Incubating

Spring’s in the air – at last – and lo and behold we have a broody hen! Normally this would cause irritation at the Villas because while a hen’s broody she’s not laying eggs. But this time we’ve decided that because we want to increase our flock we’d let nature take its course and give her seven eggs to incubate. Not necessarily her eggs mind you, a broody hen’s not fussy …and an odd number of eggs because an even number never fits under a hen so comfortably.

Behavior

A broody hen behaves in a very specific way – quite unmistakable. She loses interest in everything around her and totally focuses on the job in hand. It’s a very powerful state of mind that takes over for exactly 21 days and the mother hen has to be lifted off the nest once a day to allow her to get food and water then gently placed back on the nest fairly swiftly so that the eggs don’t get cold. For the few moments that she is off the nest she clucks loudly and puffs out her feathers which for some reason, seems to annoy the other chickens something rotten. In fact it’s not unusual for one or two of them to have a go at her and sometimes a scuffle breaks out – could it be jealousy? Jealous that the broody has become the centre of attention? Maybe.

First time

Anyway, our broody hen is called Nougat. She is a first-time-mum and is taking the job very seriously. Over the next couple of weeks I am going to post news updates and photos of our mum-to-be on Sow and So in order that you can enjoy this fascinating experience with us. It’s quite magical. Watch this space!

Rhubarb

Last year I planted a Rhubarb plant. Big deal, you may say. But really, it was. According to all the gardening books, Rhubarb is a must have in the garden. It is one of the first fruits (or vegetables, to be precise) to emerge in the Spring and it is so versatile. Jams, chutneys, cordials …you name it and you can probably make it with Rhubarb.

Apple sauce

In Holland (where I am from, in case you didn’t know already) we use Rhubarb mostly as sort of an apple sauce to go with your regular potato, vegetable or meat dish. Most of the time when you buy this sauce it is brownish and a bit gloopy. I know it doesn’t sound delicious but maybe it’s an acquired taste. Anyway, my latest challenge is to convince my husband Rogier that it doesn’t have to be brown and gloopy and to convert him into a Rhubarb lover.

Pam the Jam maker

I have this book from Pam the Jam maker at River Cottage. Pam Corbin’s handbook about preserves and jams is inspirational and I think she’s great! Last year I made the chilli pepper jelly, the lemon squash and I tried making one of the jams (which didn’t work but it wasn’t Pam’s fault – I got distracted mid process and went to have a chat with my neighbour…).

Recipe

So back to Rhubarb, I only have one plant and most of the recipes required at least two kilos which I don’t have, so I settled on Spring Rhubarb Relish. As you can see on the photos, it turned out a lovely dark pink colour. With respect to Pam, here is the recipe: (apologies to Sow and So’s American readers but it is all in millilitres and grammes, but there are wonderful converter programmes on the Internet)

(makes four x 340 g jars)

• 500 g granulated sugar
• 100 ml cider vinegar
• 1kg rhubarb (untrimmed weight)
• 125 g raisins

For the spice bag

• 50 g fresh root ginger, bruised
• 2 cinnamon sticks, snapped in half
• cloves

First make your spice bag by tying up the bruised ginger (give it a gentle wack just once in spice bag), cinnamon sticks and cloves in a 20cm square of muslin.

Put the sugar, vinegar, 100 ml water and the spice bag into the preserving pan. Heat gently to dissolve the sugar and allow the spices to release their flavours into the syrup. Remove from the heat and set aside to infuse for about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, trim and wipe the rhubarb stalks and chop into 2-2.5cm chunks.

Add the rhubarb and raisins to the spiced syrup. Cook gently for 15-20 minutes until the mixture is thick but the rhubarb is still discernible as soft chunks. Remove from the heat, pour into warm, sterilised jars and seal with vinegar-proof lids. Use within 12 months.

Caution: make sure you only use the stalks and not the leaves because the leaves are poisonous.

The relish is still warm but I took a spoonful and it tastes amazing!

If you are interested in preserving your produce then I can definitely recommend Pam’s book.

Laila

“Hi Bridget,

How’s your gardening life going? Here we’ve had a few days of sunshine followed again by lots and lots of rain. All our rain butts are full, including the 5,000 litre tank that we use to purify our drinking water.  This weekend we should be getting more rain so not ideal for gardening, I’m afraid.

My rhubarb is BIG! I read somewhere that you should leave rhubarb alone for at least a year after planting. As it was one of the first things I planted here, this year I can start to harvest it – just a few stalks. The photo here is from last year. I totally forgot to take a photo of my plant before helping myself and spoiling the look of it somewhat!

Did you know that rhubarb originated in Siberia? And that it goes really well with ginger?

In fact I’m on the look out for some recipes… In Holland, rhubarb is traditionally used to make something a bit like apple sauce, which can make it slimy and starchy (well, according to Rogier) but I always used to like my mum’s Rhubarb sauce. For my rhubarb I am thinking of making some jam, a Rhubeena (rhubarb cordial) and if there’s enough, some rhubarb ketchup!! All wonderful recipes from Pam the Jam maker.

Other news on the gardening front: I’ve planted out my French bean seedlings. I also checked on the French beans I  sowed directly and noticed that worms have pushed a few up on top of the soil. I pressed them back down again but I really hope the worms won’t do that too often…”

Bridget

“Hello Laila,

Glad to hear your rhubarb is flourishing. I don’t expect taking two or three stalks will do any harm. Did you put horse muck on your plants (I’m wondering why yours sounds so much better than mine…)? Your recipes sound interesting – I’d never thought of using it to make chutney, interesting. I used it to make wine one year but it wasn’t very pleasant – a very pretty colour but very, very dry.

As Michael isn’t a big fan (except in a crumble with custard – mmmm!) I may not harvest it and simply enjoy it as a striking architectural plant. One of them has bolted and they have the most unusual flowers… I’ll take a picture for you. Also, much to the chicken’s pleasure they can reach leaves through the fence and tear bits off to eat – I know it’s poisonous but the chickens have nibbled at it for years and haven’t come to any harm! Do you water yours a lot? I’ve heard they’re very thirsty plants and that may be where I’ve gone wrong because I tend to neglect them I’m afraid.

At the beginning of my fortnight off I set up my cucumber frame and planted out my little cucumber plants (outdoor variety) – however, they really didn’t look happy so yesterday I UN-planted them (!) and they’re back in the green house in pots until they’re a bit bigger! Last year I had the frame facing west and I got a very disappointing crop compared to the two previous years when they faced south east and we had more cucumbers than we knew what to do with! Needless to say this year the frame is set up to face south east again – the same as our espaliered fig and peach trees.

I’m not planting anything else outside for a few weeks until the weather improves – which may not be until JUNE apparently!!!! Aaaaagh!!!!”

Have you heard of Pinterest? It is like an online scrapbook where you can put all kinds of photos and videos of things you like, love, want or dream of. You can create boards on different subjects, from cooking and gardening to DIY, favorite places and even dream kitchens – ANYTHING! You can then share these photos (pins) with other people. You can follow the people as individuals or just one or more of their boards… whatever you’re interested in.

Inspiration

For me, the great thing about Pinterest is that its inspirational. I have seen lots of good ideas this way that I have already implemented in my own garden. Take for example this cucumber trellis, I found a photo of a similar one on Pinterest and Rogier created it after that image- it is wonderfully simple but you just have to come up with the idea in the first place, right? And because this cucumber trellis is such a good idea, I want to share it with as many people as possible so I’ve re-pinned it to my followers …who may then do the same to theirs.

Social Media

Pinterest is an online, mainly female community (over 75% of its members are women) and I love it. Please don’t say you don’t want to join yet another social media group because Pinterest is special – it feels cosy, warm and welcoming. The emphasis is on photos and frequently you’ll catch sight of some very good  pictures, which is always a treat!

Invite

At the moment Pinterest is still by invitation only. If you are curious and want to join, then send me an email at laila@sowandso.com or connect via Twitter (@sowandso) and I will send you an invite. For those of you who are already on Pinterest then you can follow our sowandso garden board!!

Hope to see you soon on Pinterest!

Recycling

I’ve just made a bird bath out of an old, galvanised steel incinerator lid (the incinerator itself was retired from active service several years ago when the bottom dropped out following a severe case of rust …no doubt we’ll find a use for that too, one day).

DIY

All I did was line it with some heavy duty plastic sheeting which I cut into a circle a few inches bigger that the lid. I then gently encouraged the plastic downwards to fit the concave shape and anchored it with some stones. I pushed  the chimney part  gently into the recently dug earth to make it level and secure, then with great satisfaction filled it with water from the water butt et voila!

Birds

I’m thrilled to bits with my creation in spite of the fact that Michael gently pointed out that with all this rain there are flood warnings across the country at the moment. Ha! Fair point but I’m certain that the local bird population will be delighted just as soon as they find it and I shall be so excited when I see it in use for the first time.

I’ve carefully placed it in my line of vision from the kitchen sink where unfortunately I seem to spend far too much of my time… time that I’d much rather be GARDENING!

A few weeks ago I wrote that I had ordered new worms for my wormery and I promised to tell you more about it in due course. So here goes…

Wormery

I bought my wormery a few years ago but the first time I used it I totally messed up and all the worms died. I know now what I did wrong and I am determined to do it right this time. The wormery I have is a base with a tap, three trays with holes in and a lid.

So how does it work? Well, you place one tray on top of the base and put newspaper on top of it. With the worms come some worm bedding that you need to wet a little and place on top of the newspaper and the worms go on top of the bedding. The second tray goes on top of the worms and you place a little bit of food on top. The idea is that when the worms have finished with the bedding they crawl through the holes to the food on tray two. After about a week or so you can place more food on tray two and keep going until the tray is full. You then place the third tray on top and start filling that one with food. By now the first tray with the bedding can probably be removed and placed on top of the third tray and so on.

After about 10 weeks you will be able to draw off  liquid feed from the tap in the base. You can use this diluted with water as a fertilizer so, as well as compost you get great fertiliser as well.

Food

So what kind of food can you put in the wormery? Well almost anything really. Kitchen waste, coffee grounds, scraps from your plate, you name it. However be careful not to put in too much acidic food like orange peel, onion and garlic. To keep it from becoming too acidic add lime on a weekly basis. Egg shells help to neutralise it too. The main thing I like about this system is the fact that you can put cooked food in the wormery as well as raw.

Mistake

What I did wrong last time was to put too much acidic food in the wormery. Also I added too much food that contained a lot of water whilst not providing enough newspaper or tissue to soak up the liquid, so eventually my worms started drowning. This time though I’m doing it differently and my worms are already digging their new home. I check them once a week and see them happily crawling through the kitchen waste and shredded tissue I have placed inside. It looks disgusting but it doesn’t smell at all and in about nine months or so I will have some very potent worm compost!

If you are interested in having your own wormery then check out this one at amazon.com.

Chickens

Our flock of chickens is down to seven – six hens plus a cockerel and I would like to increase it to ten. So the other day I went onto the Internet to find a local poultry supplier, of which there are several in Norfolk. The one that caught my eye was Picton Farm (Twitter: @PictonFarm_Jen), ideal because of its close proximity to the Villas.

So, on Sunday morning that’s where we went. Fortunately the rain held off for the duration of our visit, well almost – and the sun even came out at one point.  We’d arranged to arrive at 10.30 but the journey took very slightly longer than we had expected (Picton Farm is in the middle of nowhere) and we didn’t roll up until about a quarter to eleven…

At first we couldn’t see anyone – lots and lots of chickens but no sign of any humans and when I tapped on the front door, there was no reply. Through one of the windows though we happened to catch sight of a stack of egg trays laden with eggs of all sorts of colours including dark brown, white and some very unusual shades of blue and green…

Michael climbed up on a bench and caught site of a lady in a bee suit about 50 metres away tending to some hives. We called out to her, giving her a cheery wave and luckily she saw us and headed in our direction.

Hybrids

We went on to have an interesting chat about chickens, of which she has hundreds – all very beautiful and a few very noisy.  We are particularly interested in hybrids because they are generally acknowledged as being tough, good layers and Jen has dozens to choose from, some breeds I’d heard of and others that I hadn’t. They include Speckledy, Amber Star, Bluebell, Black Rock, White Leghorn and Caulder Ranger. We were especially drawn to the Speckledys, Amber Stars and Bluebells because we don’t have any grey or white hens at the moment.

They are all around 18 weeks old and are described as point of lay which means they have just started or are about to start laying eggs.  At this age a chicken is known as a pullet (from the French word poulet which means a young hen) and is at the very beginning of its egg laying career. She charges £18 per bird and they come fully inoculated. As well as selling hybrids, Jen and her husband also have pure breed birds. These pure breeds are all bred and reared on the farm from their carefully selected breeding stock.

 Bee Keeping

The conversation eventually turned to bees and beekeeping – something that Michael and I plan to get involved in.  Jen has about fifty hives, a few at the family run smallholding and the rest on other farms in the area but get this – she runs practical beekeeping courses. Now we’re talking! It turned out that Jen is Membership Secretary of Bees of God’s Acre (BGA) which is a bee keeping association currently setting up apiaries in churchyards, that provides local support and a training network for new bee keepers.

Before we knew it she’d whisked Michael away to find him an appropriately sized bee suit and some suitable footwear so that he could have a one-to-one taster session – there and then! Jen said that before Michael could be accepted onto one of her beginners courses she would need to observe him around bees to make sure he could handle having them buzzing around him and not get stressed and start sweating profusely, which apparently sometimes  happens.

I’m glad to say, Michael passed the test and is booked on to a four-session beginners course due to start on 6 June… I’ll keep you posted!

Our fan-tastic fig tree

Four years ago my brother gave us a very small (and rather desperate looking) fig tree in a ridiculously small pot. To be honest, the word tree is stretching it a bit. It was more of a dead-looking stick with a green shoot emerging out of the soil right next to it. In fact he and his wife were about to dispose of it when they saw the new growth – so, happily for us, they decided to continue to dispose of it but in our direction! We were very keen to give it a home as we had recently moved to the Villas and had a south-east facing white wall begging for fruit trees to be trained up against it…

Digging

First we dug a planting-pit directly in front of the wall, which involved removing and sieving several barrow-loads of soil. The finished hole measured just over a metre from left to right, just under a metre from front to back (we were restricted in this direction by some long since demolished outhouse foundations) and about a metre deep. Then, using broken paving slabs and brick rubble (of which we had plenty!) we lined the three open sides and back-filled the hole with the sieved soil mixed with some well rotted garden compost, planting the fig at the same depth as previously grown.

Fan

We decided to grow it as a fan rather than an espalier. This involves training the branches into a flat fan shape against the wall, with the two main branches growing outwards at around 40 degrees. The following Spring, rapid growth occurred with shoots coming off the two main lateral branches, so we selected outward growing ones only (to form a spreading fan-like pattern) and removed all the others. At this stage we started using the horizontal wires that Michael had rigged up. At first the training was fairly loose but as the growth continued we progressively tightened the ties to the wire grid, thus encouraging the branches to grow parallel to the wall rather than in a pointing away from it towards the garden.

Pruning

Now well established, we prune the tree each June, shortening all the side shoots back to five leaves from the main framework and in September we remove any fruit larger than a pea. These tiny embryonic pea-sized figs over-winter, hopefully to ripen the following year… Finally, every week through the summer when the fruits are swelling, we water-on a high potash liquid feed such as tomato fertiliser. Regular watering is also important because the roots are confined to a relatively small area that would otherwise dry out quite rapidly.

The most delicious fig recipe I’ve found so far is this one:

What you’ll need: Fresh figs, trimmed and halved; 2 tablespoons of honey and 2 tablespoons of chopped fresh rosemary leaves

1. Grill the figs for 6 to 8 minutes, turning once midway through
2. Divide between two plates. Drizzle honey over each plate of figs, then top with the chopped rosemary
3. Serve (suggest with vanilla ice cream) and eat………Sigh.

This is a foolproof roasted tomato sauce recipe. Once you’ve tasted it, you will never want to go back to ready made pasta or pizza sauce again.

One thing though – use good quality tomatoes. Last time I bought a kilo of cheap non-organic tomatoes because the organic ones were so incredibly expensive but I regretted it later on. The cheap tomatoes contained so much water that the sauce was watery and not half as tasty. Oh how I ready I am for my own tomato harvest!!

Interested? You’ll need:

• 1 kilo of good quality tomatoes
• 3 or 4 garlic cloves
• a bunch of fresh herbs like oregano, rosemary and basil
• a good glug of olive oil
• sea salt and black pepper to taste

Pre-heat oven (200 C, 400 F or gas 4)

Cut the tomatoes in half and place them cut side up in a roasting tin. Slice the garlic cloves and place them on the tomatoes. Chop or shred the fresh herbs and scatter across the tomatoes.  Pour the olive oil over it and give the tin a shake to distribute the oil. Add sea salt and black pepper to taste and place the tin in the pre heated oven for about 30-45 minutes. They are cooked when the tomatoes are soft and slightly charred. Then rub the tomatoes through a sieve and voila – what could be simpler?!

If you have any left-over sauce, you can preserve it in sterilized jars and use it for homemade pizza. Enjoy!

Many happy returns…

It’s my birthday today (don’t ask…) and a friend of mine sent me an interesting handmade card embedded with a handful of annual and perennial wildflower seeds.

Apparently what you do is thoroughly soak the paper in water, tear it up and spread it out in the ground or in a pot under a thin layer of soil (out of direct sunlight) and hey presto – in two or three weeks the seeds should have germinated! What a lovely idea – the birthday card that just keeps on giving!

Now off to the garden centre to choose myself a birthday plant – I quite fancy a Euphorbia if I can find one….