jackal10

Start building the sourdough sponge for the bread for the sandwiches. A cup of flour, a cup of water and a tablespoon of starter mother. Incubate at 85F. I'm using white flour, although the bread will be wholemeal, since I maintain a white mother, and any excess starter will go back in to the jar, and into the fridge. Smoker is at 83F, smoking nicely. This is slow food... Wondering what else to smoke. I have some stilton ready, maybe nuts (not that we eat many), maybe prawns. I've heard mashed potato smokes well, as do hard boiled eggs...Ideas? Requests?

Smoker looking good, and scenting the air round it. Cherry wood is a particularly sweet smoke. Note that the sawdust has burnt about half way, and also about half way round. Must emphasise this is cold smoking. Yarrow (gold) and Lady's Mantle (Alchemilla) ) Tomato growing box Must go do some work. Exam marking, and interview a candidate for the post of VP Business Development for one of my companies. Each question is marked out of 20. I usually set a four part question, so each part is out of five, but its up to the individual examiner. Its not as much fun as it used to be, since nowdays when you set a question you also have to provide a model answer and a mark scheme, so you can't set impossible questions anymore. My marking is then checked by another examiner, and the whole overseen by an external examiner. The marks are then correlated and a statistical analysis is done to check for anomolies, or any over high or over low marking, which are then checked again. In practice since the output grades are pretty crude (first, upper second, lower second, third, fail), most candidates fall into one or other of the categories, and its only the few on the borderlines that need scrutiny. In doubtful cases the examiners can call the candidate in for viva (oral exam), but its rare.

Good morning! A bit warmer, bright but hazy - the sun has not broken through yet. Smoker is at 81F...not got out to look at it yet. The pheasent males are fighting again outside my window. Th herb quiz. You people have done incredibly well. It was really hard! The full list is 1 Parsley (end of last seasons; this season still seedlings) 2 Sage (three sorts: ordinary, purple and three colour) 3 Rosemary (Mrs Jekylls Upright) 4 Thyme (seeding; plant need renewing by digging up and panting much deeper) 5 Chives (flowering; two sorts: ordinary and garlic) 6 Mint (Bunswick, but ther is some spearmin in there too) 7 Lavender (bit early so no flowers yet, and also an old bush that needs renewing)8 Bay (young and old leaves) 9 Garlic (giant in foreground) 10 Lemon balm (Varigated, but reverts. A menace as seeds everywhere) 11. Varigated Oregano/Marjoram 12 Dill (seedling) 13 Comfrey 14 Borage (young) 15 Sweet Cicely 16 Salad Burnet (native round here) 17 Violet 18 Valerian 19 Vervaine 20 Verbena 21 Feverfew golden 22 Gold Marjoram 23 Woodruff 24 Purple Basil 25 Tansy 26 Lovage (young) 27 Horseradish 28 Sorrel 29 Alewort 30 Lettuce leaf Basil 31 Peppermint 32 Thymes We do eat most of the produce, using it as an outdoor larder. I guess we are self-sufficient in veg for about half the year. Its not worth growing anything that you can buy in as good a quality, and that is not better when picked fresh. Some we swap with our neighbors informally for fresh eggs and occaisonal beef - the farm next door raises a few Dexter cattle. A lot of the tomatos get bottled for pasta sauce and the like, or end up as as green tomato chutney at the end of the season. I use bags of potting compost since they are almost the same price as growbags, and the quality is much higher. The local garden centre sells them at four for £10. I sow the seed conventionally. I usually use "jiffy" pellets. http://www.jiffyproducts.com/indexpage.cfm...tegory=Forestry The greenhouse tomatoes grow in a semi-hydroponic system adapted from the the "Easigrow" system from http://www.bulrush.co.uk/. Its a real lazy gardeners way of growing tomatos, peppers, cucumbers and the like. If you look at the greenhouse tomato picture you will see that the compost bags are sitting on polystyrene boxes - the sort they ship fish in. These have a polythene liner (garbage bag), and three holes in the top with a pipe, like a 3 inch plastic drain pipe, going up into the compost. You put the bag of compost on top, cut a hole and push the compost down into the pipe, which then acts as a wick. Fill the box with water and diluted tomato food, and you need only top it up once a week.

Me and a gardener, the excellent Chubby, who comes one day a week. I get enthusiastic in the spring, and taper off by late summer. That is why there are so many weeds and rough places... Machinery, like a small tractor, helps. My partner Jill does most of the weeding in herb garden and round the house. I cut the grass Its past midnight and I'm going to head for bed. We'll do soft fruit, and edible flowers tomorrow, and if anybody asks, a tour of the roses (lots). The smoker is fine, running at 73F Up a little, but I guess that's because I've not been opening the door to take pictures as much.

I'm impressed.

The other side of the greenhouse is the fruit cage. Actually it is a polytunnel, with the polythene replaced with netting. It protects against both rabbits and pigeons. 4 varieties of lettuce Seedling Buttercrunch lettuce to plant out or eat as baby leaves. Must sow sucession Seedling leeks to follow the early potatoes Seedling purple brussel sprouts Purple flowered Broad (fava) beans, just coming, Can eat them whole in the pod at this stage Purple peas, either as purple mangetout or English peas (green). Slugs like Buttercrunch lettuce Purple sprouting Broccoli (Broccotini). Now almost over and going to seed. Note the typical yellow brassica flowers. However a delicious vegtable and useful to fill a gap between winter and spring. My attempt at Hopee Indian permaculture garden, Sweet corn, underplanted with small pumpkin, and with beans to climb up them. Spare Atlantic Giant pumpkins. Probably end up on the plant stall at the MDA garden party, or given to the local school.

Next vegetable patch In the foreground are more potatoes - Pink Fir Apple (late, salad) and Purple (early salad, purple all the way though. A heirloom variety). Radishes intercropped with the potatoes. The Bulls Blood Beetroot, (heirloom) Can use the leaves for salad or like spinach, and good dark red roots. Not shown as still very small are a row of golden beets Rainbow chard. Last years running to seed, and this years coming Baby carrots, arugula Jerusalem artichokes (sunchokes) Runner (pole) beans (so thats where I left the rake!), with to the left space for pumpkins and squash to grow Then comes one of the greenhouses. This one is unheated, and had most of the seeds. It also has carnations, mosly heirloom Malmaison varieties. The other greenhouse has the strawberries, and tomotoes (same varieties as outside, just earlier). Also cucumbers.

Yes and Yes! well done

23 is indeed woodruff. 28 is Sorrel, 27 is Horseradish.

At the top of the garden is the vegetable patch, fenced against the rabbits. Actually there are two. Potatoes. These are an old first early "Arran Pilot". Gone out of favour as not very disease resistant, but I think they have a fantastic flavour, and they do well on my heavy alkaline clay. Delicious this size, when you can still rub the skins off, plain boiled with a little butter. On the right are garlics, including a giant garlic really a garlic leek, but lovely mashed. Please ignore the weeds. I suffer from bindweed (convolvulus) couch grass and creeping buttercup. Also shallots. The come broad (Fava) beans. This is white flowered, red seeded variety called Epicure. Later we'll meet a purple flowered variety, with green seeds. Must pick out the tops to prevent blackfly, who like the tender leaves. You can use the tops like a spinach. Not shown are flowers for cutting: gladioli, dahlias, sunflowers etc. Then come outdoor tomatos: Gardeners Delight (small red) Sungold (sweet small yellow) and Brandywine (Heirloom red). Interspersed are gherkins and small squash. Courgettes (zucchini), mainly for the flower. However some always escape and turn immediately to marrows. I've tried cooking them, but my conclusion is the best thing to do with them is to put them on the compost directly they are picked, which is why they are convenient of the powerhouse of the garden, the compost bins. The bins are made from old pallets, tied together. On the left are semi-permanent things. Cardoons, like globe artichokes, escept you eat the blanched young stems. I never get the timing right to blanch them, but they are very decorative. Asparagus. The bed is quite young, so we only got a few spears this year, and let the rest go to fern.

Doing well. The thermometer is the transmit end. The recieve end sits in the deep litter that is my desk. I believe they are made for US BBQ smokers.

Answers interspersed Bleudeauverge has most right so far...how long do you want before I give the answers?

20:30 Smoking nicely. Temperature steady at 67F

12 is young dill. See the ferny leaves? The strap like leaves are the seed leaves. 15 is Sweet Cicely. Its a 3ft high bush. Aniseed flavoured, used to be used to reduce the amount of sugar in, say, stewed rhubarb. Exam marking does my head in. All those people telling you earnestly the somewhat wrong answer, each one wrong differently...It makes me think I can't teach, then there is the occasional answer that just gets it all right. Usually they are the legible ones as well. First rule of exams: if the examiner can't read it, its not worth writing. Supper tonight will be take-out curry, since neither of us feels like cooking, and there is a local quite decent curry house that delivers. Apparently Chicken Tikka is the most popular meal in the UK. Todays wine is an Anjou, Domine des Forges 2003. Does what it says on the bottle

Normally this is the garden bread/pizza oven. I built it instead of a BBQ.] Sawdust and planings from a local joiner and furniture maker, bribed with produce. These are mostly cherry with some oak. Sawdust goes around the edge of the oven in about a 2 inch layer. Some bricks in the middle as the smoke tends to be at the top. In the end I only used 2 bricks Firelighting kit of kitchen blowtorch and fat from the bacon. Fire in the hole! Salmon and bacon on a rack, and in the oven with a dual channel wireless smoker thermometer. Smoke starting to build. Check in an hour or so then about in four hours... Its cold smoking, so the temprerature shouldn't go much above 90F, if that. The food will lose about 15% of its weight.

Well done.! 27 is indeed horseradish Smoking coming as soon as I've downloaded the pix. I had to wait for the camera to charge up and I had some other stuff to do

No tarragon. Only one sage picture, no chervil. Chervil and tarragon die on me for some reason

Yes, No 26 is lovage, but not a very big specimen. The trick with exams is to make the questions hard enough so that the students prefer to answer another options question!

Those really are the colours. Maybe the Borage should be a little greyer leaves.Some like the Marjoram, the Feverfew and variagated Lemon Balm are yellow culitvars. Woodruff makes a great sorbet with a little lemon juice. Beer is a lovely idea. Its a woodland plant, so it likes shade. I find it useful for dark corners. Its too nice a day to be indoors. I feel more garden pictures coming on..

That reminds me. Wendy asked about the food the German wine I bought will go with, and how long they will keep. You can drink them with pleasure now, but I think the Spatlese will be even nicer in about 5 years time, and maybe keep another five years after that. The Kabinett not quite so long, and that is more for current drink slowly when a suitable occaisions arise. Flowers, honey and lemon. They are food wines, perfect for summer drinking outdoors, maybe with cold chicken, or with salmon or even the lighter creamier cheeses, or just a glass on its own.

I like the idea of Elizabeathan dishes for the Madrigal picnic. Ive found this web site: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/food.html where there is a lot of good source material. Not adsobed it yet. I found it from following a link about Sambocade - an elderflower flavoured cheesecake. Sambocus is the latin for elder. http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/foc/FoC118small.html. Seem to feature lots of meat pies and tarts. However don't want everything with pastry. Meatballs? Capon legs? No problem with elderflower: or with wood strawberries. These are "Mara du Bois" a cutivated version. There was a recent thread about them. The ones in the greenhouse are ready to eat, but he ones in the fruit tunnel need another month or so. Speaking of strawberries, last weekend was Strawberry Fair. Strawberry Fair is not the big gypsy traditional Midsummer Fair. That happens in two weeks time, around Midsummer day, as it has every year for least 900 years or so, opened by the Mayor throwing pennies to the crowd, then chasing the town clerk around on the dodgems. Its why Midsummer COmmon is called Midsummer common, since that is where the fair happens, and hence why Midsummer House, which is on the common, is called that. Strawberry Fair was the origianl alternative hippy and traveler fair. Then about ten years ago it was aging hippies parents and their smart kids trying to disown them, now its mostly a rock festival, with a lot of West Indian influence. Lots of rightous Jerk Chicken and the like, as well as fair foods...I took lots of cell-phone pix, if you wnt them here, but I concious how bandwidth hungry this is becoming. Seperate thread? Your call..

A few more, some the same family but a different form to the ones above 29 30 31 32 Now I really must get back to my marking...smoking later, maybe. Any demand for more growing pix? Vegetables, fruit, edible flowers etc, with or without captions?

Last group, mostly but not all obscure 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Next group, not quite so easy 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

I thought we might have a quiz. Here are pictures of herbs, taken by me yesterday, growing in the garden. Your task, should you choose, is to identify them. Answers towards the end of the week. Extra kudos for identifying the variety. They range from the common and easy to obscure, roughly in order. There is only one example of each type of herb. Thus although I grow, say, three varieties of sage, there is only one sage picture. Some are in a different stage of their lifecycle, seeding for example, than you normally buy or use them at. First group, easy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8