Onion sets planted

 I hadn't planned on buying onion sets this year as I have hundreds of Welsh onion clumps dotted all around the garden.  Tony asked yesterday if I'd plant some red onions after seeing 45 sets for £1. I planted them before I went out for my walk this morning and am going to sow radish seeds in between the sets. The radish will all be eaten long before the onions begin to grow.  

Back garden update

 

Reaping the benefits.

 I'm having a smashing cooking session using mostly veg from my garden. I have a huge pan of chilli and another of beef and veg soup bubbling away on the hob. The sauce for the chilli is one I made last year using beautiful home grown vegetables straight from my garden. I'd made loads of vegetable chilli to freeze last year and I've simply picked some leeks and bunching onions from my garden and fried them in butter with about 300g of minced beef. Then I tossed the vegetable chilli in with a couple of beef oxo cubes and some extra chilli because we like it hot.  The beef and veg soup is made using 200g minced beef, leeks, bunching onions and a celeriac picked from the garden this morning.  There's also a couple of medium sized potatoes about a third of a bag of shop bought frozen veg and a load of carrot slices that I blanched and froze last year. A couple of oxo cubes and  two thirds of a pint of water was the stock for the stew. It's been really useful making veg chilli  from a glut as I can always add meat to it if I want to or serve it as a mild vegetable chilli if that's what we fancy 

Spring is on the way

 It's been a while since I updated this little blog. Now that I use YouTube to record my garden adventure it hasn't been so important to post here. I will start updating again now though. We're in for some snow but that won't stop me sowing seeds in my propagator and on the windowsills. It'll soon be time to get my garden into shape for the new planting season.  Happy gardening everyone. 

Salad days

 Now that I've got the festive season out of the way I can start to think about some healthy eating. I've looked around  my garden for some gorgeous fresh picked winter salad ingredients and thrown together salad boxes for the next couple of days and there's fresh picked leeks, chard, kale, Florence fennel and sprout leaves. I've added my own pickled beets and cucumber with some foraged apples and fermented tomatoes.  It tastes so fresh and delicious with a dollop of mayonnaise. 

Lovely fresh picked salad

 Where has the past year gone? I'm currently fighting some sort of cold virus and it's really knocking me for six. Thank goodness I don't have to walk any further than my garden to pick beautiful fresh salad. This was yesterday's  lunch

Celery, tomatoes,  Florence fennel, beetroot leaves,pickled ,beetroot, pickled cucumber,lettuce, chard all from my garden and a beautiful fresh picked pear that I foraged locally.  

October 24th Garden wander