A short clip of a report (made by my cousin’s husband) about the first olive crop in West Sussex. They picked 200 kilos and the are curing them to be eaten …
25 January 2010
06 January 2010
garden group blog
I belong to three different gardening groups. One of the groups is comprised of ladies from the International Women’s Club Provence.
We are English, Dutch, Danish & French in the gardening group and we meet once a month at someone’s house over coffee and biscuits and discuss (mainly) things to do with gardening !
We have a couple of ladies who tirelessly research and organise trips for us to make throughout the year and we have visited some beautiful gardens and met some extremely knowledgeable and kind gardeners. What we don’t have, as yet, is a way of sharing not just the information but pictures of the places and plants we have seen. To date this has been sent as a round-robin email which I don’t believe does justice to the time and effort that has gone into its composition. I am suggesting that we should have a blog so that we can have a visual record for always of what we have done, where we have been and what we have seen. To this end, I thought I would make a first post for our new blog – as yet to be designed and agreed upon – in my own blog, so that the ‘powers that be’ can see what it could look like …
The following arrived as an email this morning and is just the sort of information that I think could appear in our blog, so :
“First of all a very happy & healthy New Year to you all.
On return from our trip to the UK I found a seed catalogue in the post, from which I’ve ordered seeds for more than ten years. I’ve always been most impressed with the selection of seeds they have on offer and thought I’ll pass their website on to you so you can browse through it. Beside their selection of seeds, they have a few pages on how to grow from seed. Under the subject : information, select : cultivation leaflet.
Just when you look at basil, they have 23 varieties, six varieties of parsley, a coriander that is a ‘slow bolt’, bolting is always the problem with coriander. Last year I tried out of packet of tomato seeds that I bought in the shop, Aldi. They were supposed to be trailing tomatoes, I have a stand with nine windowboxes and I planted the young shoots in there. They grew so profusely and cropped so well. The only problem was they were not really trailing tomatoes and I had to contrive all sorts of structures to make them stand up in the end. This year I’ll select one of the trailing tomato plant suggestion in this seed catalogue, they have a choice of at least three. Interesting Chilli varieties, one that could look very nice in a pot with upturned chillies. Lots of other herbs if that’s where your interest lies.
Plants that I’ve tried out myself here t
hat they have seeds for are : Caesalpinia, Cistus, Lagerstroemia, Monardas, selection of Penstemons, lots of Salvias, Salvia patens being a favourite of mine. This year I’m going to try the seeds for Albizzia julibrissin (Persian Silk Tree).
Years ago when I still lived in Belgium, I tried out the seeds for an umbrella pine, Pinus pinea, it went very well, grew to more than 1.5m but then, unfortunately, a very wet winter killed it off in the end. Still it was a nice try and if it fails it has not cost you too much.
The company is called Chiltern Seeds based in the UK. They are very reliable and post to Europe. They charge £2.50 for the postage. They accept visa and other credit cards.
Their website is: www.chilternseeds.co.uk (the different-coloured text is a live link – all you need to do is to click on it and it will automatically take you to the website, opening another window in your browser. b-fg)
January being more or less a dead month in the garden, hope this will keep your gardening spirits going.
Regards,
Saskia”
So, hopefully this will be the beginning of our new blog. Any constructive comments are obviously gratefully received !
Keep warm everyone !
image :
We are English, Dutch, Danish & French in the gardening group and we meet once a month at someone’s house over coffee and biscuits and discuss (mainly) things to do with gardening !We have a couple of ladies who tirelessly research and organise trips for us to make throughout the year and we have visited some beautiful gardens and met some extremely knowledgeable and kind gardeners. What we don’t have, as yet, is a way of sharing not just the information but pictures of the places and plants we have seen. To date this has been sent as a round-robin email which I don’t believe does justice to the time and effort that has gone into its composition. I am suggesting that we should have a blog so that we can have a visual record for always of what we have done, where we have been and what we have seen. To this end, I thought I would make a first post for our new blog – as yet to be designed and agreed upon – in my own blog, so that the ‘powers that be’ can see what it could look like …
The following arrived as an email this morning and is just the sort of information that I think could appear in our blog, so :
“First of all a very happy & healthy New Year to you all.
On return from our trip to the UK I found a seed catalogue in the post, from which I’ve ordered seeds for more than ten years. I’ve always been most impressed with the selection of seeds they have on offer and thought I’ll pass their website on to you so you can browse through it. Beside their selection of seeds, they have a few pages on how to grow from seed. Under the subject : information, select : cultivation leaflet.
Just when you look at basil, they have 23 varieties, six varieties of parsley, a coriander that is a ‘slow bolt’, bolting is always the problem with coriander. Last year I tried out of packet of tomato seeds that I bought in the shop, Aldi. They were supposed to be trailing tomatoes, I have a stand with nine windowboxes and I planted the young shoots in there. They grew so profusely and cropped so well. The only problem was they were not really trailing tomatoes and I had to contrive all sorts of structures to make them stand up in the end. This year I’ll select one of the trailing tomato plant suggestion in this seed catalogue, they have a choice of at least three. Interesting Chilli varieties, one that could look very nice in a pot with upturned chillies. Lots of other herbs if that’s where your interest lies.
Plants that I’ve tried out myself here t
hat they have seeds for are : Caesalpinia, Cistus, Lagerstroemia, Monardas, selection of Penstemons, lots of Salvias, Salvia patens being a favourite of mine. This year I’m going to try the seeds for Albizzia julibrissin (Persian Silk Tree).Years ago when I still lived in Belgium, I tried out the seeds for an umbrella pine, Pinus pinea, it went very well, grew to more than 1.5m but then, unfortunately, a very wet winter killed it off in the end. Still it was a nice try and if it fails it has not cost you too much.
The company is called Chiltern Seeds based in the UK. They are very reliable and post to Europe. They charge £2.50 for the postage. They accept visa and other credit cards.
Their website is: www.chilternseeds.co.uk (the different-coloured text is a live link – all you need to do is to click on it and it will automatically take you to the website, opening another window in your browser. b-fg)
January being more or less a dead month in the garden, hope this will keep your gardening spirits going.
Regards,
Saskia”
So, hopefully this will be the beginning of our new blog. Any constructive comments are obviously gratefully received !
Keep warm everyone !
image :
04 January 2010
happy new year
It’s a busy time in Mediterranean countries – the olive harvest, mostly for oil in this area. I spent some time picking at friends’ and took pictures which I put into this wonderful Smilebox greeting.
A Peaceful, healthy and happy New Year to us all !
A Peaceful, healthy and happy New Year to us all !
 |
 |
| Make a Smilebox greeting |
27 April 2009
ray of sunshine
Busy doing other things at the moment, but I had to post this …
Happy Monday, everyone !
Happy Monday, everyone !
12 April 2009
01 April 2009
sad seeds
I now soak all my seeds in warm water overnight to see if they are still viable – those that sink should be good, those that float probably have nothing living left in them.
I am very sad to see that some Salvia candelabrum seeds – 14 in all – are all floating on the surface, even 24 hours later. A dissection of two of them shows that the inside of one has totally shrivelled up whilst the other looks like a fuzzy sunflower seed.
I am upset because they are unusual (and I can find very few pictures of them on the web – the one from the Telegraph article seems to have disappeared since the last time I saw it). I gathered them from a garden of salvias in October last year. Perhaps I should have sown them straight away instead of storing them. Perhaps I should have stored them in an airtight container instead of a seed packet with the others.
I am very sad to see that some Salvia candelabrum seeds – 14 in all – are all floating on the surface, even 24 hours later. A dissection of two of them shows that the inside of one has totally shrivelled up whilst the other looks like a fuzzy sunflower seed.
I am upset because they are unusual (and I can find very few pictures of them on the web – the one from the Telegraph article seems to have disappeared since the last time I saw it). I gathered them from a garden of salvias in October last year. Perhaps I should have sown them straight away instead of storing them. Perhaps I should have stored them in an airtight container instead of a seed packet with the others.
31 March 2009
sweet violet guilt
Here I am feeling guilty again …
I had a quick google to see how to preserve flowers, which I thought I’d do for Easter and the simnel cake that’s in the planning. This year we have had a lot of viola odorata – I have a few in my garden, but there are very many along the banks of the canal, not carpets of them but far more than I remember from last year and they have lasted for much longer. That’s because of all the rain we’ve had.
So following through on candied flowers, someone suggested freezing individual flowers into icecubes. Hmmm. ? Then I noticed something that suggested making sweet violet syrup – and I visualised a delicate violet syrup being topped up with something sparkling. The recipe suggested two cups of violets. So I set off with LB, bag in hand and knife in my pocket and denuded every violet I could see for two kilometres. I then felt extremely guilty that I was robbing others of the lovely sight of these harbingers of Spring. However, I reasoned that at least it was towards the end of the season and now they were being replaced by the muscari popping up like little blue traffic lights, so I picked and then the next day the few I had missed.
I had more than two cups so put them into one and a half cups of filtered water and boiled for 15 minutes before straining through the built-in filter of my coffee machine. I then decided not to add quite the equivalent weight in sugar to make the syrup – it seemed like an awful lot of sugar – and boiled again until it looked syrupy. By this time it was also a rather unappetising greeny colour. The only food colouring I have is blue, so having filled an empty vinegar bottle with my syrup, I put the remaining drops into a glass of water to take to bed with me. It looks like an intergalactic drink from the Starship Enterprise and you have to really use your imagination to get the taste of violets.
I suppose, though, with a touch of red colouring and the story of picking the violets to make the syrup, the romance of it will will be charming enough when served to friends at Easter !
[ As a post sriptum : I use Reader’s Digest Word Power Dictionary which also gives the origins of words. It says : “The word harbinger came into English via Old French from a Germanic root.
The Old German word heriberga meant ‘shelter or lodging for an army’. In Old French herberge – ‘lodging’ – gave rise to the verb herbergier – ‘to provide lodgings’ – and the noun herbergere – ‘one who provides lodgings’. This entered Middle English as herberger or herbenger with the meanings ‘one who provides lodgings’ and ‘a host or entertainer’.
Later it came to denote a person sent ahead to find lodgings for troops or more generally, a pioneer who prepares the way for others. By the end of the 16th century the modern sense, with its broad figurative use, had become established.” ]
I had a quick google to see how to preserve flowers, which I thought I’d do for Easter and the simnel cake that’s in the planning. This year we have had a lot of viola odorata – I have a few in my garden, but there are very many along the banks of the canal, not carpets of them but far more than I remember from last year and they have lasted for much longer. That’s because of all the rain we’ve had.
So following through on candied flowers, someone suggested freezing individual flowers into icecubes. Hmmm. ? Then I noticed something that suggested making sweet violet syrup – and I visualised a delicate violet syrup being topped up with something sparkling. The recipe suggested two cups of violets. So I set off with LB, bag in hand and knife in my pocket and denuded every violet I could see for two kilometres. I then felt extremely guilty that I was robbing others of the lovely sight of these harbingers of Spring. However, I reasoned that at least it was towards the end of the season and now they were being replaced by the muscari popping up like little blue traffic lights, so I picked and then the next day the few I had missed.
I had more than two cups so put them into one and a half cups of filtered water and boiled for 15 minutes before straining through the built-in filter of my coffee machine. I then decided not to add quite the equivalent weight in sugar to make the syrup – it seemed like an awful lot of sugar – and boiled again until it looked syrupy. By this time it was also a rather unappetising greeny colour. The only food colouring I have is blue, so having filled an empty vinegar bottle with my syrup, I put the remaining drops into a glass of water to take to bed with me. It looks like an intergalactic drink from the Starship Enterprise and you have to really use your imagination to get the taste of violets.
I suppose, though, with a touch of red colouring and the story of picking the violets to make the syrup, the romance of it will will be charming enough when served to friends at Easter !
[ As a post sriptum : I use Reader’s Digest Word Power Dictionary which also gives the origins of words. It says : “The word harbinger came into English via Old French from a Germanic root.
The Old German word heriberga meant ‘shelter or lodging for an army’. In Old French herberge – ‘lodging’ – gave rise to the verb herbergier – ‘to provide lodgings’ – and the noun herbergere – ‘one who provides lodgings’. This entered Middle English as herberger or herbenger with the meanings ‘one who provides lodgings’ and ‘a host or entertainer’.
Later it came to denote a person sent ahead to find lodgings for troops or more generally, a pioneer who prepares the way for others. By the end of the 16th century the modern sense, with its broad figurative use, had become established.” ]
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