Hello Friends,
We've had lovely Autumn weather here, but it can't last much longer, so I've been busy getting tender plants under cover & cropping the last few courgettes too, before pulling up & composting the plants.
I'm a keen chilli grower, & although I only have space for a couple of types each year, I always sow some seeds & usually get a good crop. Our best ever crop was a few summers ago. We grew the long red cayenne type & the crop was sufficient to freeze some to use in recipes as 'fresh' & to dry a supply for the next couple of years.
In fact, we're still using a big jar of chilli flakes we zizzed up ourselves in the food processor from that crop!
Over the years, we've tried various varieties including Padron (a mild tapas chilli), Cayenne, Pinocchio's nose (each chilli a foot long!), scotch bonnet/habanero types & Prairie fire. The scotch bonnets were a colourful Caribbean mix, which amazingly did pretty well even in a classic overcast mizzley East Midlands summer. A few of these things go a long way, as they are throat-numbingly hot. I used them to make a hot pepper sauce (a recipe I found online from Barbados). It was too hot for me, apart from diluted with mayonnaise, but being married to someone with an asbestos mouth has its benefits & it all got eaten! I've been using up the rest of the fiery fiends in a hot pineapple chutney, where they give it a good flavour too. That's something I didn't know about the Caribbean chillies, they're not just about heat, they do have a distinctive flavour from other chilli varieties.
My favourite variety to grow is Jalapeno 'Summer heat'. The germination rate seems good, they generally behave themselves & produce a really decent sized crop.
This year's was particularly good & I've picked & frozen several bags for the freezer. Jalapenos are really versatile because they are hot without being incendiary, & I use them in pizzas, chillies, curries, fajhitas, quesadillas, tortillas & stir-fries, as well as in chutneys & jellies.
A couple of years ago, I heard that it's possible to over-winter chilli plants. Our winters are too cold for them to survive, but in their natural habitat, they are apparently perennial plants. I brought a couple into the house in the autumn & tried to coax them into staying alive. By January, they were looking like proper mingers, but they gradually started back into life in Spring & I had a decent crop from them, which I was able to start picking over a month earlier than those I sowed afresh from seed. It may have been beginner's luck because I tried again last year & they by-passed the minging stage & went straight to 'dead!'
This year, I'm trying again. I've selected 3 plants which looked in good nick, pruned them back to new growth & have sited them on a bedroom windowsill.
There is no heating on in there yet, as I'm notoriously stingy with heating until it's actually cold. So far, they don't seem to mind. The sulks & strops will come later (them, not me!) when the radiator starts to make the air too dry.
If they all turn their toes up & cark it diva-style, then I've lost very little, but if they make it through, I should be picking a few lush chillies in early summer. If not......well, it won't be the first time I've been beaten by a plant!
This week, I heard that I've won a cookery competition I entered recently......I wasn't very coherent when the organisers phoned to tell me because Albert Whiskers raced into the room after me (like the phone call was going to be for him?) & started biting my legs! It was a 'Love food, hate waste' type of competition. I have to have my photo taken in store tomorrow, so am glad I sorted out my nightmare roots. I'll share my recipe in a blog post soon, although I accept that everyone may not be as evangelical about leftovers as me!
Have a great week - Autumn has so much of true loveliness to offer us.
Till next time,
C x
Hi Friends,
Well, it's a bit of basic experimental science from me today, as I've been trying out a low-tech DIY room warmer. I was able to put it together using only items I already had and if anyone fancies experimenting further with this, there are plenty of instructional websites & videos online. I'll admit you won't get many physics-based blog posts from me......decades later, I still recall the words of my 3rd year physics teacher, the aptly named Mr Newton all too well.........
"Despite her obvious lack of interest in this subject & extremely inconsistent approach to handing in homework, Cathy somehow managed to achieve 31% in her end of year physics exam"..........
Well, take this, Mr Newton, because Cathy of the 31% has constructed a flowerpot room warmer, willingly, of her own volition, following online instructions from Those Who Know!!
Aim of the experiment:To find out whether a flower pot room warmer will have any effect on the chilly temperature of 'Cathy HQ' (my small upstairs office).
Equipment required:
Two clay flower pots, 1 2lb metal loaf tin, 4 tea-lights & a 10p coin or similar metal disk. (I used an irritating Canadian coin which some skanker managed to offload in my change the previous week!)
For safety, you will also need something heat-proof on which to stand your contraption, & a box of matches. This is basic, but doesn't involve rubbing 2 sticks together while appealing to the Elements.
Arrange the 4 tea-lights in the tin as above, then light them..
Place the smaller clay flower pot over the tea-lights, then block the hole in the top with the 10p coin.
Now carefully place the larger flower pot over the smaller one, & stand your completed room warmer on a heat-proof surface or trivet & site it where you want a little extra warmth.
A couple of the online instructions I found suggested using a squidged-up (genuine scientific term) aluminium tea-light case to block the hole in the smaller flower-pot. I tried this initially, but found that more heat built up when using the 10p coin, presumably because it's heavier.
Now, as Ms 31% in Physics, I'm not about to astound you with a full scientific explanation of how this contraption works, but I do know it is to do with convection. The heat from the tea-lights builds up in the smaller pot, heats the space between the two pots & flows out of the hole in the outer top & from underneath. Clay pots seem to have good heat retention properties as the outer pot gets nicely warm, but when I removed this to investigate the smaller pot, I found that this was too hot to touch.
So, did it make a difference?
The results: Having installed the only temperature-taking device in the house (a Gallileo thermometer!) on a shelf in 'Cathy HQ', sufficiently far away from the flower pots as to avoid skewed results, I can report that after 2 hours of burning time, it progressed from this.......
i.e all glass globes clustered at the top, therefore 'Room is cold'...........
......to this......1 globe dropped to the bottom of the tube, meaning room has started to warm up. There was no other heating on at all in the room at the time, neither was I executing manic star jumps with a view to influencing the results. The room definitely felt a little warmer. Using tea-lights purchased from a well-known Swedish Purveyor of Household Goods, total spend is 8p per four hours.....plus 1 match! (Please note, I don't require any maths geeks to supply me with the cost of one matchstick!!)
Conclusion: Cathy HQ is a small room & I think that the clay flowerpot room warmer could have a role to to play in helping to keep the temperatures up in winter. Our heating goes on in November, but I think I will continue to experiment with my flower pots, to find the optimum spot to site them for extra heat while I'm sitting at my desk or playing the piano. I may check out some of the additional online modifications (some people use 3 flower pots plus tech it up with, nuts & bolts!), but I like the thought of keeping it basic.......& of potentially paying a tiny bit less to energy companies. In the continuing words of Mr Newton, as he summed up my physics prowess at the end of the third year,
"This is not a subject I would recommend Cathy to consider taking at O-level"................
...........which was absolutely fine by me, as there would actually have been fractionally more chance of me opting to become a tarantula trainer!
Till next time,
C x
Hello Friends,
Well, Albert Whiskers has something to confess today. He needs to take himself in hand or I may have to find a local primary school prepared to let him attend their D.A.R.E sessions. Yes, I'm afraid he's showing all the early signs of addiction.
I know he's cute, but he is developing a serious habit. No, he hasn't been taking over my greenhouse with hydroponics & heat lamps and he hasn't been caught smoking behind the shed.......This or rather THESE are the culprits:
'Dreamies', the 'treats cats crave'. What IS is in these things? They are like crack cocaine for cats! Albert Whiskers absolutely loves them. Once he's had one, he'd do absolutely anything to obtain
another one. I'm convinced he'd stand on the corner of our street & barter his his bed, bowl & blanket just to get hold of his next packet!
The ingredients listed on the packet are vegetable protein, cereals, oils & fats, meat & animal derivatives, minerals, fish & fish derivatives, etc......nothing really untypical in the composition of dry cat food.
'Shake the pouch & watch your cat come running' .........He certainly does come running, zipping under your feet, positively sprinting in the direction of the bag, meowing like a cat who hasn't been fed for a month. 'Feed up to 20 pieces a day'......well, good job he can't read, because Albert Whiskers only gets about 8 pieces a day, & not every single day, either. I have bought many different cat treats over the years, including some rather interesting green herbal ones made from compressed catnip, but I've never known any cat treat to have such an effect on a cat as these. Intrigued by this, I decided to take a closer look.
This, friends, is a 'Dreamie'. And this is a 'Dreamie' up close........if not exactly in focus!
In the interests of citizen science, I decided to eat one myself this morning to see what all the fuss is about. This one is 'Scrumptious salmon' flavour. With a glass of water & bottle of mouthwash at the ready, I cut one open & investigated the inside. The coating is a very crispy cereal-type material, quite biscuity, but light, with a vaguely savoury flavour. There's a tiny bit of paste inside which I scooped out on the tip of a knife. It's a little bit like the inside of a chocolate truffle in texture, but obviously fishy instead of sweet. I wouldn't particularly elect to eat another one, but it wasn't actually unpleasant. It reminded me a little of those scampi flavour crisps which were around in the 80s, although not as salty or overbearingly sort of 'rock-pooly'. Bearing in mind that cats, & not curious women of a certain age are the intended demographic for these treats, the experience was not as overwhelmingly fishy as I'd anticipated. Perhaps they taste stronger to Albert Whiskers? Perhaps it's not just the flavour he loves, but the very crispy texture. I don't know, but last night, his addiction moved up a level as he realised he might be able to extract them from the packet himself!
So, in conclusion to my experiment, I don't really feel I've got to the bottom of why Albert Whiskers loves 'Dreamies' so much. Suffice it to say that he does. We will continue to ration them (despite the modest calorie content of 2 per piece) & hope that we do not have to report him booking himself into Rehab any time soon!
Until next time, when I will be talking about overwintering chillies & my attempt to build a clay flowerpot room heater.
Oh....& I've responded to feedback about it being difficult if not impossible to comment on my blog posts by altering my settings. Thanks those readers who flagged this up. Have tested new settings, should be fine now.
Have a great week, everyone,
C x
Hello Friends,
Well, after two days of rain, I managed a couple of hours in the garden today & even found enough flowers to fill a vase.
I pruned the grapevine, brought all the agapanthus & pelargonium pots under cover & cleared away the squash vines......................which beings me to the whole subject of bloody butternut! Great to cook, lovely to eat.....sweet, filling & versatile.......but to grow? They are complete bandits. I've conducted a bit of a (not very) scientific study this summer & my conclusion is that any progress or otherwise is totally random.
Some years ago, a lovely colleague with whom I used to work brought me a butternut squash plant. "Just plant it out", she said, "and it'll romp away, & by Autumn you'll get a couple of lovely squashes from it". I planted it, it romped, the two fab squash were duly forthcoming. Result! Subsequent attempts to grow butternuts myself were spectacular fails. Seeds didn't germinate, or if they did deign to appear, they wibbled around for a week or two then carked it. If I got plants to the potting out stage, they'd get the sniffles within a fortnight. If (& it was a big 'if') I got one to the great Big Vine Stage, it would refuse point blank to set any fruits. This year, I acquired a free packet of Butternut Squash 'Avalon' seeds so decided to conduct a bit of an experiment to find out just where exactly these temperamental critters do prefer to live. This is what happened:
6 seeds sown in May in unheated greenhouse. All 6 germinated. <Stands back in amazement, hair stands on end!>
All 6 seedlings made sturdy plants, which were potted on & grew brilliantly well. My butternut confidence is rising daily.......with a tiny sprinkling of 'smug'.
Now for the experiment. At planting out time, I selected a variety of different sites.
Plants 1 & 2 went on top of a full compost bin. Squash are greedy feeders & this is supposed to be a good place for them.
Plant 3 went in a veggie bed which has sun for half a day & shade for the other half.
Plant 4 went in a veggie bed in almost completely full sun.
Plant 5 went in a tractor tyre filled with a mix of soil & our home made garden compost.
Plant 6 went into the greenhouse border (unheated).
The watering & feeding regime for all the plants was identical: Daily watering throughout the dry weather & diluted tomato food or our own comfrey liquid as soon as fruits had set.............which meant that No.1 never got anything to eat because it went seriously pathetic & carked it. No.2 started going the same way so I moved it to a raised bed. It whimpered for a few more weeks, then put out a reasonable vine, before also carking it big time. No.3 did absolutely nothing. It sat there until the end of August then decided to grow. Upwards! It climbed up through the middle of the runner beans before emerging victorious at the top but steadfastly refused even to produce any flowers (even a saddo male one!) let alone any fruits. I yanked it up & composted it. No.4 had a really prime spot, but was it grateful? Yes, if putting out one weedy vine before succumbing to mildew is a recognised sign of squash gratitude. Bloody butternuts! Can you sense how I was starting to take it personally? Because I really was! Now, No. 5 was in that enticing soil & compost mix in my big recycled tractor tyre.....surely that one did OK? Well, yes, it did.......if you want one colossal vine which sprawls the length of your entire herb bed, out the other side & onto the lawn. If what you wanted was an actual butternut squash though, tough! Loads of flowers & 3 or 4 small fruits.......which took agin me, withered & fell off out of nothing other than pure unadulterated spite.........which brings me onto No.6 .... which was clearly a triffid in a former life. It shot out vines right left & centre, over 15 feet of them, & proceeded to annexe the greenhouse. It had flowers, both male & female, which made actual procreation seem at least hopeful. It set a fruit.......which fell off. It set two more fruits........which also fell off........it set another fruit which STARTED TO GROW.............then got furry plague & exited soggily stage left. Then.....fanfare, please (Triumphal March from 'Aida' would not be inappropriate at this point), a PROPER BUTTERNUT WHICH DOESN'T FALL OFF OR DISSOLVE OR WITHER OR HATE ME..............BUT ACTUALLY GROWS!!
AND HERE IT IS:
That's a hand-sewn raw silk/linen mix cushion it's sitting on, you know! So the conclusion of my non-scientific study into the preferred location of butternut squash plants is that their preferred site is anywhere except this garden, thank-you very much. I'm sure some of you have grown some great ones but if you have, (especially if you are married to my sister-in-law!), I don't want to know!
As for this pampered specimen, I cut it today & it is awaiting its fate as star ingredient in a big panful of Hairy Bikers' Lentil & Butternut Curry.
I've got this out of my system now & will not moan about bloody butternuts again. I don't want to waste my time on them again, but I bet I still sow some next year.
Love to all,
C x
Hi Friends,
Welcome October! Perhaps my favourite month. I love Autumn. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors referred to October as 'Winter full moon month', the hunters' moon being the first full moon of Autumn. I love the whole continuity thing of knowing that they would have been busy getting everything gathered in for winter, foraging, drying, storing.........just as we do on a much smaller scale, albeit with a less 'Life or death' outcome. This has been continuing apace at The People & Cats Republic with more additions to the pantry, which must now be close to imminent collapse. Apple chutney made, & a bucket of windfalls turned into a batch of delicious brown sauce - honestly nicer on a bacon sarnie than any you can buy.
Blackberry & apple gin also on the go. Looking forward to warming me cockles with a glass or three of this by the fire in months to come!
Although our veggie garden has almost finished producing for the season, it's surprising how much I'm still picking. More aubergines, chillies, courgettes & herbs this week, plus heaps of pears.....
.........and apples showing no signs of stopping just yet.
This may surprise non-gardening friends, but rather than October being the end of the garden season, for me it's the first month in the gardening year. There is SO much that can usefully be done in October, from planning, to improving the soil, dividing plants up to make new free ones, planting bulbs, cutting back & clearing, potting up self-sown treasures you want to keep or use for swapsies, as well as October plantings of things like garlic, broad beans & sweet peas. I've had a fab morning out in the sunshine today, assisted by our tame robin, who is Feathered Pest Control in action. He (or she) sings loudly until I've cleared an area, then swoops in & hoovers anything wriggly, slimey & edible. We have no shortage of places for wildlife to shelter in our garden, so I'm happy to start a big tidy up now. Amazing how many pests this exposes, as well as snail & slug eggs which I'd rather didn't overwinter to emerge next Spring as a New Model Army of ravenous molluscs. Today's efforts uncovered a colossal slug who had clearly set himself up for the winter......such an impressive pad had he established for himself deep in the heart of an overgrown alchemilla that he was practically ordering in an M&S Wine & Dine to enjoy in front of his 3D hi-def TV! Needless to say, he has been dispatched to a grassy area frequented every 5 mins by our blackbird family! Another bonus this morning, was turning up 2 flowery little gems:
A rather late 'Morning Glory' which must have self-seeded from a few years ago.......lovely family of plants, just don't go googling it in public, as a friend of mine once did, perfectly innocently, to see what colour the flowers were!
Also, a tiny Primrose Vulgaris flowering already! Wild primroses grow like weeds in our garden, which suits me fine as we have such a pretty display in Spring.
So, if your plans to start growing stuff have fallen through for another year, the spring season passing into summer without you having sown a single seed & all the intentions you had to redesign your garden have fallen back yet again, I can almost guarantee it'll partly be because you didn't do anything useful in October, the first month of the gardener's year. Think on!
Septembers's garden wildlife
In addition to all the usual suspects noted since July, we've seen:
*Sparrow hawk (we are now minus 2 sparrows)
*2 juvenile collared doves
*Toad
*Hedgehog (regular visitor in the hope of catfood leavings & another great predator of sluggy foes)
*Flock of 14 long tailed tits chattering away in our fruit trees - such pretty birds.
*Blue tit
*Coal tit
*.......and this lad......any ideas anyone?
Food plant was our greenhouse peppers....leaves only. I suspect this may not have been the preferred choice of scoffs (though he was making impressive headway!) as internet searching for caterpillars/peppers really only threw up various hornworms & he didn't appear to match.
So these are a few of the things I've been doing. I've been busy as you can see. You are probably unable to detect similar levels of industry in Albert Whiskers who has mostly been engaged in charming visitors, trying to fetch 'Dreamies' out of the cupboard using the powers of telekenesis & testing beds........
........Hmmmm, not exactly been caning it, has he?
Till next time,
C x
