July...ing

Hello there, I am just sneaking in with July...ing. We have been away on a break so I am catching up on home, garden, work and blogging all in one week. The Summer holidays have started here and although my girls are older, 13 and 15, it brings different challenges to when they were little children on the summer break. Now that we live in a rural place there are a lot more taxi shifts involved.

Finishing - my strip quilt. Hooray! I/we have been making this since the second lockdown. Sometimes my girls would sew some strips after home learning and I have just kept adding to it over the last 18 months or so. It is my kind of quilt - no measuring or procrastination just sewing stuff together with faith and enthusiasm. It is a wedding gift for my cousin for his family camping adventures, it will be hard one for me to let go of because I really love it.

Sewing - the Samford Set from Peppermint Magazine. It is the most comfortable thing ever if of course your don't mind walking about in everyday pyjamas like me. I wore them to an agricultural show and they were perfect for staying cool but not getting sunburnt - that was way back when the sun was shining!

Giving - some sewing time to my bloke. He got some new linen viscose shorts which he is showing you in a very informative way! It is a pattern called Summer pants from Wardrobe by me. He actually asked for trousers but I thought a precautionary pair of shorts would be a good thing to test for fit first.

Going - to Latitude festival in Suffolk. It is a while since I have been to a big music festival (bloke and me used to go to lots of live music) but now the girls are teens we figured they could rough it and do the walking involved. We all loved it even though the weather was a combination of hot, wet, cold, windy, dry etc. On the third day I wore all of my remaining dry clothes and ended up looking like this! It is a rather delightful combo of trainers, jeans, a PJ t-shirt, a dress and a big jumper :)(raincoat and suncreak are in my bag)

Watching - Lots of live comedy in the comedy tent. We loved Ed Gamble, Suzi Ruffel, Romesh Ranganathan and Kerri Godliman to name a few.

Singing - along to George Ezra on the last night. We all had a great time.

Knitting - a jumper in the van which I fear is going to be too small. Bum!

Entering - a pink phase in my table vase. The challenge of keeping a vase on the kitchen table has been enjoyable and this week sees the emergence of my potted lillies. They come up every year and fill the house with a natural fragrance. They are joined by the last of my sweet williams, the second flush of lupins and a few sweet peas.

This year the lillies had a kind of painted effect on them which they have not done before.

Buying - a new rose from David Austin roses called Fairy. There a tiny clusters of beautiful little pink roses with a light scent. It is still in the pot at the moment while I wait for some of my annuals to go over at the end of the season and then I can find it a permanent home.

The girls and I are off to Bath next weekend and if it would only stop raining I could catch up on some gardening and bloke can cut his hay. You know the phrase "Make hay while the sun shines" well, suffice to say we haven't cut our hay only our lawn.

Chat soon. Thanks for calling in. Jo xx

Many Vegetable Firsts

My three word gardening post this month is a little round up of all the 'firsts' a veg plot throws up in the early stages. If you are up for copious amounts of produce photos then you are in the right place!

Got my first cucumber and had our first completely homegrown salad of lettuces, rocket, tomatoes and cucumber but I believe salads are much more than this. I really like the salads/sides in Tom Kerridges cookbooks because they are so interesting, flavourful and varied. We had it with a lasagne and it was sooooo good. Same again another day with salmon on a flatbread with a packet of samphire I found in Sainsburys for 30p!

The basil was going strong but I found some indoor caterpillars on them last week which must have been laid on the leaves when I had all the windows open in the hot weather. I cut the whole lot off and made a batch of caterpillar free pesto for a camping dinner next week so nothing wasted.

Fruit wise we have been having a bumper season despite my strawberry plot disaster where I fed them at the wrong time of year and they grew like crazy but used all their energy for leaves instead of fruit. We have been picking gooseberries and freezing them, making jam and I even got a gallon of wine.

My mum was given a jostaberry bush a few years ago and it outgrew her garden so she gave it to me when we first moved in. They look like goosberries but are not hairy and they taste like a cross between what they look like, goosberries and blackcurrants. A dark rich taste that is enhanced when you cook them. The bush has been a bit meh for two years but this year it was full. Again - some stewed, some brewed and some jamed.

It is the first time for raspberry picking this week. Again the summer variety I put in has not faired well over the last two years. The first year took some establishing and then last year the birds ate them all because these are not in the cage because I didn't have enough room so we have a make shift net thrown over them which is not ideal but will do for now. This variety is called cascade and indeed has that form. It makes them trickier to pick but does shield them from the birds. The Autumn bliss raspberries are coming up next so we should have a steady flow now until about October! The raspberries don't get to jam or wine or the freezer we eat them every night with ice cream or on our breakfast in the morning. 

We are getting our first courgettes which I am trying to pick young and stay on top of. We also dug our first potatoes. I was expecting the charlotte variety to yield little salad ones but they are massive. The size of a colander infact! Anyway I chunked them up and roasted them in the air fryer because I noticed on cutting them that they had two distinct rings inside which denotes varying water levels and this is what makes them blow in the water (incase you are wondering). When it was warm the growth is slow and dense and then over the last two showery weeks the growth is whiter and this is the layer that would split in boiling water.

First, and last to my families joy, are my broad beans. They don't like them but I picked a few when they were young here and there and threw them in with peas for Sunday dinners. They ate them. They can manage four at a time. This patio variety has been better for them in terms of sweetness but they took a lot of space for not very many in my farming opinion. 

First French beans this week too now that is a bean we can all hop on board with. I didn't grow runner beans this year - too much peeling effort on the mum front but french beans are fabulous hot or cold in salads - and virtually no prep.

Our chickens are still laying although one is broody so I have to keep hoofing her off the nest box every morning and shutting her out to cool down and remember to eat and drink. Some chickens instinct can be so strong that they sit on the eggs and won't move until they exhaust themselves or die so it a necessary upset of her daily routine. 

Our first tomatoes are ready and I pick a handful of cherry ones every day but the cordon varieties have hit a snag. They have blossom end rot. This is a calcium deficiency but you can't solve it by adding calcium. The condition is due to the roots being too knotted up to take up any calcium from the compost. I did grow my tomatoes in pots this year to enable better watering but maybe I need bigger pots. My lifetime fantasy of having so many tomatoes that I can make soup, sauces and chutney eludes me once again! We can eat them but I have to cut half off. :(

Hot on the heels for next time are peas, peppers, redcurrants, blackcurrants, beetroot, some weedy looking carrots, leeks and a shed load more courgettes I expect!

We have had some wonderful sunsets from the patio in the hot humid weather but the showers have been welcome for the garden even if a bit annoying for getting things done. Thanks for dropping by.

Kindest. Jo (and all her veggie helpers) xxxx