Tag: kitchen garden
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Minted Pea & Ham Soup
It’s the end of Great British Pea Week, and what better time to celebrate my love for the humble garden pea! Starting life as a shrivelled up wrinkly seed, the first luscious green leaves that emerge are a welcome sight in early spring. Once they start growing, they don’t need much encouragement as they soon start…
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How I Made Home Brewed Cider Part 1
Happy Apple Day! Since today is the day that we, in the UK, celebrate the versatile fruit we all love eat, drink and grow, I thought I would share my home-brewing cider process so far.
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September Polytunnel Video Tour
I can’t believe it’s September already and the growing season has almost come to an end! I thought I would do one last tour of the polytunnel (below) to show how the plants have progressed with their new support and water systems in place.
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Allotment Jobs for Autumn
Pune hedges Sow green manure ✅ Prune herbs ✅ Plant Spring bulbs ✅ Remove bindweed (!) Collect leaves for leaf mould ✅ Collect seeds ✅ Sow lupin seeds Pot up strawberry runners Tidy the shed Tidy the polytunnel ✅ Consider sourcing farm manure ✅ Build a hedgehog house Harvest squashes ✅ Remove plants after end…
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Apple Variety Identified!
I was wrong all along! Well…kind of. Let me explain. I got the keys to my allotment in September 2014 and one of the reasons I chose it was for the apple tree growing at the back of the plot. The first apple I ate was sour and must have been an underripe one because…
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Late Summer Evenings
The evenings are getting noticeably darker earlier and there’s a subtle chill and smell to the air as the change in season is underway. The golden hour tonight had the most beautiful warmth and even though I’m frantically preparing the seating area for the bank holiday, I reminded myself that these last few hours of…
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Squash Overload
You might remember how excited I was to find my first squashes including some tiny butternut squashes forming last month. Well, it seems 2017 is going to be the year of the squash! I keep seeing more and more pop up beneath the jungle of leaves. I counted..wait for it…
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Polytunnel Update! [+VIDEO]
It’s been almost a month since my last polytunnel post, when I planted out the tomatoes with string supports. Everything is growing well, the tomatoes are loving their support system and have lots of flowers and fruits. I keep the polytunnel door open permanently to prevent blight even though it’s quite cool. I also feed…
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Greenhouse Update (with video!)
The small greenhouse is becoming very crowded! Only thing is, I still have even more (yes, I probably over did it a little..) pepper and tomato plants growing at home, eager to be moved into the new polytunnel. Fingers crossed it will *finally* go up this weekend – that is IF the weather holds out.
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A brief May update
Despite the topsy-turvy weather we had over April a lot has been happening in the last few weeks! In between the hail storms, rain showers and sudden heat waves, I’ve spent a lot of time at the allotment, making the most of the longer days – so much so that I’ve hardly had time to write about…
Homegrown Garden 