Heritage and Parsnips

Well After working on my garden for a few days i feel like progress is being made and I its time to think about what to grow, oh what fun! The possibilities are very nearly endless, there a lot of veg out there, but also a lot of different varieties. One thing i want to try growing however is parsnips, I really, Really love parsnips, no other vegetable can even hope to compete with the mighty Parsnip.

They a very British plant, growing well in our colder climate (in fact the taste better after a frost) and are very under estimated. Many people are familiar with them at Christmas, but i believe no dinner is a roast without a whole dish of these sweet roots. Apparently the French only used them for cattle fodder, further proof that Franks are not the be all end all of food.

This year in my garden I'm heavily considering growing a lot of heritage fruit, not only will this be keeping alive olde English traditions, you'll also invariably get more interesting produce. So up above you'll see the first purchased seeds for my spring garden. Until next time.

Three days in..

Ah just noticed its actually four. But lets begin, (actually on a side note, my pissing space bar is playing up, you reading this have absolutely no idea how irritating this is getting.) This is the time of the year when people start making outlandish claims as to what they are going to give up, but won't. This leaves two options.

1- Give up something you don't do, i.e. I know I'll quit smoking as I don't smoke.

2- Really, really try.

Now we all know which is the easy option, but lets try shall we? And lets pick something good, I personally like the idea of choosing to do something rather than cutting something out. The obvious being to get into shape, loose weight etc....BORING. You won't do it, not even till February.
My resolution is to have a go at forging my small concrete jungle into something life sustaining. Last year I didn't grow a thing and with spring just around the corner (unless there have been some rather serious changes that I don't know about) now is a good time to start planning.

Firstly, reclaim and clean. I need to take back the land, this will be a protracted campaign involving tools and bin bags. Its a little shocking how quickly junk can accumulate. Once all the rubbish has been cleared its time to take stock of what we have to work with. Really not much indeed. I have one actual patch of earth two metres by point five and several 50cm2 containers. Not a lot.

Not in previous years I have produced staples, such as potatoes, carrots, but really considering size restraints I can't afford to grow these ready available and cheap foods, so the plan is to grow more interesting fare. One thing we will definitely grow is leeks. Leeks are really nice, and astonishingly, to me at least, expensive to grow. Squashes and sweet potatoes, things I love but my GF won't touch and chillies. So in the coming weeks regeneration will start and magic will be sown. That's the idea at least.

Also, my last post concerned a rather curious book, that's fallen by the wayside due to lots of very interesting books (something Christmas hasn't helped at all) anyway, that will be back. Eventually.

Growing an stuff..

Well after my initial jubilations at the first glimpse of sun have been quashed slightly by a complete lack of any warmth in the slightest, ah the temptation to move to sunnier climes, that said everybody is moving off these days at least 80% of my friends now live in York.

I am actually very tempted to move abroad, I don’t like the UK anymore it's fallen a little too far, I fancy yanksville but the lack of a public health system worries me a lot (knowing my luck I would suffer a terrible accident as soon as I settle), but I should be able to secure a visa quite easy. Europe temps me, particularly France, so much so that I’ve taken to learning to language (badly and self taught of course). 

But anyway, away from pipe dreams and back to my scrap of north England that I can call my own, I do really like my house, it’s a lovely little thing. I just wish it could be in a nicer town.

But back to the green, as spring still hasn’t really kicked in there hasn’t been much gardening to get on with, all I have is a window ledge and that’s a little full at the minute.

 Asparagus babies, sage and thyme and strawberries taking up all the space.. 

 And pride of place my fig tree, a queue is starting to back up a little now with a lot of things needing to be planted, chard and PSB (purple sprouting broccoli) being the big things, I want another crack a chili peppers and I think I’ll grow some cucumbers this year, mainly to pickle for home made summer burgers on the barbeque. I have a few things growing outside, my garlic seems to be doing well, and the blueberries are budding nicely. I’ll have a good crack at the garden this weekend and get some pictures, hmmm I need a container big enough for a plum tree...

And here for no reason is one of my cats enjoy,

Sunny side up

Blue skies today and its getting well into march so here's hoping that spring is finally on its way here. As it stands my garden needs a heck of allot work done, need to move some of my planting beds and mainly just a bit of maintenance and tidying up really.

But soon I hope to have it all swinging along in a little while, hopefully be eating home produce in the near future. One big surprise is my little fig tree, which has figuratively exploded despite the cloudy days and cold weather, it’s doing pretty well on its little south-facing wall. Bought some strawberries over the weekend hopefully will be placing them out in their little hanging basket soon, they did quite well last spring but struggled over summer so I’ll be taking a little extra care with them this year.

One lesson learned from last year is to be vigilant against pests, cabbage whites slaughtered my brassicas last year and a pair of feathery bastards laid waste to my blueberries. I think to combat this i need some form of fortifications, castles and battlements maybe a bit to far, but some sort of net systems definably merits some thought...

Post one

Gardening I'm afraid,

It's February and its cold, and windy, windy enough to break Liverpool. Until spring hits us, there's not much I can do. We don't have much over winter stock in the ground, well none apart from our 2^nd gen garlic. In a spurt of wanting to do something I bought two small dwarf trees to live inside the house (last year my blueberries were pilfered by some feathery bastard), the tree's are a Fig and an Olive. The former to bake and the latter to eat off the tree, its also nice to have a bit of green adorning the window.