Own Grown Gardening

I had a lovely harvest of pumpkins this year and I didn't want them going to waste. I wanted a recipe to use for storing the glut.  This lead me to the idea of candied pumpkin. With nothing to lose, I experimented and was blown away by the result. Everyone who tries these candied gems invariably requests a second helping. Ingredients: - Peeled pumpkin - 1kg - Demerara sugar - 500g - Cold water - Cloves - 15 buds - Ground cinnamon - 1 tbs - Lemon juice - from 1 lemon - Icing sugar - 10g Instructions Cut the peeled pumpkins into cubes about the size of large gaming dice.  Put the cubes in a large pot and add cold water until they are just covered.  Add the demerara sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon, and cloves to the pot and stir all the ingredients together. Heat the pot to boiling, while stirring occasionally and gently. You want the pumpkin cubes to stay intacted. Turn down the heat to a low simmer. Leave the lid off your pot. Keep the mixture simmering until the liquid evapo...

Last Sunday, after the wind of storm Bert, I walked through my local wood to assess the damage. The number of downed trees felt devastating. The most striking part of the walk though was not this. Instead, it was the strange accumulations of foam I found at the base of several trees, ones still standing. I'll show you what I mean. Totally odd, isn't it? The fact I found such accumulations at the base of several trunks is what really piqued my interest.  When I got home, I had to investigate. After a little Googling, I hit the jackpot. It looks like soap suds because, it is soap suds . I know, I was surprised too. If you've ever watched Fight Club , you'll know that traditional soap is made from just two ingredients: tallow and lye . If you've never watched Fight Club, seriously, watch it. Tallow is made from rendered animal fat, while lye is made from filtered wood ash. Bringing this story back to foamy trees , ash floats through the air, just think about the smok...

I'm shocked I didn't write this post a couple months ago. It completely slipped my mind for some reason. Better late than never! This year, I experimented growing wheat in our allotment plots. Yes, you read this right, wheat. I realise it is an unconventional choice for an allotment. I think that is why I chose to do it. I'm always looking to do something a bit different. If you examine this photo, you might notice something rather curious. This wheat is growing differently than what you see in bog-standard farmers' fields in the UK where the wheat all looks the same, knee high with uniform ears missing awns (whiskers).  As you can see, my wheat is totally different. Far more unruly, just the way I like it, hahah! The individual plants are growing at different heights, most way over the knee. There is also incredible variation in the wheat ears, some have long awns, others have none. Some ears are huge, others have far fewer kernels. What is going on here? Why is there ...

As you might know, a few months ago, we moved house. As part of that gargantuan endeavour, we moved our fruit orchard as well. It was a totally mad time of year, at the beginning of summer, to move the young trees. All of them, cherries, apples, medlars, and plums, sulked the entire summer. Some dropped nearly all their leaves, but thankfully all survived. I'm hoping this winter gives them a good chance to establish themselves properly. I'm feeling optimistic. I'm currently feeling so positive, I decided this week to take the orchard to it's next phase. My vision for this little orchard has always been to grow, what I like to call, an Orchard Garden. I think of an Orchard Garden as a lush green grove of fruit trees under planted with a plethora of soft fruits ( currant bushes , gooseberries , honeyberries , etc.) and those bushes still further under planted with a ground cover of strawberries , herbs , and wildflowers . I want to establish an ecosystem focused on food p...

    Recently, Plymouth City Council here in the South West of England, installed living roofs on nine of their bus shelters along Royal Parade in the city centre. I think they look great. The Council plans to install 36 across the city . Right now, the bees are just loving them, swarming all over the pot marjoram in full bloom.  These roofs are designed to help such pollinators. They are planted with a plethora of native wildflowers and sedum. It is a shame you can't see many of them from the ground because sedum in particular is such a beautiful genus of drought tolerant succulent plants . They change colour through the season depending on the weather conditions. I'll demonstrate. I bought these plants from a nursery where it was well sheltered in partial shade. This is what they looked like straight after repotting, like green emeralds. In a matter of weeks in a location exposed to full sun and wind they transformed into red rubies, equally as beautiful. Such wonderful ...

The title of this post sounds like a children's fairytale. Entirely unintended. I guess, in a way though, it is rather fitting because although ragwort ( Senecio jacobaea ) with it's delightful, and prolific, yellow flowers has many benefits, it also possessed what some consider a dark side. We have all the ingredients of a Grimm's fairytale me thinks, hahah! Ragwort, although native to the UK, is classified by the government as an injurious weed . Why, you might ask, is it so vilified? It's because the plant contains toxins, called pyrrolizidine alkaloids , that cause liver damage and even death to grazing animals such as horses and cattle. My neighbour remembers back in the day the government advising the public to destroy any ragwort plants they encountered. Even now, DEFRA publishes a Code of Practice on How to Prevent the Spread of Ragwort . However, many environmental conservation groups, such as Buglife , rail against this advice. This is because ragwort is such ...