Archive for April, 2011
First of many...I hope!
I just managed to sneak the first harvest of new potatoes into April. These are the potatoes in bags I planted in the polytunnel back in February. They haven’t produced the most abundant crop, but there’s enough for a meal. Now the potatoes in store have just about run out, it’s good to be able to run seamlessly into the new potatoes. Definitely an experiment I will try again next year.
Asparagus crowns
Now we’ve got plenty of room in the garden, I thought I’d have a go at planting asparagus. As a perennial vegetable, it stays put year after year, so it isn’t something that many people can find the room for in an average sized vegetable garden. It’s also a bit of an investment, as the plants aren’t cheap, but hopefully once they’re established we should be rewarded with a good crop of asparagus spears for the next 20 years or so. I earmarked a space for them in my perennial veg plot, where they should get plenty of sun and the soil is (relatively) free of stones. I worked in some manure over the winter to try to enrich the soil a bit, and I’ll add a mulch of manure or compost each year. Read the rest of this entry »
Bracket fungi
It seems that foraging is the in-thing to do at the moment. With people having less money to spend and wanting all things natural, foraging for food seems an obvious way to get a free wholesome dinner. We’ve been foragers for some time, and used to go on many a walk armed with Richard Mabey’s Food for Free pocket book, looking for something to take home for our supper. We seem to do less foraging now, even though we’re in the heart of the countryside. It’s probably because we now have a bigger garden, so there’s less need or desire to forage for food. However, at this time of the year when not much is available in the veg garden, we like to see what we can forage from our own fields and hedgerows. Read the rest of this entry »
This year's crop in the making
It’s been a busy few weeks. The start of spring means things are starting to happen in the garden, and there is a flurry of activity at the potting bench. The recent warm weather has seen shoots appear where they should and shouldn’t have. So it’s now the start of the battle against the weeds and slugs to make sure the garden is as productive as it can be. I usually start my morning rounds off now with a slug hunt, some of which are fed to the chickens, and the rest are given a salting. As long as I keep up the routine for the next few weeks I should be able to keep the worst of the slugs at bay. I’m also leaving a few strategic pieces of wood and rotten vegetables around the place, as the slugs will hide under the wood once the sun comes up, and also gravitate to the smell of the rotting vegetables so can usually be found in its vicinity. Read the rest of this entry »