We discovered we have a crabapple tree in the front garden. Chaos immediately ensued, resulting in this: I may have a fruit problem. Today I washed and chopped and boiled and strained all EIGHT POUNDS of those, and by the time I was done I was too tired to make jelly even if all I had to do was pour it all into a pot and boil it with sugar for fifteen minutes. And actually jar it. That was the part that seemed too hard. But the juice is an…
There’s been an unexpected benefit to having gone out and chopped my way through the nettles and brambles in search of blackberries, which is that I tromped quite a path out there and unintentionally exposed the plants to quite a lot more sunlight than they’d been getting. That, combined with a couple of weeks of unseasonably sunny, warm weather (which is due to continue for another week!) netted a startling bounty of extra berries! I got about four more cups today! I need about two more cups and I’ll have…
We have, as I may have mentioned, several apple trees in the garden. The apples aren’t really ripe yet, but a lot of them are cooking apples that aren’t going to be any good to eat straight off the tree anyway, so yesterday we had an apple picking party and the family came out to play in the garden and pick apples and eat apple pie (made, yes, from garden apples. I forgot to take a picture but it was lovely and tasty!). Hail, hail, the gang’s all here! Indy…
Several weeks ago–early November, because I had to move the greenhouse for Thanksgiving–Young Indiana and I made a wee greenhouse of a deepish cardboard box lined with tinfoil. We filled several empty toilet paper rolls with dirt, propped the rolls in an egg carton, and tucked orange seeds into the tops. We’ve a string of Christmas lights in the box to create warmth, and a piece of saran wrap across the top to keep heat and moisture in. But our kitchen is Very Cold, and I thought that despite our…
Potato harvest! Our potato plants have been looking a little sad and yellowing and some were starting to die, (no idea why: too much water, not enough water, not enough room, too many slugs…?), so we thought we’d dig up the most pathetic of them and this is what we got! Young Indiana and I are very pleased. :) They’re Maris Piper variety, which are as close to Yukon Gold as I’ve found here. V. tasty. We were very excited at finding the biggest one in there, and this was…