Wednesday 22 August 2012

New Herb for Me: Vietnamese Coriander

The last couple of times I've been to my local garden centre, which I only discovered last year, they didn't seem to have a large variety of plants, but this might have been due to the summer season ending.

A couple of weekends ago I headed down there to find a great variety of flower plants, vegetables, trees including fruit and a large section full of herbs, some of which I never thought I'd see there, including the Vietnamese Coriander plant which I picked up for £1.49.

I've done a little research on this, and I found that some other buyers have struggled to look after this plant as it is meant for a much hotter climate, so it is best to bring this in doors once the cooler weather comes in, so I'm looking forward to seeing if I manage to keep this alive. It also needs a lot of water, as I found out over the last hot weekend.

                                                                    Photo: Laura Lunt  Date: 21 August 2012

Monday 20 August 2012

Even More Courgettes

We had lovely weather over the past weekend, very warm and humid but great for all the vegetables which seem to blossom and enjoy the splash of heat that's finally arrived. I had a little nosey around the vegetables to see how everything was doing and I notices one long Courgette as least 6cm in size and then another four just starting to form behind this.

I'm really really excited as last year it was very disappointing, due to only getting one Courgette from four plants, so I'm overjoyed that this one plant has so many Courgettes on, they obviously love there new place on the Balcony.
 
                                                        Photo: Laura Lunt  Date: August 2012

                                                                     Photo: Laura Lunt  Date: August

Friday 10 August 2012

First Round Courgette

This year I decided to try a different variety of Courgette, instead of just planting a few of the normal long variety, 'All Green Bush', I also planted some round ones called 'Tondo di Piacenza', which came free in a garden magazine I bought.

Last year I had a bad experience with my 'All Green Bush' Courgettes, out of four plants they only produced one Courgette, which was very dissappointing. But I hoped I could do better this year with two varieties and I also placed these nearer to the front of the balcony, so they could get more sun.

                                                                     Photo: Laura Lunt  Date: August 2012
The round variety were actually put in a hanging basket, and the results have been great, I currently have several Courgettes coming through, which I am so happy about, they obviously love the hanging basket. The normal long variety plant is in a pot near to the front of the balcony and this has tons of flowers on, which have just started to open, so fingers crossed I'll have some Courgettes coming through soon.

This Years First Tomatoes

Over the last couple of months the Tomatoes have been outside, growing away and enjoying the lovely sunshine we've had now and then, when it's decided to show itself. The first two Moneymaker Tomatoes were removed earlier this week and were a gorgeous red colour, they're skins were a little bitty, but this might be because I haven't feed them enough over the last few weeks, which I have now been doing for the rest.


                                                                     Photo: Laura Lunt  Date: August 2012

The other two varieties, Gardeners Delight an Roma VF, are now happily growing away also, I was a little worried for a while as the leaves were going crazy and lots of flowers were coming through, but no Tomatoes, but having had a look this week they now seem to have gone crazy.

                                                                     Photo: Laura Lunt  Date: August 2012

Chilies Planted Up & Growing

This years Chilli plants have been planted up in their final place for a few weeks now and are now sitting comfortably on the Livingroom windowsill. We have one Thai Dragon Chili plant, one Hot Chili Pepper 'Apache' plant (store bought) and one Inferno Chili plant. The non-store bought Chili plants were grown from seeds from last years plants, and as stated in an earlier blog, I'm not sure what these will come out like, due to the pollen of the plants being mixed together, but I can't wait to see how they grow and also how hot they may be.


                                                                  Photo: Laura Lunt  Date: June 2012

I've also planted and finally managed to germinate some Cayenne Pepper Chili plants, which I have three and also the Hotscotch (Hot) Chili Pepper plants (no photos), again I have three of, these are all nicely planted in two big pots and sitting on the windowsill of the spare bedroom, they get great late evening sun there.


                                                                     Photo: Laura Lunt  Date: August 2012

At the moment the three in the livingroom are growing really well and already have a lot of flower buds on them, which hopefully will turn into lots and lots of Chilies and then I can get on with another year of making Chili Jam and my lovely boyfriend Zac, can test out a few more versions of his Hot Sauce.

                                                                     Photo: Laura Lunt  Date: August 2012
 

Plaiting Onions

After leaving the Onions to dry out in the small greenhouse over the last few weeks, last weekend I finally got around to trying out how to plait these, now I've never done this before, as this is my first batch of Onions, but I thought plaiting them would be better than just storing them in a bag.

Having consulted my garden books, it looked like plaiting was the best way to store them, but they didn't explain how, so off I went to the internet, as always this is a great place to find a few videos of people demonstrating this, and I found a great video called HOW TO PLAIT ONIONS which really helped me.

                                                                     Photo: Laura Lunt  Date: August 2012

It took a while and a few attempts at starting the batches off, but I finally managed to plait two batches of Onions, a small and large version. I'm very proud of them and they are currently hang up and waiting to be used.


Wednesday 1 August 2012

Preserves: Garlic Pickle

Having harvested my Garlic a few weeks ago, these have been drying out outside for a few weeks now with the Garlic. I've never had so much Garlic so I was a little unprepared to what I could do to store this. I know Garlic can last a long time, but as I left mine in the ground too long and I've managed to destroy the outer layer and exposed the cloves, I wanted to see if I could preserve these some how.

So the trusty Preserves book came out again and I found a Pickled Garlic recipe which is perfect for my small batch of Garlic. I have kept four of my best undamaged bulbs complete, as I'd like to use these for planting next year and also use some for cooking, plus they small delicious and look great.

                                          Photo: Laura Lunt  Date: July 2012

500g Garlic
200ml Cider Vinegar
50g Granulated Sugar
A good pinch of Saffron
12 Black Peppercorns
2-6 Bay Leaves
Half a teaspoon of Fennel Seeds
x2 Small Jars & Lids

Firstly I sterilised the jars, by washing them in the dishwasher. To prepare the Garlic, this was washed and then placed as bulbs, in a pot of boiling water for one minute to loosen the skins, they were then dried off and each clove was peeled and placed in one of the warm jars. The recipe says to use 3 jars, but as I didn't have the 500g Garlic, I was just slightly under; I only managed to fill two.

                                                        Photo: Laura Lunt  Date: July 2012

Once all the Garlic is in the jars, the fennel, black peppercorns and bay leaves were added to the jars as well, I still used the same amount of these as the recipe stated, but I only added 2 bay leaves to each jar. The cider vinegar, sugar and saffron were then added to a pan and brought to a boil over two minutes and then left to boil for two minutes and then added to the jars, were the lids where put on and the jars were left to cool down.

Once sealed they need to be used within a year.