Fasting at The Larches....

Man (or woman for that matter) cannot live on strawberries, gooseberry jam, raspberries, potatoes and flaars alone!

OK, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit! We've had other stuff like lettuce, rocket, onions, tons of broad beans and leeks, but it's really been a bit of a poor show this year. We were due to exhibit our prize horticulture and our pet lambs at Burwarton Show this year, but sadly the show was cancelled due to the weather/fields/hay. Lucky escape really; the Larches 2012 is a little meagre this year.

In contrast to the fruit and veg the flaars seem to be faring well. For the first time in 3 years I managed to convince the Echinacea that death was not the only option.

Having been cut back twice this year the purple and the blue geranium as well as the orange geum is flowering for the third time.

Along the path, calundula, rose campion, aster, penstamon and feverfew are rampant.

Shasta Daisies the colour of fried eggs, attract all sorts of visitors.

Early in the season the weather was too dreadful to plant all the potatoes in the field allotment so I hastily shoved them into the two year old leaf mold bin and into two of my compost bays. I tucked them in all snugly, covering them with more compost, home-made, rich in horse manure and hemp. I'm glad I did this as I strongly suspect that the field potatoes will be rotten, they certainly seem to have contracted blight.

Yesterday the sproglets and I harvested the leaf bin. The haul was fairly impressive considering..... maybe we won't starve after all.

We won't need to eat the chickens or the lambs either,

today we came home to a rabbit, dead and skinned on the doorstep, a gift from a friend. Not everyone's idea of a pressie but heo-ho, we live in the country. It's a wonder the deceased was still there when we returned - the cats are impressive thieves.






Salad Days

Pssst! Wanna know something great? Wanna save some money Mrs? Do you, do you?

Well, first you'll have to find yourself one of those supermarkets, Aldi or similar, where they sell cut-and-come-again lettuce in the little punnets. In the Aldi nearest me, a mere 15 miles away, they sell a windowsill version for 79p. I kid you not, there must be 50 baby lettuces in this plastic container. If you have little or no space in the garden you might want to pick up a bag of compost from the store too at a cost of approximately £1.99. So that's £2.78.

When you get home feel free to snip away and have a lovely salad for tea or you could leave these juvenile leaves intact and instead, gently prise the plants apart at the roots. Then either dot them around the garden, ideally in a moist, sunny spot, or cut a long rectangle in your compost bag and plant your lettuce seedlings in there.

Water well and within days you'll have healthy little lettuces, without the bother of raising seedlings yourself. You can pick these leaves by snipping with a scissors at their base and, quite wonderfully, the little stub that is left, (apologies if I'm teaching granny to suck eggs,) will regrow its leaves within a week or so. Lettuce for all summer if you're clever...... and how much is a full lettuce? Well in various supermarkets I found lettuce heads from 57p (for a round lettuce) and £1 (for an iceberg.) With my method a single lettuce head could cost as little as 5p, if you're using a growbag and a whopping 1p if you're not. Not bad eh?

Still got to buy the salad cream, obviously.

Yum.

[By the way, I'm not on a retainer for Aldi, this is me, a nerdy customer/gardener, shopping wisely.]