Stuff in jars for the Winter

Now bear in mind a chutney has some staple ingredients: vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper, that I shan't bother listing again for each.  I also tend to include bay leaves and chilli flakes in all my chutneys.

Rear, from left to right: 

• Pickled shallots with apples, peppercorns, beet stalks and juniper berries.  
• Pickled garlic with red peppers, basil, lemon thyme, bay leaves, peppercorns.  
• Dried, home-grown sage.  

Middle, left to right: 

• Dried, home-grown rosemary.  
• Beetroot, onion and plum chutney.  
• Tomato, red pepper, red onion and garlic chutney with home-grown oregano.  
• Mango, green pepper, carrot and onion chutney.  

Front

• "Rhubramble" jam.  There's eight jars that size rather than one big jar in order to combat Bready Knife Syndrome.  

That should be me and mine set up for the Xmas period.  Our Sophie lives down in Reading so she's got an 0.25L jar of each chutney and one of the wee jam jars as cupboard-fillers for the Winter.  

Herbst

It's been a while, to say the least.  My first year as an undergrad was mayhem mayhem, so I've cashed out for an HNC.  I had the grades, no problems there.  It was pretty much straight Distinctions in everything, but the politics got to me.  Suffice it to say I've been busy.

My first niece, Ellie, was born in December.  She's adorable.  I shan't blog photos though because internet.

Got away over the Summer.  When you're part of the many worlds that I inhabit you tend not to have a circle of friends so much as a diaspora, so I arranged a list of couches to crash on, got myself a Golden Ticket - *sings the line* - and went off to see, well, the UK I guess.  England and Scotland at any rate.

I ended up staying in Aberdeen, Northampton, Dundee, Inverkeithing, Manchester, and Leamington, with stops in Stonehaven, London, Edinburgh, Newcastle, York and Coventry, before ending the Summer in Brighton with Julia from Stages of Succession where I picked up an award!  

In all, I probably racked up 3,000 miles in three weeks.  It was awesome!  This map by @scattermoon doesn't show the Brighton leg but other than that the lines taken are accurate, it should give you some idea.

Muchly recommended!  If you get the chance to put in a fortnight city-hopping then do so.  I saw more museums and galleries in that short space of time than I do in the average year.  I went on the RRS Discovery, stood inside a mock-up of the Large Hadron Collider, finally saw Body Worlds, and got to stand on the footplate of a very handsome steam engine.  Ain't stopped grinning since :)

So the garden then.  The garden has changed considerably.  The buddleia got cut down, so I put in fruit trees, thornless brambles and rosemary.  I've also painted the railings British racing green so's they don't make the place look like a doctors' surgery any more.  Alas, with the shade from the departed buddleia having gone away I'm having weeds come up out of the ramp faster than I can pull them out, but once the trees get a little bigger that'll sort itself out.  

On the left along the fence line are three cherries: morello, dessert, and another morello.  Visible on the right, between ramp sections, is a family-grafted apple and behind that, near to the taller fence is a family-grafted pear.  

As you can see I'm training thornless bramble to wind around the railings.  This year's growth will turn woody next year, providing a broad and steady platform for next year's growth.  In time the railings will all be covered in blackberries, I may even put in an arch with bamboo and have blackberries cascading above the ramp.  Yum!  Ellie's been picking blackberries all Summer, she loves them.  

My new bay project - Stan - is coming along nicely.  Here he is next to the entry out front.  

That's all thyme in there.  The two in front are orange thyme, then three lemon thyme in the middle, Stan in back.  Oh you should smell that planter after a storm!  

Out back, meanwhile, I've had a little change of heart.  My veg beds will never grow anything like enough veg to feed my lot, but they can grow enough herbs.  They're now my herb beds.  The little ones that were my herb beds are now my odd-job beds.  The fruit bed is mostly planted, save for raspberries which aren't even stocked until October.  

From the left we have rose, thorned bramble, three kinds of blueberry, a fig, and loganberry on the right.  The roses and brambles are to discourage a cat from sitting on the Strawbrary because it pisses George off, who then runs around the garden frantically, and my flower beds get trashed.  No cat, no crazy dog, no destruction.  

This being Autumn now I'm drying rosemary for storage, where it'll keep us in home-grown herbs until the Spring.  

And meanwhile we've got enough fresh in the kitchen to last us a while.  

Rosemary - Sage - Thyme - Bay

Looks kinda Skyrimesque.  Ah well, until next time :) 

Strawberry news

  Last night a fox got into the Strawbrary by climbing over Kelly's shed and scratching in through the netting.  George, predictably, went berserk.  He couldn't get through his usual corner at first because there was a trellis in the way, so he just nutted his way through the trellis!

Give it up for canine skullmanship!

  I hear it was a hell of a fight, though I myself slept through it.  George came away unharmed while the fox was apparently quite injured, so I guess that fox won't be back in our garden any time soon.  I'll be making modifications to the Strawbrary over the next few days.  Sadly, a couple of plants didn't survive the fight.  

Meanwhile, strawberries!

Boi-oi-oing!

Spring is springing!  My crops are well on the grow.

Spuds:

Strawbs: 

TINY BABY LEEKS; SQUEE!!!

Last year I planted a Jasmine at the foot of the arbour.  I read up on it before I planted it, so I knew it died back in the Winter, but I didn't realise just how much it dies back!  All the leaves fell off and the vines shrank and turned a very dark green.  I was convinced by March that it had died.  I thought "crap, I'm gonna have to dig this one out, amend the soil and go buy a new one".  Then just as I was contemplating doing the work we had the first hot sun of the year and the Jasmine burst into life, grew half a foot and sprouted a mass of leaves in less than a week!  Now it looks like this: 

I fully expect that Jasmine to be a further foot taller come the Autumn.  Also in Spring news, my lawn received its annual infestation of weeds.  This year however I used a weed knife and cleared half the lawn in a few hours.  I really must recommend a weed knife.  Compared with a hand fork it takes a third the time, a quarter the effort, and leaves the grass minimally damaged; whilst hand-forking is hard, long, sweaty labour that leaves your lawn looking like it lost a fight with a platoon of moles.  Seriously, get a weed knife.  Best tenner ever spent!

So yeah, all in all I'd say there's no overstating the boon that a little sunshine can bring to my garden.  And of course as soon as there's hot sun on the grass you'll catch Bill outside, shedding his Winter stoicism in favour of his Summer friskiness!  

Until next time xx

Alliums, Blackcurrants and Cuteness

Got another three sacks of that organic, peat-free compost that I like (and it's great that it's 3 big sacks for £12), and I've planted up the second bed.  This one's the allium bed.  I've planted, from the left:
Leeks (Musselburgh), Onions (Ailsa Craig), Garlic (buggered if I know).

 The allium bed is shallower than the potato bed for now as I had to top up the potato bed with half a sack of compost because somebody has been digging up my spuds.  And my lawn.  Somebody who's going the right way towards being a furry hat with earflaps.

The lawn's greened up a treat; but in a week or two I'm gonna feel the need, the need for a reseed.

Now George likes to climb into the Strawbrary via a rip he's made in the netting at the back, so that he can get as close as possible to the cat that lives a few doors Eastward and over the back before barking furiously.  This is a behaviour we've tried to discourage in various ways, of course, but still he rips the netting as fast as I can fix it.  So today I've planted a big blackcurrant plant in that corner, and I'll be putting a trellis over it just as soon as the stain has dried.  That'll go some way toward excluding George and keeping my strawberries from being trampled any further.

Lastly then, because I did indeed promise cuteness:

George, of course... ;p

Grass, tools and evolution

I planted the lawn today.

  George now has no back garden for at least a week, maybe a fortnight.  I used aerator shoes to drive the seed in deep, like two inches deep.  Some's only an inch deep, having been raked in.  Some's at the surface, squashed in with my boots.  With any luck, a storm coming out of nowhere won't be as devastating a thing this year as it was last year.  We may end up with a half-decent lawn this Summer!  

  As thanks for putting the lawn in, I got given a lovely new edger.  I've never owned an edger before.  This one's a thing of beauty: dark hardwood handle, sturdy, quality lathework, and with a bright stainless steel blade.  I think I'm in love.  Can't wait to put in a proper border with it.  

Lastly then, the strawberries I planted last year are greening up and back on the grow.  More specifically: half of them are.  The other half are either dead or dormant.  Thankfully the surviving half are from all four cultivars planted.  This is a good thing because the weird second Winter we just had is not great for plants.  The limey London soil is definitely not great for fruiting plants (my strawbs are in compost, but there's soil beneath and the alkali is capable of creeping up).  

Those which survived are hardier to frost and more tolerant of the edaphic conditions than those which died.  

This is the basis of evolution.  Evolution depends upon life in the midst of death.  Those which survive go on to pass on those very genes which helped them survive.  This adapts the species to the prevailing conditions.  The surviving strawberries will propagate new plants - both vegetatively and sexually - until the Strawbrary is full.  Those new plants will be adapted to fit the prevailing conditions of my garden.  After a few more generations they'll have thoroughly evolved to fit the niche of "strawberry plant in Joey's Strawbrary", after which they'll need to evolve again before they'll be able to thrive half as well in any garden but mine.

Life plods on, as ever it has.

'Tis the Season...

"Once they figure a way to work a dead horse, we'll be next. Likely I'll be the first too. 'Edd,' they'll say, 'dying's no excuse for laying down no more, so get on up and take this spear, you've got first watch tonight.' Well, I shouldn't be so gloomy. Might be I'll die before they work it out." 

– Eddison 'Dolorous Edd' Tollett

  Well, my part in the Christmas Clean is drawing fast to a close, Gods be praised.  My black dog, Shuck, tends to make an appearance around this time.  Two generations of Atheists (though half of us were still part-raised as Taigs) and still we gotta get festive.  My cynical nature reckons that the season isn't in full swing until I've called the tree a c**t to its face.  I hate Christmas, so the little acts of cynical pseudo-rebellion (like insisting that being Christmas no.1 makes Killing In The Name a Christmas song) keep the black dog from swallowing me whole.  I never take it too far though, on account of the fact that the rest of my family seem to like this ever-repurposed holiday, and that it is bizarrely easy to spoil it.

  Gardening then.  I've had to change my plans for the beds.  It turns out that a person can't work a bed of 5'x5' without stepping into it, which defeats the object.  Better than having six of those is having ten beds of 3'x5'.  Either way it covers the same amount of ground, but this way I get to grow more solanaceae and alliums, fewer beans and apiaceae, plus I can include things that weren't in the six bed rotation such as peas, wheat and gourds.  Here's the new plan; it's to be read clockwise in terms of a given bed, which actually means that the whole thing'll rotate anti-clockwise.

More tatties overall, but in a rotation that sees each bed growing legumes once every five years rather than once every six.  The beds won't reach all the way to the Eastern fence.  Instead, there'll be a strip of land a foot wide, from which I'll grow fruiting bushes and vines up trellis against the fence.  This is also where I'll grow borage, as any area of soil that has fruit growing in it has a heavy drain on potassium.  

  Other than that, the garden's ticking over.  Got some manure coming soon.  Got the baseplate to the composter coming soon.  Once Commercemas is over I can start building for the coming year.  I'll get a tool cabinet and a couple of bat boxes built.  The beds will be built in January.  I'm thinking railway sleepers for the beds, but you've got to be careful in buying them.  For beds, the law says I need timber not treated with creosote.  The shed likely January or February.  Once the shed is in situ I can work on trellis plus further bird houses, bat boxes and other things.  BirdCam will follow the shed.  The greenhouse tent will go up in March and the first seedlings will go into the garden shortly afterward.  With luck I'll be getting in the first of the early Harvest in June.  

  Lastly then, the post Why Biology?  has attracted enough interest (second most viewed post on the blog) that I reckon it's appropriate to go further back.  Science for me started when I was a tiny kid.  I had a microscope before I could write, but I'd document my methods and findings pictorially.  At 4 I used to sit and watch that cartoon variously known as Once Upon A Time... Life, and How My Body Works.  Mam got me a chemistry set when I was about 5 and I grew crystals of copper (II) sulphate.  The big thing though was Lego.  I had Lego throughout my childhood, starting from the day I was able to play with things without trying to eat them or fit them into the orifices of the head.  Physics, mechanics, timing, all can be explored with enough Lego.

  I don't think I was raised toward Science though, I think it's better to say that I wasn't raised away from it.  I had the tools because I asked for them and showed genuine interest.  The kids who grow up to consider Science are not those who were told to be curious, but those who weren't told not to be curious.  If that makes sense?  I dunno.  ROLL VT!

Rosie and Jim Go Outside

Finishing revisiting childhood in 3... 2... 1...

I'm back.

So we've got some new additions to the garden this morning.  Rosie and Jim are from Rubus 3 and they've taken up residence on the roof of the Strawbrary.

Bill is vaguely interested in the mysterious floating plant pot.  George is convinced that it's here to kill us all!  Meanwhile, the experiment's own page now comes up top on Google when you search for The Rubus Experiments, which is pretty awesome.

Wa-Hey!

Looks like I haven't just killed thirteen bramble cuttings!  This is excellent!  It means that the experiments are definitely going ahead (I've been biting my nails over this one) and that at the end of it I'm likely to have a viable plant with which to carry on the lineage of brambles that have lived up to now in the front garden.  Think in terms of Noah's Ark if that helps.

Pics when the camera turns up.

The Rubus Experiments, pt. 2

I'll be setting this one up tomorrow.  Broadly the same set-up as for Rubus 1, but with different variables:

Windowsill 'Tilly' (my bedroom)

• Hot
• Average humidity
• Maximum direct Sun

Windowsill 'Tom' (dining room)

• Hot
• Very dry
• High Sun

Windowsill 'Tiny' (living room)

• Warm
• Average humidity
• Minimum direct Sun

Windowsill 4 (Rubus 1 group)

• Coolest, though warm still
• Most humid
• Second-highest direct Sun

From Rubus 1, only Milo and Doodle will be involved in Rubus 2.

Further updates will now be found at rubusexperiments.blogspot.co.uk

The Rubus Experiments, pt 1

Note to secondary and FE biology teachers: feel free to use this as an example of a simple and practical botanical experiment.  The link presently comes up second on the first page of Google when searching for "The Rubus Experiments".  The Rubus tab across the top of the page will link to the site where I'm posting the experiments progress.  

  The ramp out front needs replacing as it is presently bridging the damp course.  Everyone finally admits it, so that'll likely happen a few months from now.  The ramp covers more than half the surface area of the front garden, so it'll mean something of a slash-and-burn of plantlife out there.  That Buddleia will go (TFFT!) but so will my brambles.  Those brambles have been there for over ten years and they're a brilliantly heavy cropper.  Every year in late Summer/early Autumn we have more blackberries than we know what to do with.  I didn't plant the bramble myself and nobody knows how many generations of Rubus have grown here.

  More important than sentiment is genetics.  Genes are like stories: they shift in the retelling.  The verses which suit the culture tend to be retained, to grow and to flourish, whilst those which don't will fade into obscurity.  That plant has a genetic heritage which enables it to hold its' own in that place, that soil, those conditions, in spite of competition from other plants.  That plant belongs to that garden, and a similar bramble bought from the garden centre might not suit the space in the same way.

  What to do, then?  Well, I intend to keep the bramble one way or another, but if the bulk of it must be chopped down then I might as well try some stuff out.  I'm not saying this'll work, so you shouldn't take this as a guide to action.  Still, here's what I'm getting up to:

The tools I'll need.  

I've filled the pots with soil from my garden, the same soil the parent plant is growing in.  Most would say to use potting compost, and I'd tend to agree.  My soil is crumbly, silty loam which successive gardeners since the 1930s have dug endless peaty compost into.  If I wanted a better medium for growing I'd have to invent it.

I took the soil from the beds.  Specifically from a point furthest from where my V. faba are growing.  No sense in depriving the beans at this time of year.  Once filled, I took cuttings from shooting tips of the Rubus. They're easily spotted by the claw-like, mitroid tips.  These are where new growth is happening most vigorously, so they should be most likely to take root.  The greenest shoots are best.  Prior to cutting the blades of the scissors were suspended in a pan of water as it boiled.

The growing end of a vine.  

The shoot cutting, size 7 hand for scale.  

I took only healthy shoots, avoiding any that had a problem with greenfly.  Heh, "problem", kinda makes it sound like "if you're not talking to your plants about greenfly..."  Aaanyways; once a shoot cutting was taken, it had to be rinsed under the tap.  A good soaking helps prepare the cuttings.  A hole was made in the centre of my potted soil using a skewer and the cut end put into the soil.  I then used my thumbs to press the soil down gently, just enough to close the hole without compressing the soil.  

I've made five of these - each of roughly the same length - and put them in the Nursery.  Mike has been relocated to my bedroom windowsill for the duration.  Mike seems to be recovering well from his infection.  Once there they each got a solution of 4:2:6 up to the yellow line on the saucer.  Now for the experiments.  I say experiment, but these are more akin to case studies than true lab experiments, albeit with certain controls in place.  

1. I've taken four cuttings of thin, green shoots.  One of a thicker, purpling shoot.  Which will fare better?
2. Two of my shoots curve.  I've pointed the tips of these away from the Sun, where normally plants bend toward the Sun.  Will the phototropic action of auxins cause the whole shoot to straighten up as it brings itself sunward or will the tip kink towards the Sun instead?  

Basic exercises in botanical study, but interesting for all that.  I'll observe the cuttings over the coming months and report on their progress.  Here's the five as they stand today:

Thyme and Space

  I picked up some Thyme yesterday.  By this point I've run out of space in the herb nursery so I'm keeping the thyme on my bedroom windowsill.  They'll go out in Spring in a trough beneath the landing window.  From the centre radiating outwards I have:

1x Common Thyme (Thymus vulgaris)
2x Red Creeping Thyme (Thymus serpyllum)
2x Lilac Thyme (Thymus lilac thyme, apparently)

  I give it a week before my room starts to smell like a roast.  That windowsill gets full Sun so they should grow like stink.  They'll be pretty when they're in full flower too.  I'm growing most of my herbs in the garden or in pots on windowsills but I'd be mad to pass up fitting windowboxes.  I'm gonna check out that Thymus lilac thyme, because that does not sound like a thing.  Even if the name of a new species isn't Latin per se, it does at least need to be Latinised - possibly by bolting an us on the end of it - lest some important botanist somewhere go berserk and shit a kidney.

  While I was out I picked up a suet feeder and some mealworm suet blocks.  Robins do love their mealworms.  I've hung that on the same nail as a clay birdhouse that I dug up last week and have since repurposed as my fat cake feeder.  Hanging them from the back wall rather than from a tree should make it harder for squirrels to get at it.  Maybe I'll bring the ladder out at some point and move the feeders up higher onto the pipework.

  Pinky and Perky have recovered beautifully in the 26 days they've been sat in the herb nursery.  So much so that today I put them outside in the Strawbrary.  I actually didn't rate them.  Everyone says Alpine strawberries have a kick but these tasted very watered down to me.  Maybe because nursing involves a fair bit of water in the initial stages, I don't know.  I put them in the outer bit rather than the inner bit so that wildlife can get at the berries.  They'll still cross-pollinate with the others so hopefully I'll end up one day with big, juicy Cambridge strawberries that crop over an extended period like Alpines do.  We live in hope.  

  Pinky's on the right, Perky's on the left.  I had to get more straw to mulch these two, so most of the remainder from the new bag has gone into the Strawbrary, while a good few handfuls have gone onto the roof for birds to take for nesting, perhaps save them from picking it off my plants.  I'll get some copper tape for the edges eventually, but of course there's a million other things to do.  

  Lastly then, a plea for sanity, a plea that people learn from my fail.  The ends of fingers have no muscle, no meat to speak of; just skin, fat, two tendon-ends and a bone.  It doesn't take much for something to go deep.  Please, when storing tools in a place where they cannot readily be seen - such as the bottom of a toolbox, drawer or bucket - ensure that all knives and saws are sheathed.

That could've been nasty.  Thankfully it caught the pinky on my swearing hand - so-called because the ring finger and the pinky are both dull and half-palsied - and even then it only got down to the fat.  I've since checked my toolbox incredibly thoroughly, as infections such as tetanus can be picked up from cuts by muddy tools.  My jab's in date again from last year, so it's all good.

Right, I'm off.  That porridge ain't going to eat itself.  Bye xx