Yes you did, ya told 'em once before

This week's update on the progress of the lemongrass:



Still growing!

Don't you tell it to the breeze

As well as trying to grow unusual plants I like Thai food, so my latest gardening experiment is to grow lemongrass. The idea was given to me when watching Gardeners' World (compulsory Friday night viewing for Oldies!) - it hadn't occurred to me before that it could be done. You can get packets of lemongrass seeds in garden centres, but googling showed me a far more interesting way of propogating it; simply buy some from the greengrocery section of the supermarket - yes, the pallid, naked sticklike things that have been trimmed to within an inch of their lives - and stand them in a jar of water on the windowsill. I tried it, and couldn't believe how fast the roots started to appear from what looked like a hopeless stump.

After one week in water



After two weeks in water; time to pot on



Transferred to pots



After one week in the pot; doing okay!



After two weeks in the pot the roots are still developing



Four weeks from when I bought them - starting to sprout out.


They're growing at a tremendous rate - about a centimetre a day at the moment! Soon they'll need potting on into bigger premises and hopefully by next year they'll be quite nice ornamental clumps for the patio.

In spring I'll be having a bash at ginger as well ...

And I will give to you summer wine

After the required 48 hours had passed I dutifully strained the elderflower cordial through muslin to remove all the flowers and lemon and decanted it into sterilised bottles.



I was rather surprised this morning to find that it's started fermenting, which isn't at all what I'd intended; my plan was to have a soft drink and not an alcoholic one! It's been put in the fridge to slow it down for the moment (I really don't need glass bottles exploding!) but the fridge isn't really very big, so that can only be a temporary measure. I don't really want to haul out a demijohn and all the winemaking paraphernalia to fail to make a drinkable wine. I might have to add a little vodka or gin to stop it, but again that rather defeats the object. Drat.

To adorn and perfume those sweet meadows in June.

I love this time of year. The honeysuckle's in full bloom



and filling the air with its sweet scent; it's especially lovely in the cool of the late evening, round about ten o'clock when it's not yet quite dark. It's a shame that it's determined to flower at the back of the trees and not the side facing the house, but there you go. The roses are glorious, as well as the lavender, although the philadelphus (the variety we grow smells exactly like Juicy Fruit chewing gum) is dropping its petals, like confetti in a churchyard after a wedding.

Following the blackthorn blossom of early April and the hawthorn (mayflowers) of May, where the hedges looked as though someone had thrown muslin curtains over them now in the hedgerows there are the wild dog roses - some white, some palest pink and some really quite determinedly rosy. Not forgetting, of course, the foamy umbrella flowers of elder with their cool scent,



so many this year that we decided to seize the moment and have a bash at making elderflower cordial; grown-up squash which is a delicious long drink, with ice, on a hot summer day.

We decided to use a recipe from a blog I regularly follow, called the Cottage Smallholder; a real feel-good site.

So we gathered together all the ingredients



and put them all together.



Now we wait for 48 hours before straining and bottling it. Fingers crossed it will be as good as I hope!

And a partridge in a pear tree ...

Sometimes Ned's experimental cooking doesn't quite go according to plan.

Chocolate truffle or bird dropping? You decide.

Harvest blog #2

I like growing things - I especially like growing vegetables. Unfortunately things don't usually appreciate the tender care I lavish upon them, and crops can be quite spectacularly poor. This year, however, the results have been, by my standards, amazing. Most vegetables I grow are unusual in that they're often unexpected colours - the varieties that are very rarely stocked by greengrocers or supermarkets.

The mange-tout peas were phenomenally successful, and with the rows being planted at fortnightly intervals meant a good succession and no glut; but I still managed to freeze a couple of pounds. The rainbow chard is now coming into its own (these photos were taken earlier in the year) and looks very attractive in the garden as well as on the plate. The cauliflowers did okay, but were small and allcropped together, meaning any that were left too long were munched by slugs. Bah.



Yellow courgettes are more visible on the plant and less likely to escape and turn into marrows when you let your guard down.



Historically carrots were white, with the orange colour being bred into them in the past couple of hundred years. So I decided to grow a range of colours (again for plate-interest), and these too have been astonishingly successful, and incredibly flavoursome.



The purple-podded climbing beans were again chosen for visual interest in the garden - the leaves are dark green and the flowers are a beautiful two-tone pink and purple. The beans themselves look amazing when picked (and are wonderfully tender and stringless) ...



... but sadly lose their colour in the cooking, which is disappointing. However it's all good and organic and couldn't be fresher - from plant to pot within 5 minutes.



Now's the time to clear up the beds (leaving the chard, leeks and parsnips because they're not finished yet) and spread loads of muck and compost to hopefully repeat the success next year.

Open up your mouth and feed it

I mentioned on Facebook that I'd baked a batch of 'Appley-Dapplies', which intrigued quite a lot of people who asked for more details.

It's a recipe we came across years ago, and has been a great favourite with everyone who's tried them. We had to cut the amount of sugar from the original because it made our teeth try to leap out of our heads in shock, but it's still plenty sweet enough.

I've not yet worked out when is the best time to slice it up; when it's still hot in the tin it burns you and falls apart, but when it's cold it's more difficult to cut through the top 'crust'. So the slices don't always look quite as neat as they could, but who cares?



A slice showing the apple filling.




So here's the recipe ...

APPLEY-DAPPLIES

Ingredients:
450g/1lb Bramley Cooking Apples, roughly chopped
50g/2oz Raisins
50g/2oz Caster sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
zest 1 lemon

200g/7oz plain flour
200g/7oz soft light brown sugar
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
150g/5oz rolled oats
150g/7oz butter, melted


Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 190 C/ 375 F/ Gas mark 5 for about 10 minutes before baking. Place the apples, raisins, sugar, cinnamon and lemon zest into a saucepan over a low heat.

2. Cover and cook for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the apple is cooked through. Remove the cover, stir well to break up the apple completely with a wooden spoon.

3. Cook for a further 15 – 30 minutes over a very low heat until reduced, thickened and slightly darkened. Allow to cool. Lightly oil and line a 20.5cm/ 8 inch square cake tin with greaseproof or baking paper.

4. Mix together the flour, sugar, bicarbonate of soda, rolled oats and butter until combined well and crumbly.

5. Spread half of the crumble mixture into the bottom of the prepared tin and press down. Pour over the apple mixture.

6. Sprinkle over the remaining crumble mixture and press down lightly. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 – 35 minutes, until golden brown.

7. Remove from oven and allow to cool before cutting into slices. Either serve warm with crème fraiche or whipped cream, or cold in lunch boxes.