Jamming

More Rhubarb!

Rhubarb wine.  Here goes!

3kg Rhubarb

2.6kg sugar

Left to soak for 3days

Strained to separate out the syrup. 

Smells deliciously fruity!

Then the remaining sugar is flushed out with cooled boiled water (hot water releases the pectin, which we don't want). The liquor is made up to 10 litres (and some more because the specific gravity was too high).

Camden tablets added to kill off any wild yeast.  Then, two days later (yesterday), I added the white wine yeast.

Now there is very little fruity smell. The last time I made this (probably 20 years ago), the liquor was a beautiful pink colour. Not this time. Still, let's hope the flavour will emerge from all of this pummeling and dilution. 

I'm supposed to leave it alone, apart from a daily stir, for five days while the yeast grows aerobically.  I might give it a little longer because this is double-quantity.

The airlock is there so I can see if anaerobic digestion has started - I don't think is necessary at this stage. Thank you to my neighbour, Rob for spurring me on with some old demijohns and bits & bobs.

Disclaimer: if you start following this recipe before we know the results, you're a bigger fool than me.

Stunted Growth

The little basil seedlings are just not growing.  I'll re-pot. So this is for reference.

Honesty

Time to take stock of a minor natural disaster and man-made disappointment, and to consider some plant repair work.

I've been watering at the wrong time, spraying the bean seedlings in the evening. Consequently, they have stayed wet overnight and now have mildew.  Silly me.  Lesson learnt.  

We have some bean seeds left over, so there's still time to get some more plants germinated.

We had a hard frost BB (before blog), which caught some plants.  In particular, a forest flame by the arbour was badly hit. Also, an honesty bush, which looks very scruffy and misshapen.  I need to look at chopping it back.

Which brings me on to the next problem: this 'rose bed' in which two tall evergreens have outgrown the space.  The roses are still there, but some look very sad (the honesty, too).

The trees do provide some privacy from neighbouring gardens, at least as much for the neighbours because this garden is elevated compared to them.  Decisions.  I'm minded to cut the trees down and try to recover the roses.

It's not all bad news. Genie and I cleared part of the path border and planted some rockery plants which we had bought from the local garden centre on Wednesday (the first day we were allowed to visit under lockdown rules).  Being a skinflint, I split the large plants.

Campanula next to the fern. Delosperma, the little pink flowers at the top, closed up for the evening in this picture.

Sedum, the blue-green succulent, top right.  

The bushy herb is lemon balm - it makes a slightly lemony tea which, though a little bland, is genuinely calming and relaxing.  Great as a bedtime drink apart from being somewhat 'windy' (they say), ahem.  The other bit:

Genie and I did a little casual weeding this evening:

(The wheelie is already full.)

Tool of the Day:

Use with caution.

Frostproofing

The weatherman says there's an air frost on the way.  So now, the St Paul's Cathedral Bean Wigwam is wrapped, along with the onions and salad seelings. Also the blackcurrant bushes, which are in flower.  This has used three windbreakers, two builders rubble bags, two parasols, a table cover, a dozen hoops made from water pipe, and a large tarpaulin.

Bring it on, Frosty.

(It had better be cold.)

Rubarb Cake in Under One Minute!

This was made to a recipe from my colleague, Aneta, from Poland
The music is the Minute Waltz by Frédéric Chopin (geddit???!??), also from Poland

But played by Matt Nickle, from the USA, which sort of ruins the symmetry, but never mind.

Music:  Matt Nickle

Bees, Beans and Butter

The beans are in the ground. After a month of very settled and sunny weather, the beans are ready for planing out from their first home in the greenhouse. We made sure the ground was good and moist, then popped in runner beans around our mighty construction, with a dwarf variety, called 'butter bean' (confusingly) around the smaller frame.

Genie and I potted up a lot of the herbs, too. 

Some of the rescued strawberry plants went into the shallow stone trough, displacing a thyme plant, which was split and put into the 'rockery'.  I use quotes because the stones are there, but there are no rockery plants - something I want to rectify.

Genie sat on a nettle.

Rob kindly offered me some nematode slug control he had left over in a WhatsApp message. He said he put it on his strawberries. I said we prefer cream.  He treated this old joke with a dignified silence. Quite right.  

There was enough for most of the tender shoots in the veg plot, but I left one strawberry bed as a 'control'.

I was a bit too lazy on Sunday.  There were lots of jobs I could have got on with, but I wanted a proper rest having been somewhat poorly in the second half of the week.

The laurel over the stone seating area is in flower. The bees and furry hoverflies love it. So do I. The scent is subtly spicy, warm, and almost buttery (to my nose) and, with sound of the bees, makes a drowsy combination. The bush is too big for the location now and it leans over the seating area.  I need to think how I can shape it.  Not now though.  Too sleepy.

Blossom

This weekend, it's half a year since Pippy died. And here we are, all locked away from the World. And still the seasons roll and the blackthorn blossoms in the lanes.  Pippy would have a story for this, of course.  I know blackthorn, despite its beautiful flowers, has a sinister reputation in folklore, possibly derived from the long sharp spines, a stab from which can turn septic because of the tendency to leave a splinter in the wound.  The wood is dense and hard, burning like coal, and traditionally used for walking sticks and cudgels. Also witches wands.

So here it is, Prunus spinosa:

In the garden, the cherry and the apple trees blossom.  Also Prunus

Same family, Rosaceae, different genus, Mallus: the apple. This one is a Cox's orange pippin.  A stumpy little thing, only about 4ft tall, but very fruitful last year, while the three other apple trees in the plot seemed to concentrate on getting tall.  Come on, Pippin, the rhubarb is almost taller!

Lush, ain't it?  Plenty of room to hide elephant's eggs (I keep looking).

Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree

But I've got to get these beanpoles up and now it's half past three.

Tidying and Playing

A late start yesterday, but I've run out of excuses not to tidy the path into the veg plot.  Genie livened things up later by pretending to do some work:

We had a go at making a bean wigwam (in anticipation of the yet-to-show runner bean plants).  Couldn't find a roll of string for love nor money, but found some electrical wire ties.  Not massively pleased with the semi-completed result, but we've got a little while yet to improve it.

A Warm Day for Worm Work

Dug over one of the two enclosed beds.

..and cleared under the birch tree. Easier climbing in than out again!

Meanwhile, the rest of the garden is not waiting for tidying.

Un-pottering

I ignored my own advice to tackle on job at once.  There's too much to do! Today, much weeding. Genie took some of the many new strawberry plants and potted them up.

I concentrated on weeds and our early crop of dandelions and brambles.  Cleared under the veg plot Acer (every veg plot should have one), around the compost bins and the paths around the blackcurrants.  I put a line of bricks to divide up the veggies - not a good job - taking in too many tasks at once.   It's not organised enough for pottering yet!

Planting, Path, Patio

Yesterday, we planted a few seeds for carrots, beetroot and lettuce. Just a few so we can plant more later and avoid a glut (I should be so lucky).

Today, I added a few feet of kerb to the path behind the tall wall to keep the soil off the path and widen it a little.

I finally finished clearing a heap of brambles from the patio. This has taken three wheelie bins. Well, the same wheelie bin three times.  The patio needs re-laying, but not today!

Counting on Onions

Took to the veg plot with some onion sets. A bag of 80 actually had 94 ,so we got an extra row in.  We chose the sunniest part of the prepared ground.  There's room for a couple of rows of beans, which will go in later when they have germinates. Here we are:

Germinatio!

I planted some seed on 5th March. Through the magic of germination, the first seedlings up: corriander.

Everything's Coming up Rhubarb

Working from home this week, and for the foreseeable.  Today is the first really sunny day for quite some time. The veg plot is a sun trap, which Pippy called 'Spain' for its warmth. I've rarely sat out here midweek, but I can see now why Pippy loved it - to get out of the house and into the sunshine and birdsong.

Rhubarb

General tidying This afternoon. I'd left piles of brambles ready to be collected in the green wheelie bin, emptied on Wednesday.  Checked in rhubarb forcing - it's about double the size of the unforced crowns.

No sign of seeds germinatibg in the greenhouse yet.

Herbs

Assembled mini greenhouse this morning (£60 from Homebase in Kendal). Put the greenhouse on patio near the house.  It only gets sun from about 1pm. There's nowhere with more light near the house.  Alternatively, I could put it in the veg plot ( which is somewhat self-defeating)  or possibly make a space for it near the shed when I rebuild it, though this area gets more afternoon shade.

Potted up herb seeds with Genie's help this afternoon, and placed in greenhouse.  Parsley, corriander, basil.  Also tomato (Alicante).  Last year, I didn't plant the tomatoes quickly enough.  

Dug out the stone mint trough, which did almost nothing last year, and re-potted some roots.  Also started some bits of root ok n the greenhouse.

Veg Plot Tidy

Emptied the grot from the bottom of the rubbish bin / incinerator / compost bin (yuk).  Washed it out, out some extra holes in the base and turned it upside down over one of the rhubarb crowns, now sprouting.  So I hope this will force the rhubarb - we'll see.

Genie helped weed and turn over the old marrow patch. Two tiny spuds turned out, one with a burrowing slug ☹️.