Credit Crunch Busting Tips

Posted By admin on February 26, 2009

Now it seems that spring is here, snowdrops, crocuses, dwarf irises, catkins, pussy willow, amorous birds..it’s all happeneing out there!

This year we aim to keep you up to date with our progress in the veg garden.With the ever increasing price of vegetables, we have decide that we can do without our big lawn. Most of it has been dug up, dug over, had plenty of homemeade compost dug in, and will be home to a crop of spuds. Two reasons for spuds. No, three.  They will help break up the ground, and as we are growing maincrop spuds in that bit, they will save us a fair bit on shop prices, thirdly, we get to experiment with different types of poato other than those chosen for us by the supermarkets.

As we always grow a few new spuds (you truly can’t beat the flavour of them straight from the ground), we like to try different varieties each year. Seed potatoes can be expensive, so see if you can interest a pal to go halves with you on the cost, share the seed potatoes, and you can try more varieties!

Our poataoes are currently sitting on trays in the summerhouse, doing a mysterious thing called chitting. Don’t be put off by the jargon, it just means they are sending out shoots, ready for planting.

We’ll keep you up to date, and let you know which varietes do the best, and most importantly, if we save any money by growing them.

Next week, if the fair weather continues, we’ll be sowing some veg seeds under glass, I’ll take some pic, and we can watch their progress.

MARCH

It’s been a beautiful week weatherwise, and we’ve done much preparation for the growing season. The flowerbeds have been tidied of the last bits of dead stuff that was deliberately left around as shelter for the winter creatures. It doesn’t look so tidy, but at least it gives shelter. Don’t forget to leave some of the smaller twigs and bits of dead grass for nestbuilding though.

The compost bins have been turned, and some spread on new planting areas. The blackbirds have enjoyed all the worms!

New strawberry plants have been ordered for this year, as the previous strawberry bed was five years old, and we wanted to move it.  We took the opportunity to buy new plants, something we rarely do if it can be avoided, but the old strawberries weren’t fruiting very well any more, so it was a good chance to try some of the newer varieties. We’ll let you know wch ones are best!

Seeds have been sown under glass, and some in the garden under cloches.

Finally, we have begun work to get the old pond area ready for our first venture into chicken keeping. We are in the process of filling in the pond and building a henhouse and run. It’s a shame to lose the pond, but we are looking forward to the eggs. And we won’t miss the mosquitos that the pond attracts, although we will miss the bats that the mosquito’s attract. There was no frog spawn despite  having a good frog population, or we would have waited.

All this fresh air and excercise made us hungry, and the thought of strawberries made our mouths water, so we defrosted some of last years raspberries, and will make a Raspberry Cream Slice later. It’s really easy!

Raspberry Cream Slice

Buy a pack of frozen puff pastry (I know, but it really is better than you can make at home unless you’ve got hours for all that rolling and folding.)

Defrost and roll it out into three equal sized rectangles. Bake ‘em in a hot oven for 10 -15 mins. Cool. Sandwich together with fruit and double ceam, whipped up with a bit of icing sugar and a couple of drop of vanilla extract. (REAL vanilla, not the chemical sort called ‘flavouring’ which tastes nasty)

Make some runny icing and pour it over the top…it will run down the sides. Yummy. Scatter chooped nuts on the top if you have any. Chill until icing is set and then…get there first! It disappears very fast.

Raspberry Slice

Categories: In The Garden
Tags: Add new tag, birdfood, birds, cheap, chickens, compost, cream, creditcrunch, food, free protection, frogs, garden, grow your own, money, organic, pastry, plants, pond, raspberries, seeds, spring, trees, vegetables