Starting seeds

For the last two years, I have grown the fast majority of my vegetables from seeds started in the garden. Most by directly planting them in the beds, the more sensitive ones in pots and flats to be transplanted later. Tomatoes have been the major exception; I bought a couple of plants last year and got some more from my brother-in-law.

Last year the results were quite a bit better than in 2009, mainly due to a rather warm April and beginning of May. The year before, there was still snow until the mid of April and soil temperatures remained cold. To play it save, and have some guaranteed produce in the first summer months (when longing for fresh vegetables is the strongest after a long cold winter) I am strongly considering starting seeds from a number of different vegetables in side this year in pots.

Since we are rather limited in space, living in a small appartment and have two boys with an abundance of destructive energy it will have to be a limited operation for now. I am considering getting four or maybe five trays maximum. I envision putting two in our living room close to one of our big windows (and maybe I can sneak in a third...). The others would go on our south-east facing balcony which gets quite a bit of sun, and where they will be protected from the worst cold. If there's cold spells, I could either move the balcony flats inside overnight, or use some protective covering.

It is still too early to get started, at least unless I want to have half a forest in our living room. We're quite a bit away from possible last frost dates, but it is never to early to starting thinking and planning. So, I am gearing up for a quick trip to the gardening center to get some seed starting trays and seed starting soil (which is actually not really soil). I strongly doubt I will be able to resist the urge to buy some more seeds while at the gardening center; like I need any more....

Still here!

Although I did not post any updates in a long time, I have been struggling away, both in the garden plot and a bit at the farm in France. Last summer was our second gardening season here in Switzerland. There's certainly enough room for improvement left, but we definitely did a lot better. It helped tremendously to know the climate and its tricks somewhat more. Also, weather-wise the summer of 2010 was far better than 2009.

Still, a rather extended cold and wet spell in the first two weeks of August didn't help the vegetables that had been planted for the fall/winter season. But, it did keep the green and yellow beans alive and productive for a longer time than normal. Beans were hence the success crop of the year--lucky for us we all love them!

It being winter now, there's little or nothing growing; some kale (most of which I harvested yesterday), cabbage and several overwintering allium variants excepted. However, I do try to spend some time in the garden regardless. I have been pruning the cherry tree, blackberries and the grapes. I tried to transplant some raspberry bushes that had a hard time surviving this summer. Most wood on those seemed dead, and I am not too optimistic. I guess I can only hope the roots are hardy enough and will be able to survive and thrive at a different, slightly more sunny place. I think it is the blackberries that were out-competing the raspberries, so I moved them quite a bit away.

Last year, I took some cuttings from a Josta-berry bush, and planted them. I planted 9 of them, and at least five are still surviving. They did not grow a whole lot last year--at least not visible above ground. That's expected, the first year they will use most of their energy to develop roots. I expect that the growth above ground will take off this year. If they survive another summer and do well I will move them to their definitive destinations. Some of them, I intend to plant on the farm in France.

Curiously, I have a red currant bush that has been grafted; the stem is a current like type, but does not grow any berries. This red currant bush is very productive, so it doesn't seem a bad strategy. I have taken several cuttings of this stem, and hope they will take. Once they grow big enough, I will try to graft some of the red currant stems one them.

Spending a January day in the garden can become somewhat unpleasant if it is too cold or humid. Today, the weather was not really something to complain about, but I figured it still wouldn't hurt to make a small fire:

And, as last, a picture of the view today. Yesterday, they sky was blue and it was clearer, alas, I did not bring my camera, so this one will have to do.

No posts in 2010....?

The scandal! I'll try to be better next year..... maybe.

Blackberries

If there is one place in the garden where we have looked with the most hope and anticipation, it is near the blackberry bushes. Both my wife and love those black, sweet soft-fruits. We've tried one or two a while ago that had a slight hint of blackness, but that was predictably disappointing. The other day when we were in the garden, there were lots of deep dark blackberries, and some careful and repeated tasting revealed they were read for harvest!

We collected close to 2 kilo (4 lbs.), about a third of that got either eaten immediately, on the way home or during desert. It still left

me with 1.3 kilos,

which I turned, with tremendous pleasure into a great marmalade. I made it the French way this time, taking the whole fruits, and after washing them adding the same amount of sugar and left it overnight at a relatively cool place. The next morning I cooked it slowly for about two hours with regular stirring.

It made 7 posts.... though when I wanted to make the photo I noticed one went AWOL already. I doubt the others will last very long.

There are still some blackberries ripening on the plants, both barbed and non-barbed, but not great amounts. I still hope to collect about 1 kilo (2 lbs.), but try a recipe I have seen for blackberry-peach marmalade. That sounds interesting and I would be very pleased to give it a try. I am not sure where I would obtain the peaches; we have got quite a few peach trees on the farm in France that seem to have lots o peaches this year -- but those won't be ready until September. So I can either freeze the blackberries for now and wait for our peaches, or buy some peaches at the local fruit & vegetable shop. Waiting until September would probably be the best, because we would use our own fruits -- just, I doubt whether I'll have the patience.

With our love for blackberries in mind, I am trying to set up a second stop in the garden with a couple of plants, that should double our potential harvest next year.

Nice harvest

Unfortunately, I didn't have the time this week to visit the garden. Either the weather was too bad, or our schedule too tight. I will probably have time to go later this afternoon, and for a more substantial period tomorrow.

Regardless, I already had a good gardening day today -- I visited the used books section at the thrift shop on the other side of the road and scored four books.

The first one is a 45 year old book on the growing of strawberries; the book isn't too big but enough to have information from beginner level to experts. Lets hope the knowledge will help me to boost next years strawberry harvest!!

The second one I found is about pruning fruit trees. I have still quite a bit to learn in that department, so it is a very useful find. It has a surprisingly large section about the different tools to be used for pruning so I guess I'll have some

more things to add to my Christmas list. I will also still

need to find some literature about the pruning of soft fruit bushes, though that seems to be a little more trivial then the trees.

The third book I scored is one with 88 tips for the

vegetable gardener, lots of illustrations and schemes. It also seems to

go nicely into the different diseases and afflictions of and the potential remedies or ways to prevent those.

The nicest book I found is one which is titled "Old Garden Knowledge Newly Discovered" (that's a rough translation). It seems to be a collection of small facts and tips; one that astonished me a bit is the recommendation to bury some sweet water fish under tomato plants. I am sure there will be lots of these little facts. Even if I won't use them, it will probably be an interesting and amusing read.

As an afterthought, they are, evidently, all in German. It will take me a while to read through them -- and I seem often to get stuck in getting which particular fruit/vegetable they talk about.

Abundance

Up till now, we didn't have a big problem keeping up with the produce; sure some of the salads bolted, but in my opinion who doesn't have some bolting salads didn't plant enough of them (besides, I'll let a handful of them until their seeds are dry -- which means I'll have more then enough seeds for next year). However, now the garden started producing in earnest, which means that we have too much of lots of vegetables.

Every second or third day a big courgette can be picked up, we harvest kilos of green mange tout beans and we have more red beets then we ever wished for. The last thing isn't surprising, because they are far from our favorite staple, we plant them to use their foliage to mix in with salads.

I also harvested about a pound of blackberries, I tasted one that was nice and sweet and collected the rest of the black ones -- we were in for a surprise when we ate them after dinner on Saturday, they were not quite as sweet as the one I tasted. I'll leave the rest of them a couple of days longer; if they don't get as sweet as we hope they would get we'll turn them into marmalade. We've got a small apartment, with a small freezer, so conserving fruits & vegetables is not quite an option, but we can always find some space for for marmalade's.

Reading around on different blogs this weekend, I noticed the mentioning of eating purslane, some of which my father-in-law had pointed out to me a couple if weeks ago. I looked around a bit in the garden to collect a couple of hand fulls and and the web about different options to prepare it. This website has detailed information about the nutritious values and how to grow/prepare purslane. We decided to eat it 'as is', mixed in with a couple of different salads and other leaves. We dressed it with a bit of truffle oil (real one, nothing synthetic!) and ate it with some home baked fresh bread.

Quick drop-by

The title is both with regards to the blog and the garden, yesterday. Between work, an afternoon spend taking care of the kids and the cooking/bathing/bedding thing, I had approximately 45 minutes to run up and down to the garden. With a 15 minute walk each way that's generally hardly worth the effort, but we had a bag with kitchen scraps that contained some rotten apricots, which we didn't want to reside on our balcony any longer.

The alternating heat and humidity have not been bad for the garden. A zucchini that had been to small to even consider harvesting last weekend had taken humongous proportions, which also meant a spontaneous change in dinner plans. Even the third, and rather small, salads start to bolt right now. I guess we'll still have some good ones for a couple of meals, but then we have to hope the fourth and fifth batches can take over (the fifth batch went in this weekend, so it will take a while before we can eat...).

We evidently didn't take good care when harvesting the peas, which we took care of about 10 days ago. In the bed, that now has several different members of the brasica family in it, about 25 small pea plants can be seen. I am hesitating whether I should keep them, and transplant (but where??!) and hope for a second harvest, or whether it's better not to bother and clean them out.

Last, but not least, just before having to take off back home I had a quick look at the tomatoes, and there's more and more little ones appearing. All, both small and big are still very green though. I guess we can only hope for more warm and sunny days.

Weather issues

Weather has been rather weird here the last couple of months, and is seldom in accordance with the predictions. For one, we had snow until late in March which prevented planting of many early harvest crops.

We experienced a first drought period with warm weather in the end of May and beginning of June, which gave many plants severe growth delays, though I guess we were lucky there was quite a bit of moisture left in the ground for some plants with deeper reaching roots to survive. Last week it was unseasonably cold; this week warmer weather was predicted but instead a rain front has arrived.

Regardless, we have been lucky enough to harvest quite a few fruits and vegetables so far. Salads are of course a main crop and grace our dinner table virtually every night. Peas and green manche-touts have been served several times now. Last week I picked the first courgette with more to follow this week if the weather permits.

It turned out we had quite a few rhubarb plants, so we have eaten it in several different forms, and there's quite a few jars with rhubarb marmalade and strawberry/rhubarb marmalade waiting in the cellar for times when fresh fruit is less abundant. The strawberry bed we inherited was actually quite a mess, so we transplanted about 90 plants in April;we got some hands full of berries from them, but tried to pinch out most of the berries to get them settled properly hoping for a nice harvest next year. The remaining plants in the old bed gave us around 5 pounds, which I guess we can't complain about. The bed has now been cleaned out, and another 50 plants have been transplanted (current rain should do them good!!).

Our red currant bush did quite well. I had never seen one before that had been grafted, but apparently it works quite well. The berries mostly ended up in a mixed berry marmalade which also include josta-berries, strawberries and raspberries. We are currently waiting for the Logan and blackberries to ripen, which shouldn't take too much longer, depending on the weather.

Our cherry tree bloomed wonderfully in early spring, and many cherries appeared. Unfortunately, the bird population of Zurich seems to have had quite some nice parties among ours, and those of the neighboring gardens, so we ended up with just a couple of handfuls. Our plum tree didn't even bloom, so there's nothing there. They are Reine Claude's, a variety that's hardly available on the market, but supposed to have a great taste. We can only hope for next year....

Our small apple tree did quite well, though I removed about two thirds of the budding apples not too challenge the tree too much. With a bit of luck it should be able to give lots of apples in a couple of years, even though it is not ideally placed.

Last, but not least on the fruit front are the grapes. I am utterly inexperienced with them, and had thought I had pruned them rather rigorously this winter. It seems I have to be even more merciless because they are putting shoots in every direction imaginable, but there's relatively few grapes....

I'll try to post some photos next time around.

Did add one single photo.

Long time no see

Keeping a garden blog in winter is relatively easy, I noticed. However, once the gardening season started in earnest it got harder due to lack of precious time.

I'll try to post up dates in the next couple of days and weeks more regularly.

Pear-fig marmalade

Arriving at the local vegetable and fruit shop Saturday morning, I was thrilled to see they had some class 2 pears again for a very reasonable price. I had been looking for those for a while to try pear-fig marmalade. They had some about two months ago, but since I still had a whole bunch of plums back then, I decided to make pear-plum marmalade. In the following weeks they had lots of class 2 apples (some of which ended in different marmalades or pies), but no more pears. I was starting to fear that the pear-fig marmalade, which I never tried before, would have to wait until next fall.

After quartering, peeling and coring the pears, and getting rid of the bad spots, I had some 2 kilos (4 lbs.) left. I sliced them as thin as possible; I took 500 grams (1 lbs.) of dried figs which I soaked in water for about two hours. I used just enough water to cover them, and added the figs and the water to the pears. An equal amount of sugar complemented the ingredients.

This all was brought slowly to boiling temperature. After one hour gently boiling I started checking the pear slices, normally the marmalade is ready when those get translucent. It took roughly another 45 minutes, before 13 jars could be filled.

The results are amazingly good, the quantities of pears and figs are nicely balanced, and in taste they complement each other. I will definitely make this one again!

Winters ending really nearing?

It is of course still rather quiet, allotment wise, the snow has disappeared, more helped by a couple of days of rain then by rising temperatures. Those still hover around freezing point, maybe two or three degrees Celsius above during day time, but unfortunately the same amount below during nights. The predictable result is that the allotment is extremely muddy, since the upper 5 cm (two inches) or so has thawed, but below that it is frozen. The rain we had, and the molten snow have nowhere to go, and make the plot a nice mess. I would have liked to dig over a bed in preparation for some garlic, but it seems I will have to be patient. Predicted temperatures are a bit higher for the coming weekend, so there might be better possibilities soon.

The cuttings I took a 10 days ago seem to be doing fine, except one or two that show some mold, those will definitely be thrown out.

The ones outside are doing okay. I don't expect a lot here the next couple of months, I guess the key is to keep them humid enough, and not to worry.



These are inside, normally cover with some plastic wrap to create an environment as humid as possible. The are definitely sprouting, and I might be able to see some very fine roots forming (might be wishful thinking, though).


Here is the second pot I put inside, close to the heating ... there are some molds growing in here. I will eliminate those branches, and probably the rest of them as well.

Interestingly, a colleague mentioned to me they tend to graft their currents here normally onto something with a decent rot structure. That is the first time I hear about this, I have always had the illusion currants (red, white or black) can be grown as bushes. I will have to see, and if I obtain disappointing harvests the next couple of years I might need to try my hand at grafting....

Winters harvest

Little growing on the allotment right now, thought the snow is melting so I hope to be able to dig over a bed and put in some garlic. We should still get enough cold weather for them to get cloves. I might wait with part of the garlic until the end of March, or beginning of April, these will most likely end up as large single bulbs.

We do have some vegetable growing at the farm, although a bit less then other years. To my great disappointment, we didn't get around to planting kale last summer, which is one of my all time winter favorites. I'll be making sure that this year we'll plant kale both at the allotment and at the farm, to make absolutely sure I will get some next winter!!

Late in October we planted some winter-salad, though it was even quite late for them. The red variant doesn't seem to be doing too bad, but we will have to be patient for a little bit longer if we do not want to harvest the whole row for a single meal.

It seems we have had some uninvited guests eating them as well, maybe some mice which are currently quite abundant since the cats have moved over to different neighbors after some minor 'disagreements' with the dog.


The green salads are doing less well, and are much more victimized by the vermin ... I guess we will have to take our losses, they get the green salad and we will eat the red leaved ones.



We also planted less of the green salad, at the back of the row the leeks are visible. We grow a couple of handfuls every year, they are being harvested throughout spring.



Considering their size, I assume harvesting the broccoli also won't happen anytime soon.


Some garlic has already been planted. A tad bit early to our taste, we normally plant in February and actually earth them up like potatoes. It seems to be the only successful way of getting a decent harvest. A friendly family member that was visiting while we weren't there, planted some back in November. They don't seem to be doing to bad for now.


We will still plant our normal batch in February, at worst we will get a large garlic crop.

Pruning soft fruit bushes and trees

I spend quite a lot of time on the allotment this weekend, yesterday about two and a half hours for the pruning course, today about a hour to clean up a bit. I would have stayed a while longer but it started to rain, and with the temperatures around freezing, I called it a day.

Just having taken over an allotment which has quite a few soft fruit bushes and trees growing in it since a couple of years, I decided to follow a short, hands-on course in pruning them. There is certainly an abundance of books and on-line material available on the subject, but I figured that nothing would be better than seeing the actual pruning in practice and the possibility to ask questions.

The course was organized by the organization taking care of the allotments, and about 8 plot-holders, including me, turned up. It was a very pleasant surprise to learn that we would actually visit the eight plots, and the course leader would prune something on each, and give advice. Due to juniority, both in age and plot holdership, and my plot being a bit further away than most, it was decided mine would be visited last. This didn't bother me the least, since although it was cold the sun was out for the first time in ages, and I was fortunately dressed warmly.

While visiting the other plot holders sites I not only learned how to prune older apple trees and how to re-vitalize 30 year old vines, something I probably won't have to do in the near future, I also managed to pick up cuttings of black currants, red gooseberries and blue berries. With a bit of luck, I should be able to harvest from these in two to three years.

When we finally arrived to my allotment, it turned out that my vines had apparently been neglected last year. They got rigorously cut back (if there's one thing I learned it that: prune rigorously -- you might end up with a bit less fruit this year, but will profit for years to come!), I'll have to attach them soon to their support and guide them properly to get the best results. I was told that in three to four years I should expect 80-100 kg of grapes. I certainly don't have a clue what to do with that many!!

I got some quick advice on pruning my blackberries, raspberries and red currants. My tiny apple tree got even smaller, I was told not to let it grow more then 10-15 apples so that most of its energy would be directed into growth and strengthening. One of my two 'mystery' trees got identified as a cherry tree and also got the appropriate hair cut. The other tree of unknown species will probably produce damsons, though due to translational issues it could be another prune variant. Time will tell.

Spätzli

Today I was lucky enough to find something I have been trying to get for quite a while. One of my favorite local dish (although, known throughout most German speaking countries and some neighboring countries in addition) is spätzli. It is some mixture between egg-noodles and dumplings, with different recipes citing variable quantities of ingredients.

The spätzli are prepared by pushing the dough through a device above a pot with cooking salted water, and waiting about three minutes until the spätzli rises to the surface to be drained and served, or set aside for futher processing. The problem is that, with currently most people buying pre-made spätzli in supermarkets, these spätzli-presses are hard to come by. While actually unsuccessfully looking for either gardening- or cooking books in the local thrift shop this morning I passed by the kitchen section and noticed a standard, no-nonsense spätzli-press on offer for next to nothing. Less then two hours later it was being applied in my kitchen:

The recipe I used to prepare the dough:

• 500 gram plain flour (1.1 lb)
• 250 ml water (8.5 oz.)
• 1 tablespoon of salt
• 1-4 eggs (I used two)
• 30 gram (1 ounce) butter

Mixing it all together I got a rather sticky and though dough, adding the one or two additional eggs should make it less sticky and more fluid. After bringing a pot of salted water to a boil, I pressed the dough through the press in small portions, waiting until they were finished before starting the next portion.

I decided to make our meal a bit more fancy by dicing a small onion and fruiting it, adding in two handfuls of smoked bacon cubes, and gently frying until they start to be brown. The spätzli were added for the last three minutes.

I shamefully have to admit I lacked the patience to make a photo before lunch-time, but here is the lunch box I'll take in to work on Monday:

Some farm photos

We have been rather busy the last couple of days, but nothing interesting to blog about. I have a couple of spare minutes right now, so figured I would update the blog and add a couple of photos taken about two weeks ago while we were staying at the farm.

Unfortunately, the weather wasn't great (well, what else can you expect around January 1st....?), hence, dull skies and boring lighting.

One of the reasons I greatly enjoy spending time at the farm is that there's always something to do. Apart from the daily chores and 'big time projects' there are also many small tasks that normally don't get done because they are not urgent enough, but are nice to fill 15 minutes or half an hour that otherwise would have been spend doing nothing useful.

Two of those half hours were spend removing dead leaves, branches and other waste from the small pond.


It is evident that it is not ideally situated in this regards since both the leaves from the two oaks on the left and those from the walnut tree on the right drop in during each fall. The trees, however, have been there since quite a while and the pond has been dug around a small natural source that keeps it filled year around.


Although I had fished out most leaves and other muck last year around the same time, I was once again truly amazed at the quantity that had ended up in the pond. Standing on the side of the pond I used a standard hay fork, leaning over to scoop up the muck from the bottom of the pond, that at it deepest is around 1,5 meter deep. I managed not to fall in, though there were several narrow escapes!


About two and a half years ago I spend a lot more time cleaning out the pond, since over the years so much rotten material had accumulated in it that it blocked the source, and the pond had fallen dry. I dug out about 50 wheelbarrow loads of muck that we used to fill up holes and trenches all over the property. Now we can still easily identify those because the dug up material functions as a very efficient fertilizer and causes the grass there to grow higher then anywhere else.

In the old days the pond was used by a flock of geese that were relatively successful in breeding. When things were downsized due to the advancing age of the permanent inhabitant the geese were moved to the other side of the main house where the chickens were. Like this it was easier to take care of them and feed.

After an unidentified predator had a feast meal on our chickens about two years ago, we only have some geese left. Due to the lack of water they do not breed, so each spring we tend to buy two or three goslings that join the two old timers.



The source feeding the pound is definitely not the only one on the property since we have a well close to the main building. It is rather deep (14 meters) but provides a steady supply of high quality water.

On some of our pieces of land a bit further down the road we have two additional ponds, I will try to post some photos of those another day.

A cold hour on the allotment

New things are always fun and thus, even though there was not really anything useful to do, I walked down the road and spend an hour on the allotment. I was also curious to know how long it would take by foot; our first visit was by car.

Walking normal speed it is just a bit more than 15 minutes, which I consider very reasonable. I was afraid it would take more then 30 minutes, but walking there's a short-cut which is not available to cars. When going alone, I will probably take my bike most of the time. With the kids, it would be nice to be able to go by foot instead of having to take the car. If it takes me 15 minutes, we'll be able to be there in half an hour when we take them which is still fine, would it have been a lot longer it would probable have forced us to take the car to go, which would be a pity.

I spend my time there by sweeping the snow of the stone path and rummaging around a bit. We are lucky that the previous owner left us quite a few tools. There is a rather complete set that can be used while working on the knees. Not quite what I had in mind, but probably handy once the plot has been sorted out, vegetables are growing and weeds just need to be kept in check.

There is also what is needed in normal tools that can be used standing upright, but 3 or 4 of those have their shafts broken. Either they have been accumulating over the years, and been replaced by tools that have been taken away, or the earth must be a bit harder to work with than I hoped. It is certainly hard to say now, everything is frozen solid.

French King Cake

A couple of days ago it was the Epiphany, and a French tradition calls for a delicious type of cake to be eaten around this time of the year. It consists of some layers of puff pastry and frangipane in the center.

Although I do like most of the different aspects of cooking and baking, making puff pastry is not part of my skill set, hence I bought some pre-made one that keeps for a couple of days refrigerated and, as experience has demonstrated, gives great results.

The frangipane, on the contrary I do make myself:

• 100 grams of almond powder (3 1/2 ounces)
• 100 grams of castor sugar
• 1 egg
• 25 grams of butter (1 ounce)
• 15 grams vanilla sugar (1 tbsp)
• 1 tbsp rum
• 2 or 3 drops almond extract

Mix the butter with the sugar until it is homogeneous, then add the remainder of the ingredients and mix for a couple of more minutes.

Take a little less then half of the puff pastry and role out into a circle of 23 cm (10 inches); roll the remainder into a circle of 25 cm (11 inches). Put the smaller pastry circle into an oven dish, add the frangipane in the middle and distribute until 2 cm (1 inch) from the edge of the pastry.

Add the remaining pastry circle on top and use a fork to seal it all around to prevent leaking of the filling. Streak the top with some egg yolk and put at a cool place for 15 minutes. Pre-heat the oven to 240 deg C (465 Fahrenheit) and bake for 35 minutes after making a small hole in the middle to allow the steam to escape.


Smells wonderful, tastes even better!!

I've got a plot!!

Yesterday was the big day, allotment wise. We visited the organization that takes care of the local community gardens here in Zürich, and went with them to a rather large site with allotments. They must at least have a couple of hundred there! There were just two available to choose from though.

All plots are roughly 200 square meters (600 sq. feet), so size wasn't an issue in the choice; they are also virtually all facing the same direction, no difficult decisions to make there either. The main point is the shed that's present on the allotment. Apparently we do rent the plot from the organization or the city (I didn't get quite which of the two it is in the end); the shed however, is property of the allotment holder and needs to be bought by the next person. The community garden organization (familiengartenverein) decides upon a price, the seller doesn't have a lot of say and the buyer gets to say 'yes' or 'no'.

The first plot we got shown had a very fancy shed that looked nice and solid and has without doubt been made with a lot of love. The second plot has a standard shed which is at least 15 years old and not too solid anymore. An added advantage of the first plot was that there's a lot of fruit bushes and trees already growing, which means that in that respect the first seasons will be a bit more productive.

Here is an areal of the allotment we choose. We didn't quite get to see it like this since there is currently about 20 cm of snow covering it. Previous owner apparently spend a lot of time on the plot, but got severe heart problems during last summer and had to give up the plot. There's a small 'tomato house' at the bottom end (in green). It is covered on top and on three sides .... which seems a bit weird to me; for sure they'll suffer less from wind, but I guess they need to be watered every other day. Fortunately it is one of the few allotments which actually has running water.

There was a bed with strawberry plants, somewhere under the snow. There are blackberry plants, raspberries, redcurrants and grapes. I also noticed one apple tree, there are others on neighboring allotments, so that should work out as well. There are some more trees and bushes, but the persons showing us around didn't know what they were, or details got lost in translation.

The necessary papers will get signed soon, and then once the snow melts and the temperatures rise (probably those two will be somewhat associated) I know what to do with my spare time.

Garlic will to into the ground in February here ... definitely will have to do some preparation work for that! I'll keep you up to date.

Back home

After a rather long trip, I am back home now. Fortunately, traffic wasn't too dense so the voyage was uneventful. We have spend the last two weeks in France with my in laws, and have been lucky enough to spend a couple of days here and then at their country side farm. It is quite remote and I truly love being there and doing the odd jobs that need doing.

Since the current sole inhabitant is in her mid eighties, the last couple of years we have cut back on the size of the garden and live stock. There used to be sheep, rabbits, geese, chickens and even further back one or two milking cows. Currently, there are some geese -- not too much work and the rewards in form of a dozen or so geese eggs per year and the main part of the Christmas dinners.

Apart from cutting down two dead trees in our small forest, most of the weekend was spend hauling sheep manure from one of the outlying pastures and spreading it over the garden. As we do not need the pasture currently one of the local farmers uses it occasionally and put a 'bit' of sheep manure there for our garden about three years ago. We used a bit last year, since it was already nicely rotten then, but this year we made a serious attempt.



This is the state of the pile after we we took about 60 barrow loads to the garden. Fortunately we have a small tractor, so that we didn't have to use real wheelbarrows.



Here is an image of the manure in the garden. We managed to get a 100 barrow loads into the garden, and then had the 'joy' of spreading it evenly around. Although it was -5 °C (25 °F) we had to take of some layers of clothing!


I made quite a few more images and will be posting them over the next couple of days, with the associated explanations and stories.

Clementine whiskey confiture

Last Sunday I accompanied my wife to a local market, here in France where we are staying for the holidays. It was nice, though a bit cold. Lots of local produce on the stands, including different kinds of honey, dried sausages, regional cheese variants etc. There were a couple of fruit stands as well and we ended up with a rather large bag of clementine mandarins.

To finish of the year, and the bag of clementines, I decided to make some nice marmelade with them today. I quartered them and cut the parts into small pieces. I weighted them, and added the same amount in sugar. I had ended up with 1 kg (2 lbs.), so 1 kg of sugar -- and I added 150 mls (roughly 10 tablespoons) of water. After cutting as much of the white stuff as possible of half the peels, I cut them up into zests and added them to the slowly warming sugar and clementine parts. Quickly brining it all to a boil, and then bioloing for about 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

For the last 10 minutes I added a similar amount of whiskey as I had added water. The result is 6 nice pots of confiture, one of which I will be enjoying for New Years Eve!!! To be a bit ahead of time, I labled them with etiquittes dates Jan. 1st 2009.

Last pumkpins of the year

Since a bit of mold started showing up, I decided to take care of the last two pumpkins that lasted of this years harvest. I also took a handful of their seeds to save for next season, kind of hoping that taken the seeds from the best preserved onces will provide me with a crop of pumpkins that can be kept well a bit longer then this year.

I washed the seeds with a bit of warm water in a steel restrainer, now they are drying wrapped in some kitchen paper. Once they are dry and don't risk going moldy I might either pick them from the paper, or save them with paper and all. I read somebody just tears the piece of paper they are glued to, humidifies it and plants. I like easy methods!!

Bussy Christmas time

Not surprisingly, it has been a rather busy time, the last couple of days. We are spending most of our holidays with my in-laws at their place in France; but are fortunate enough to have spend a couple of days already at their remote farm in the country side, with more days to follow. Of course, lots of cooking went on for the last two days, I'll post some of the recipes (and a couple of photo's, though I don't have many) once things have settled back into their normal rhythm.

Practising for Christmas meal

We tend to have fairly copious Christmas meals with the in-laws, and it has become a habit the last couple of years to try some of the new recipes beforehand. I tried a bunch a while ago, but a change of plans has put a turkey on the menu for the 25th. I figured that for once we could go American, and will prepare some sweet potatoes as accompaniment — and with sweet potatoes, for sure, there should be some cranberry sauce or jelly.


I found an interesting recipe for an 'orange - cranberry' sauce, that I decided to give a try:

• 250 g (8 ounces) cranberries (fresh or dried)
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 orange
• zest of one orange
  

Put cranberries in a bit of water (if using dried cranberries, weak them for 30 minutes or so) add the brown sugar, start heating slowly. Prepare the zest of the orange, in small slices. Cut up the orange parts in small pieces, and add the zest and orange to the pot. Cook slowly for roughly 20 minutes. In case needed add some water.

Gave a great sauce, was wonderful with the sweet potatoes as expected and gave enough to have some ready for Christmas already, as can be seen in the photo above. But, I'll certainly need to prepare an additional batch.

Snow today, lots of snow.

Gotta fix me something easy to eat, then I'll post some more stuff and recipies.

One simple meal

Sliced tomatoes, sliced aubergine (eggplant, for the linguistically handicapped) into a slightly oiled oven dish. Some mozzarella on top. 25 min at 180 C.

Dellicious with some fresh, homemade bread.