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The Big Lavender Chop
The Lavender path along the greenhouse has had a seriously big chop this year. I’m not sure how this story is going to end, and I guess I won’t know fully until next year! To keep your lavender looking good for as long as possible, it’s really important to trim it every year. It needs to be done as soon as the flowers have gone over, this is usually early September. It’s also important to not trim it too late in the year. It needs time to put on new growth and for this soft new growth to harden up, giving it protection through the winter. The most important rule…
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Courgette & Cauliflower Cheese Vegetable Lasagne – You’ll never want a meat one again!
Can be gluten free If you grow your own summer squashes, then you too will be desperate for new things to do with them. They certainly are prolific croppers. Over the years we have used courgettes and other summer squashes in more and more inventive ways. One of our favourites is to use it in Courgette cake which we eat for breakfast with yogurt, it’s really good! But we have a new favourite! I speak to you as a meat eater when I tell you that this vegetable lasagne is far, far better than a traditional beef lasagne! If this dish doesn’t convert the most ardent carnivore to eating at…
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Simply Delicious Cauliflower Cheese – Recipe
I love cauliflower cheese! I only have to hear someone mention it, and I crave it until I get chance to buy a cauli and make it. This has led me to make a larger portion and freeze it in batches. That way I can satisfy my craving instantly. Well at least when it’s defrosted! Having these portions ready made has recently resulted in making one of our favourite dishes, even better! In the summer when our courgette plant is producing so much fruit we can hardly keep up with it. We make so many different dishes with them, including courgette cake. One of our favourite dishes though, is vegetable…
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Tomato Sauce – A Very Simple Recipe
Transform your homegrown Tomatoes into delicious Tomato sauce for the freezer! Tomatoes were the first edible crop that I grew and once I tasted that first homegrown tomato I was hooked! I’ve grown tomatoes every year since, which is now more years than I care to remember. I initially only had the tiniest vegetable patch and I only had enough space for four tomato plants. Although they were outside, they were against a south facing wall, but I still struggled to get them all to ripen before the end of the season. I dreamt of having a greenhouse and growing enough tomatoes to make tomato soup. Well dreams sometimes come…
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Wildflowers – My New Border
It’s wonderful that wildflowers and wildflower meadows are being appreciated again, and so many people are planting a version of them in their own gardens. At the same time it’s really sad to know how many have been lost over the last few decades. Again it’s the gardeners of the country that are helping by growing these insect friendly plants again! I’ve loved wildflowers ever since walks with my auntie as a little girl, when she used to teach me the names. Even the cultivated varieties of flowers that I choose tend to be the more natural looking ones. When I was designing our garden, the vegetable growing area and…
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Food from Flowers – With help from our little friends
Have you ever stopped to notice the flowers that become our food? A lot are small, some are insignificant, but others are as beautiful and spectacular as any ornamental flowers we grow. Fortunately, however small and plain they are, the insects that pollinate them don’t miss them. They busily fly from one flower to another, getting their reward of nectar and pollen, unwittingly pollinating the plants. The big majority of our food is reliant on our busy, buzzy, little friends doing this service for us. As they pass pollen from one flower to another they fertilise the plant and so allowing it to produce seeds. As with everything in life…
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Brandywine Tomato Salad – It’s too easy to be so delicious!
This tomato salad is so simple, that it’s hard to believe quite how delicious it is. The reason for this is the ingredients! I came across this tomato variety years ago when I read James Wong’s book ‘Grow for flavour’. As the title suggests, it’s all about growing food for flavour above anything else. I’d always liked the idea of a large beefsteak tomato, but they always let me down on the flavour front. Brandywine on the other-hand are absolutely delicious, packed with flavour and very few seeds, making them less wet. They are not always the most attractive looking tomato, and they can grow to quite enormous sizes. The…
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Mid-summer – Full Borders and lots to Harvest
One of the things I love about mid-summer are the flower borders full to bursting! They’re simply packed out and filled with colour. But even more importantly, it’s the most productive time in the kitchen garden. The food side of the garden is by far the most time consuming, it doesn’t stop with just growing your own food. At this time of year it’s a constant job picking the fruit and veg, then more importantly preserving the excesses that you can’t eat straight away. The Greenhouse In the greenhouse the gherkins have been going mad for a few weeks now. The best way to preserve these is to pickle them.…
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How to Pickle Gherkins – The quick & easy way
You won’t believe how good these are! This is only my second year growing gherkins, but now having discovered how gorgeous homegrown pickled gherkins are, whilst I’m lucky enough to have a garden, I’ll be growing them! I’ve always enjoyed bought pickled gherkins on a burger and I also use them to make tartar sauce, but these homegrown ones are in a different league of scrumptiousness! It helps that they are so easy to grow. The seeds are large, making them easy to handle. They germinate quickly and once they start growing, you’d better make sure you’ve got something for them to grow up, as they romp away. Little yellow…
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Gardening in a Heatwave – Too much Watering!
Gardening in a heatwave means gardening early and lots of watering. Watering is not my favourite job in the garden at the best of time, but especially not the amount I had to do at the beginning of last week! As we saw temperatures reach over 40C, the highest this country has ever experienced, it was a particularly big job. At it’s peak I was watering twice a day, and despite this some of the plants were still wilting in the mid-day heat. The beetroot leaves were looking like we were all feeling, wilted! I really thought the poor old Ligularia ‘Desdemona’ was done for, but amazingly she perked up…
