Food ‘n Drink

For anyone who’s not ventured into my other (numerous) blogs, I’ve been writing about my first summer of growing fruit and veg on the gardening section of my personal blog. Anyhow, I’m trying to get my blogs on the correct subject more and so I’m moving gardening over to here as it’s not to do with flowers but food! So if you want to catch up with the summer’s posts then go to my Personal Blog (as I’m not going through the hassle of moving them over!).

Anyhow, so where are we with the garden? Well the summer’s come to an end. We still have plenty of tomatoes coming and once I return home I’ll be most likely starting to cook these down into a passatta for freezing and using in cooking through the winter. The chilli’s are also still coming through. I left a few in the airing cupboard the other week before I went away so I’m hoping these will dry out for me to crush and save in spice jars, again for use in the winter months. The raspberries are still coming through however they’re most likely going to our housemate’s mum as there weren’t many left. This just leaves the Peppers and Aubergines. I left 6 peppers on two of the plants so whether they’re still growing, will turn colour or just stay the same I don’t know. The aubergines just kept producing flowers this year and did nothing else so that’s been a waste of time really which is a shame. My Dad had two aubergine plants (he gave us the other) and he got a couple of aubergines off his but I guess ours didn’t want to know. The other shame was the cantaloupe melon plant, I think it just got planted too late as again my parent’s had a few plants and had a fair few melons off them.

However this year has been pretty successful with the amount of lettuce and rocket we’ve had from the garden along with potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries and herbs. Not bad considering we didn’t really prepare the ground very well besides digging it over and considering it was our first summer too. So I’m already making plants for next year as you need to plan early. Once we’re back we’ll be digging out another area full of rubbish (literally), sieving out the decent earth and dumping the rest, then getting some compost in and dig it through all of the areas for growing. This will take a few weeks however it’ll be done then ready for planting.

Next year I hope to grow:
Garlic and Shallots
Spring Onion
Potatoes
Peppers
Chilli’s
Tomatoes
Lettuce
Rocket
Raspberries
Strawberries

Maybes are
Parsnips
Carrots
Dwarf Beans

I also want to add some extra herbs to the herb garden such as Thyme and Fennel as these are great for cooking with fish.

So the plan is to sit down today with my Dad (aka my inside knowledge) and run through what needs to be planted when and when to start preparing, and of course when to pick / dig up. I’m quite looking forward to next summer just as I was the summer gone. I’ve got better plans for structure and using the small space we have more wisely. I’m past the good life now, call my home River Cottage