is, both. Some seeds won't germinate at low temperatures, so can't be sown outside, like tomatoes, melons, cucumbers, squash/pumpkins, aubergines (eggplants) and tomatillos. Sweetcorn will germinate outside once it's warmer, but will grow better if I germinate it indoors. I've also sown leeks, peas, beans and cauliflowers indoors (but without heat), mostly because I wanted to start them but didn't have the beds ready, but also to stop slugs, mice and/or birds getting at the seedlings. Everything else goes straight in the soil.

Tomorrow I'll post pictures of the "indoor" plants - currently squash, pumpkins, melons, beans, peas, tomatillo, huckleberries, aubergines, peppers and chillies. The leeks and cauliflowers might be visible by then too.

Veg plot - day 9, where things really start moving

We couldn't have asked for better weather today - it's been really warm, gorgeous blue sky, and birds singing away like mad. My face has actually tanned a little which is annoying because now I'm pink, but much better than being soaked to the skin like yesterday.

Michael shovelling the last few bits of topsoil. Well, at least the soil for this bed anyway. There's still a ton and a half on the drive. But...

Bed #1 is finished!!

Well, except that we need another bag of compost.

Frame is done, all the topsoil's in there, and a layer of compost on top. And we've used string to mark it out into square feet, leaving narrow strips between the three sections of the bed where I'll grow herbs and companion plants to attract beneficial insects and deter the nasty ones, and generally help the plants grow better.

The bricks are there to hold the compost in, and will be moved as soon as the beds get filled completely. I'm not adding compost to the potato section (the end furthest away) now, I'll use that compost to earth up the plants as they grow. And I know that the bed isn't square, but I don't much care, especially as the ground isn't level anyway. It looks, er, rustic!

I'm now desperate to get some seeds sown in it... perhaps not desperate enough to get up early, but I'm looking forward to getting out there.

Oh I forgot to mention that yesterday we had a couple of helpers. A pair of magpies were wandering around the bed while we were inside drilling, I thought at first they were looking for insects but once I got the binoculars on them I realised that they were collecting weed roots from the soil! Must have been nest-building. Now mags get a bad press, because of silly superstitions and ideas about them being unlucky (obviously not) and stealing shiny things (maybe) and being responsible for the decline in songbird numbers (definitely not, blame pesticides and habitat loss and monoculture), but I've never heard of them gardening! Have to say I do like them, very attractive birds even if they do have a horrible voice.

Anyway, I think that having a project agrees with me, because I've felt pretty good the last week or so, despite not sleeping well. Tonight I'm really tired because we've worked hard today - arms and legs and back and shoulders are all a bit achy, but strangely not in a bad way. Just in an exercised kind of way. I can live with that.