My Poppy Jungle

This year hubby planted up part of our veg patch with radishes, onions and carrots.  He put in some stakes and planted out the beans that had sprouted from his little seed tray. The first lot of radishes are over. We couldn't eat them quickly enough and some got too big and soft and had to be pulled out and put into the compost bin. Rather than plant another row, he's just thrown another handful of seeds into their area and they are starting to show green shoots now.

Meanwhile, we've had an invasion in the onion patch beside all that. A whole jungle of poppies have seeded themselves and completely overwhelmed the two rows of green onion spikes bravely climbing skywards.  we're not sure how they got there, unless the seeds were in the topsoil we bought when we created the garden two years ago. Apparently poppy seeds can lie dormant underground until you turn the soil and the light gets to them.

When we saw the first of the plants poking through, hubby wanted to pull them out, but I love poppies and said I wanted to see how they came out. Over the weeks more and more came up and turned into the little jungle you see in the picture.  And at last they have started to bloom with these delicate pink flowers.

A friend told me to wait till they'd flowered then lift the plants and move them somewhere more appropriate, so I'll do that if I can find the time; life's still a bit hectic at the moment. And then we'll wait to see how the onions do.  The carrots look to be doing well, and we've already had some meals with the rhubarb that overwintered under an upturned flowerpot.  We also should get some potatoes, as some plants came up from the few we left in the ground last year without realising it.

Stourhead and Growing Your Own

I took this picture of Stourhead this time last year.

This last week has been more about cooking than writing. After walking around Stourhead in beautiful sunshine on the Sunday, we stopped off at a little stall outside a house on the way home. They leave bagfuls of cooking apples for sale at £1 a bag, with a box to put your pounds in. We bought 2 bags. That’s quite a lot of apples to peel, core and cook.

We had them first with a delicious stale doughnut pudding, made like a bread and butter pudding with eggs and milk, then on another day with blueberries and custard. I have stewed apple in the fridge and the freezer and there are still four apples left to prepare.

Also, we’ve had a glut of runner beans in our garden. Actually we dithered about planting them this year because we were/are still trying to sell the house. But they went in on the reasoning that sods law says we won’t sell if we don’t plant them, but we might if we do. In any case whoever buys would be welcome to them. Too late now though.

The beans began to form the week before we went on holiday and we had our first feast on the delicious, small young ones. During the 16 days we were away, my neighbour looked after them for me, and I told her to help herself. She said she had picked some. After that they started to come thick and fast. We picked and ate them nearly every day through the rest of August and most of September. Several bagfuls were given away and eventually, last week, I had to blanch and freeze several more bags. I never think they are as nice after freezing, but I just can’t bear to throw them in the compost. I have spent hours stringing and slicing them. The plants are now due to come out but I found enough to go with our roastie meal again yesterday.

There’s nothing like eating your own produce, and we really don’t grow enough different things. Trying to move house has definitely put us off. I remember my dad working in our quite large back garden when I was young. He grew lots of beans and all sorts of other veggies – cabbages, sprouts, potatoes, carrots, onions, beetroot, marrows, etc. It’s becoming fashionable again in the UK to do this. Totnes in Devon was the first town to designate various areas for the community to grow extra produce, and others have followed suit.

We did have some home grown potatoes this August, that we had grown from just one that had gone too soft to cook and started growing tubors in my cupboard. We put it in a tub so it could have gone with us if we’d moved. When we came back from our holiday the leaves had died off so we emptied the tub and found about 3 lbs of good sized spuds that were really yummy when cooked.

I’d love to hear what you grow in your back yards or elsewhere, wherever you are.

On a completely different subject, why not pop over to Rebecca Laffar-Smith’s Writers’ Roundabout to see my guest post which is currently featured there? It gives hints for writers who want to ‘show, not tell’.