Posted by Martyn Norris on Tuesday, November 1, 2011,
In :
Allotment
Who knew there was a national sausage week? I certainly didn’t but it seems that it is this week which gives me a good reason to show you my sausage, tee hee. It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago and my lovely Significant Other bought me an excellent hand cranked meat mincer with, and this is the important bit, a sausage making attachment. It is a fine thing and looks quite a bit like this,
Now the first thing to decided was what I was going to make. Perhaps the finest thing thing in al...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Tuesday, July 5, 2011,
In :
Allotment
So
I have finally got round to it, well, to starting doing it anyway. As
with most things that involve plants, it's a work in progress.
In my last post on here, which was a while ago, I said that I was going
to do some Guerilla Allotmenteering (whilst I fully understand that
that is not a word it is fun to say) in some of the tree pits near my
house. At the time of (one fingered) typing that post I didn't have any
plants to go in it and that is why it has taken so long to make a start ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Sunday, May 8, 2011,
In :
Allotment
BBC Radio 4 is a great station and one of it's best shows is the Food Programme. This week's broadcastwas particular interesting as it was about a “climate change farm” in Devon. It's owner, Mark Diacono, grows thing that are a bit difficult to grow here in the UK but will probably get easier as we bury our heads in the sand that has suddenly appeared around our ankles as we try and ignore changing climate.
Now, whilst that bit was interesting what I liked was Mark's attitude towards...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Sunday, May 1, 2011,
In :
Allotment
I have had an idea. Usually I don't have them so I want to show off a bit, oh and by the way I am in no way saying that it is a good idea but it is an idea and that is what is important.
So I have been doing a little Guerilla Gardening in a small area near my house as I have mentioned before and it is starting to look really very nice indeed. I have just planted some Aquilegia that will be up soon and my mother gave us one for Easter that looks a bit like this,
Posted by Martyn Norris on Tuesday, April 19, 2011,
In :
Allotment
Oooooh, well that's interesting and intriguing, what is in this plastic bag held down by quite a large stone? It seems to say that I should take one and read it then visit the incredibly long website address they have provided and so I did.
It seems that there is a review going on that hasn't had quite the publicity it should have and, as it is about cutting stuff, I would imagine that it emanates from the Government. It is a local government review about “tackling burdens” on councils a...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Sunday, April 10, 2011,
In :
Allotment
So we were sat on Poundbury Hillfort yesterday (which you can read about, as well as some other things, here) and we were wondering how they calculate when Easter is. One of the reason for this thought was potatoe related. When are you supposed to put potatoes in the ground? On Good Friday I'm lead to believe but that is different every year and is therefore, as a immoveable date in the calender, of no help. If Easter is the most important Christian festival (as most say it is) then why doesn... Continue reading ...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Sunday, April 3, 2011,
In :
Allotment
People get very
obsessive
about compost and the making
there of, I am not one of them. However that does not mean that I
don't do it, I just don't take it that seriously. You can spend a lot
of money on some rather over the top compost bins,
Posted by Martyn Norris on Thursday, March 3, 2011,
I know it is slightly
sad but I don't really like going on holiday in the summer for one,
and I think very good, reason. Stuff grows really fast in the summer
and by stuff I really mean weeds. A weekend away is ok, even the
little unplanned, grow-where-they-like bastards can't grow that
quickly, but all the time I am away any longer than that all I can
think of is my precious little seedlings be out competed by those
awful, awful things, blocking the light and sucking up all the
moisture. Oh ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Wednesday, January 19, 2011,
I come before you today with some good news. Yesterday I
wrote about my one visit to the allotment so far this year and the destruction that
the weather had caused. Well, that exciting adventure out was about 10 days ago
and writing about it got me excited about growing stuff again so, with the sun
shining and an afternoon off, I wandered on down there again.
Is spring in the air? If you judge these things by the
actio...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Tuesday, January 18, 2011,
It’s that time of year again. The time of year that sees an
envelope flop through the letter box from the council pointing out that it is
time to pay the rent on the plot. It’s a gone up this year as well, a rather
extortionate £15.25. God lord, that’s for a full year mind you.
There is a line in the letter that amuses me. It says, in
bold, “Reminders will not be sent out
this year so therefore if we do not rec...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Tuesday, October 19, 2010,
The first frost of this Autumn, in Dorset anyway, was on Sunday. Sunday was also my birthday. Do these 2 things occurring on the same day have any significance? Is it like the groundhog thing? Probably not, it just shows that winter is on the way so it's best to be prepared.
If you get some of those dull jobs done now, such as digging over, then you don't have to do them in the middle of the cold, cold winter and that is why I spent about 6 hours last Wednesday moving my raised beds.
Wh... Continue reading ...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Monday, September 20, 2010,
Does anyone one have any recipes to use up a lot of cherry
tomatoes? It seems my experiment with a blight free tom
has gone quite well. Seriously, I have fuck loads (I believe that is the
expression I heard them use on Gardener's World.) and I made BBQ sauce and some
tomato sauce for storing on Saturday but the BBQ one demanded skinning of the
tomatoes which became very boring very quickly. It is very tasty though, do you
want to rec...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Sunday, August 8, 2010,
I love this time of year. All the hard work that you have
put in is literally bearing fruit (and veg). Just yesterday, for instance (and
I use it as an example because it was a really good day) we bought home onions,
peas, mange tout, 3 types of bean, radishes, lettuces, cucumber, courgette
(anyone want a courgette by the way?) beetroot, carrots and my special prize,
more on that later. Basically at this time of the year we can f...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Tuesday, July 27, 2010,
Waitrose,
home of the overly descriptive labels and a shop that nicely turns a
negative into a selling point.
I
recently bought some nectarines from them (yes I know, air miles, but
I can’t grow them yet and they only came from Italy and, and I
think that this is the most important point, they are really, really
tasty) and the label bore the legend “Home Ripening”. I’m
sorry, what now? So they are not ripe yet? So they were picked when
they weren’t ready to be? I know tha...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Tuesday, July 13, 2010,
When we were at the garden centre on Sunday picking out some
plants for Significant Other’s bit of the allotment (yes I know it sounds like
giving a child a small amount of the garden to look after but I do have a lot of
space and the flowers do look lovely), which you can read about here, we noticed that they had converted
the field next to the car park into allotment plots. Now that is a genius idea
I thought, allotments next...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Saturday, July 10, 2010,
We've put some new raised bed at the allotment and one of them has been planted up by my Significant Other, you can read about here on here blog Knit Knot Norris, that is all. Continue reading ...
I come before you to report a rare success today. I have
been a little failure heavy recently but some things are going alright.
I have finally
managed to get some carrots seeds to germinate. I know that this is usually
very easy for most people but I seem to have a problem with them and I don’t
know why. Anyway this is my 3rd lot of seeds and some of them have
germinated, this makes me very happy. Look at their tiny little gr...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Wednesday, May 19, 2010,
Beans are quite easy to grow. We all know this. You take a dried husk of a thing, put it in some compost and then about 2 weeks later up it comes, raring to grow.
This has always been my experience of them anyway up until this year. This year I have had no end of problem with mine and it is mostly my fault.
I am what could be described as an inpatient gardener. When March turns up I like to get pretty much everything going. Tougher seeds are planted at the allotment, parsnips and early ca...
A continuous update on how my seeds are doing would (has) become
a little dull so I will stop that, probably. I will try to bring you plant
related stuff though as well as allotment updates and news.
Today, being a Bank
Holiday, there were only a couple of things that we could legally do so this
morning we did some DIY and then we got stuck in a traffic jam and got rained
on. Ah a blissful May Day bank holiday.
Posted by Martyn Norris on Monday, April 12, 2010,
I realise that I haven't had that much
to say on the subject of allotmenting recently. This isn't because
I'm not doing anything, much seed germination is taking place (except
in the carrot and spring onion area), but it is a little dull and I
have talked about it at length. Although I have just potted on my
courgette seedlings which is coming along nicely.
Today I put my potatoes in. It is
traditional to put your spuds in on Good Friday, which is odd as it
moves each year,...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Monday, March 29, 2010,
One of the things I like about this time of year is the appearance
of wild garlic or Ramsons. When the flowers come out you will know about it because
of the overwhelming smell of garlic when you wonder through the woods.
If you don’t like
garlic I would ignore this next bit. The leaves of this plant taste fantastic
(good mixed with salad leaves or chopped into a risotto) and you can eat the
flowers as well (they are also ...
Posted by Martyn Norris on Monday, March 15, 2010,
[if !mso]
One of things that really annoys me is when the perfectly normal
things of life are fetishised by the media in order to turn them into “Lifestyle”
issues. Food is the most obvious of these things. There are endless shows and
articles, many of which descend into nothing more than food porn, about cooking
and how hard/easy it is. If you want to see this in action have a look at a
menu. Even the Wetherspoons p...
The sun has remained visible so I have continued to get
things into the ground. I’ve been removing stones from the soil and adding my
own compost. It all looks lovely. The problem is you have nothing to show for
all of your work except for some lovely bare soil.
Here for instance are my carrots,
And here are my parsnips,
And today I put my onions.
Yes that is just 3 pictures of soil but it is lovely soil.
