Apologies for the awful ‘Beverly Hillbillies’ pun. But I’m so excited about my find - it’s pure gold. While wandering around town I spied a cool-looking 1950s style mixing bowl in a charity shop window (I like kitchenalia). So in I went ready to ask the assistant if I could rummage in the window. But then, I completely forgot about the bowl because on the floor infront of me was a huge box full of books. It had the sign: ‘Old Gardening Books - 50p each’. I was in there like a flash and emerged 10 minutes later, the proud owner of these little beauties. I just love the cool fifties and sixties style covers. I think I would have bought them even if I didn’t like gardening. And yes I know, I don’t have a greenhouse but a girl can dream can’t she?
It’s time for the broadbeans that I sowed back in January to leave the protection of the Victorian greenhouse and make their own way in the world. They’re fully hardened off now and can withstand any temperature that the English winter can throw at them - well assuming we don’t get any more snow!
I bet Monty Don doesn’t have to put up with this!
Never let it be said that I am an expert seed-sower. As you can see here I have a lovely set of seedlings growing happily in my small propogator outside (with no heat and it has to be said very little light). Starting on the left there is Corriander, Red Cabbage, Purple Sprouting Broccoli, two rows of Arctic King Lettuce (planted two weeks apart) Parsley, Caulifower and Rocket (romping away in the right hand bottom corner). A very nice selection to get me started this year. With this photo I could create an illusion of mastery and you would marvel at my seed-sowing prowess. But it would be a long way from the truth.
Behold the beginnings of my cutting garden, seed of Aster (lemon and orange) and Cosmos (white).
These seedlings are in our loft room (the sunniest room in the house) and they are sitting on a bed of sieved compost with a slight under heat of around 60 degrees. Perfect conditions you may think - but no. As you can see they are not happy chaps. All legs and pale as death - they remind me of me when I was about 15!
In an effort to use up the last two leeks I had in the ground I made some Potato and Leek soup. The potatoes are Robinta, harvested last summer.
- 2 x large leeks
- 3 medium potatoes
- 1 small onion
- 1 clove garlic
- 100ml of milk
- butter
- salt and pepper
First de-grit and chop the leeks into small pieces. The only way I have found of getting all the grit out of leeks is to slice them down the middle and open up all the layers under a stream of water. Nothing else seems to work for me.
Next chop the onion and fry the leek, onion and garlic in the butter.
Peel and chop the potatoes and bring to the boil in a enough water to just cover the potatoes.
When the potatoes are soft pour the whole lot (water and all) into a processor. Add the leek mixture and the milk. Blend until smooth.
Transfer back to the pan and re-heat. Season with salt and pepper.
In this recipe I added a spoonful of Greek yoghurt but it didn’t really work - the flavour was too sharp - so next time I’d do it without the yoghurt.
Bye bye leeks until next year…
I’d never really understood what bastard trenching was. I had heard the term on TV programmes and read it in some books but never truly ‘got it’. Anyone can dig a trench right? But to use trenching correctly as a form of cultivating the soil – well, now we’re in flat-cap territory.
But I picked up a book in an old bookshop called ‘ABC of Gardening’ by W E Shewell-Cooper. It was written in 1940 and contains a great description of bastard trenching.
So it’s basically like a conveyor belt of soil. You mark out an oblong of land (or bed) into small squares (you can do this mentally if you like). You dig out the first square to a depth of one spit (spade depth). You dump this in your wheelbarrow and take it to just beyond the end of your oblong – empty it. Then you proceed to fork up the bottom of the pit that you’ve just made, add some manure and dig it in well. Then you move to the next square and do the same again. But instead of putting the removed soil in the wheelbarrow you dump it in the first square.
This is genius – why? Because all the soil stays in the right place. The top-soil stays on top, the sub-soil is cultivated and manure is added in the right place. Then everything is put back in the right order like a giant jigsaw. Now I realise that bastard trenching is what some people call double digging – now I get it!
Yes - at last, some frost. I must have been the only one celebrating while everyone else was busy scraping their windscreens with their credit cards.
