Garden

The garden has been a little neglected recently, partly due to this.



Oil seed rape growing in the field at the end of the garden, very pretty but it gives me dreadful hay fever so I've been limiting my outdoor time.

There are a few things doing well though.




We've had loads of raspberries, there is a bit of a pause in production at the moment but new ones are forming on the autumn fruiting ones.



I am a little disappointed in the new lasagne beds, the layer of cardboard doesn't seem to have done a very good job at keeping the weeds at bay (maybe I didn't overlap it enough) and the bale of straw i used must have had lots of wheat seed in it which germinated. Some of my usual crops didn't do well, although the runner beans are flowering so we should have some beans to eat soon.




And the corn is doing really well.

I am really pleased with the forest boarder though.



It's looked really good and we have had quite a bit of food from it. Best of all it has pretty much looked after itself.




I planted lettuces amongst the other plants and they have done really well and seemed to have gone unnoticed by all the usual pests.




There are lots of herbs all doing well planted among the fruit trees and bushes.




This plant i particularly love, it's tree spinach, it started life as a very small plant bought at a local garden centre in the spring and has grown to 4 or 5 foot tall. It's really attractive, the small pink leaves are great in salads and the larger leaves can be used as a substitute for spinach.

I'm hoping to get out into the garden this weekend, now the rape seed flowers have finally gone over, to try to get the weeds back under control so I can plan for some winter crops.

New additions

A couple of weeks ago my sister phoned and asked if I would go with her to pick up a couple of new hens to add to her flock. She had found a place on the Internet that is about half an hour away from me. I agreed but said that I wouldn't be buying any as the smallholders show at Ardingly was coming up and I wanted to buy some there.

So one morning she picked me up, she also brought along her lovely friend Sally, who also keeps chickens and off we went.

When we got there we followed the signs down the side of the house into the garden, which initially didn't look that large, and down the garden path which went on and on until to our surprise the garden opened out into a large orchard with loads of chickens! Heaven! There we met a very friendly chap who showed us some hybrids in loads of different colours, all beautiful. Well you guessed it I couldn't resist.



Meet Primrose and Cathy, sorry the photo isn't great they are still a bit shy, but are settling in well. If you live in Kent and are after some chickens I can thoroughly recommend Hen House Poultry in Teston, he has a website with all his available birds, if you google it you should find it.

Well yesterday was the smallholders show, we had a lovely day, the weather was perfect. We saw lots of lovely animals



And went to a talk on bee keeping, which is something we have been considering, it was very interesting. We are hoping to attend a meeting of the local beekeeping association soon so we can handle them to see how we get on. I'll blog more about this later.

Anyway we were at the show, but we weren't going to buy any livestock as I just got two new girls.


I'm so weak, meet Buffy, Willow and Xander. My buff Peking trio, I have a cockerel! We are hoping to raise some chicks in the future, probably next spring, watch this space!

Jayne x

Gardeners World Live

We travelled to the Nec in Birmingham this weekend for gardeners world live.




There were some really sweet show gardens and lots of shopping to be done.



When we first started going to gardening shows you rarely saw a vegetable, but now they feature in nearly all the gardens.




I bought a fig tree (I love figs) and some herbs for my forest border.



And I saw Monty!

Jayne x

Raspberries and strawberries

My first harvest of berries from the garden. (Not counting the ones that have found their way into my mouth while I've been working in the garden!)

Jayne x

Heathfield show

Spent yesterday at the heathfield agricultural show.







There were lots of lovely animals that I would have loved to have brought home with me.







Especially these piglets! But they were all going to grow too big, not enough room in my garden for sheep or pigs or goats.

But....






Someone did come home with us!






Introducing Pippa our new speckled hen. She's moved in with Hettie and the ducks. So far they all seem to be getting along really well.

Jayne x

Duck update

Emma's ducks have settled well into their new home. They are now fully feathered but are still too young to lay any eggs yet.



They love their paddling pool and become quite excited when we fill it up. These pictures were take a few minutes after I had filled it. They had swam round and round, jumping in and out (totally drenching me in the process) and flapping their wings like crazy.



They also like to sit under the hose and snap at the water as it comes out. They are really funny to watch and all have their own personalities.




As you can see Hettie has now moved in with them permanently. She seems much more comfortable living with ducks than chickens.

Rose Petal Jelly

I love roses, especially ones that have a really good scent. My favorite roses are the David Austin ones that we have bought over the years at RHS shows. I love going to these shows, my favorite is always Hampton court. It's chelsea week this week but I will only be watching it on the TV, we have been before but it is expensive and always very crowded, but I always feel sad that I'm not there when I watch it.

Anyway back to the roses, as I said I love heavily scented roses and I thought it would be lovely if I could make some rose petal jelly. I had read that the more fragrant the rose the better, so my David Austin roses were perfect for the job.

I picked some flowers that were fully open, stripped all the petals off and gave them a good wash, I don't use any sprays which makes them safe to eat but may mean there is the occasional bug.

There was quite alot of petals so I put them in two jars and filled them with boiling water.

The effect was quite amazing, all the colour from the petals immediately drained out into the water, turning it bright pink. I left this to steep for about an hour and the I sieved it to get rid of the, now off white, petals.

This left me with quite alot of rose water, I measured out a litre, added the juice of one lemon, a kilo of sugar and a packet of pectin. I heated this mixture, stiring till the sugar had dissolved and then brought it to a rapid boil until it reached setting point.

I then put it into sterilised jars. You can't really see from the photos but it is the most amazing jewel like pink colour and is absolutely yummy. As you can see from the picture I had quite a bit of the flavoured water left so I made another batch and also tried it it a batch of soap, I had hoped it would retain some of the colour and maybe a litte of the scent. The colour turned to a beige as soon as I added the lye and I'm not sure about the scent I think I can detect a hint of rose, but will have to see what it's like once it's cured.

I now have a new favorite thing to have on my toast for breakfast. I have been looking for other things that I may be able to do with flowers from the garden. I've read that jelly made with dandelion flowers taste like honey, I'm always battling with dandelions in the garden, so I may try this next. Then I can say I'm growing them for culinary use, any excuse for doing less weeding!