Today’s best kept food secret: nasturtium flowers. Many people know the leaves as great in salads. But the flowers are even better: a honey-sweet burst of scented flavour that ends with a fiery, radish tang.
1 week ago
Today’s best kept food secret: nasturtium flowers. Many people know the leaves as great in salads. But the flowers are even better: a honey-sweet burst of scented flavour that ends with a fiery, radish tang.
1 week ago
Beanfence: a new project. One nice new bare fence, a flowerbed with soil rich from disuse, and five Scarlet Emperor runnerbean seedlings, grown from beans. Watch them climb!
1 week ago
A small red pepper that has been growing all winter
2 weeks agoTimelapse photos: the growth of Curcubit mound over the past few weeks
2 weeks ago
I call this “Curcurbit Mound”. Hidden beneath the lucerne mulch is not a body but a couple of bags of potting compost. On top, guarded by a row of bright-yellow sentry marigolds, is a miniature pumpkin seedling and a few crystal apple cucumber seedlings.
1 month ago
Bright red harvest. I will fry it all up tomorrow with garlic and olive oil, and scatter on some fresh basil and lemon thyme I am growing.
8 months ago
Mystery plant - the ferret seems to find it interesting, but I have no clue what it is. It doesn’t look like anything else I’ve planted. It started growing in the pot with the sunflower in, so I just let it grow as the sunflower died.
8 months ago
The first Turkish Orange aubergine harvested - it doesn’t seem to be quite ripe, as it’s very hard - but some animal has already nibbled a hole near the top.
8 months agoGiven the heatwave, it seemed a good time to try some irrigation gadgets. I bought this tomatoes hanging basket from a market, and it is desperately struggling with the heat and dries out all the time. So I’ve put a gel-spike device in it. It wasn’t very impressive: all the gel started glooping out without even having to pierce the bottle as directed. It doesn’t look like it will last long.
The other thing - and cheaper - is these adjustable spike nozzles that attach to regular water bottles. I will do a few experiments with them, trying out the different settings. I’m not very convinced they will be that accurate or consistent, but so long as they work a bit, it should help.
9 months agoThe Pocket Encylopaedia of Herbs contains a lot of fascinating historical information about once commonly-used herbs that are now rare or even unknown today.
I had earlier managed to grow some Salad Burnet, which is supposed to taste like cucumber but doesn’t seem particularly noticeable when I add it to salads. I’ve been struggling to grow various other herbs, such as Lemon Basil which germinates well, then the seedlings die. Also Lemon Balm/Melissa, which never managed to germinate until now.
Then today in a hardware and garden centre, I discovered Lemon Savoury which is in the book, but I’ve never seen before. I also bought some Sage, as I cannot get it to germinate (likewise Meadowsweet and Evening Primrose just will not seem to germinate). I planted them next to the Salad Burnet, in the space where a Borage plant once grew. L-R savoury, sage, salad burnet.