Fab Bread & Butter Pudding

Made this at the weekend as had a surplus of eggs from the chooks (good girls are still laying well). Also had a loaf of fruit soda bread. So I made sandwiches with the fruit soda with softened butter and good marmalade and sliced them to fit an ovenproof dish. You can sprinkle with some booze if you like - cointreau works with this one. Make a custard with five eggs (three whole plus 2 yolks) which you need to whisk with 5oz caster sugar until light coloured. Heat half pint full milk with half pint cream flavoured with the grated rind of two clementines.

When scalded (v.v. hot when the skin starts to form) pour onto the eggs whilst whisking (I used a billy blender). Then pour over the bread slices and leave to soak. For best results bake in a bain marie in a oven at 180 c for approx 40 minutes until cooked through and golden brown. Serve warm.  I don't usually bother with making the custard properly first, but it really makes a difference with the texture being more creme brulee than quiche.

Colourful Containers & Chooks

Ranunculus and Aubretia

I went plant hunting at my local Homebase and found some purple Aubretia and dark pink Ranunculus (both reduced). I have used them to replace the dead french lavender in a couple of containers. One by the gate to the Kitchen Garden is a lovely dark blue pot, and the colour combination is very rich. The second is the focal point at the end of the path sitting in front of a black elderflower (black beauty).  Last year this was planted with purple penstemmon and trailing geraniums, the penstemmon has not survived the winter either (fortunately the cuttings have). Also found in Homebase were some cottage garden perennials for the bee border and some bargain strips of veg plants (globe artichokes, mini sweetcorn, peas and leeks.

Spice the poorly hen has recovered from her eye injury, though sadly has lost the use of the damaged eye. She has decided that my job is to provide her with lots of lovely slugs and snails and now follows me around the garden hoping for a handout. She comes and hides behind my legs in the hen run as a couple of the other girls are picking on her (hopefully this will sort itself out as she becomes more confident).

More from the Kitchen Garden

I managed to charge up my phone and take some pictures around the kitchen garden today. First project was to plant a perennial sweet pea - a pink one and construct a hazel peastick wigwam as a support. The chickens were happy to help! I have chosen the middle of the comfrey bed for the sweet peas. 

I planted up this bed several years ago when I was short of ideas and now the comfrey is here to stay - it is remarkably vigorous and has even regenerated from cut leaves used as mulch on a potato bed. It puts down very deep, fibrous roots which are very challenging to dig out of clay soil. Still, it is another plant which is full of bees when in flower and can be cut several times a year. It is high in nitrogen and makes a great addition to the compost heap. I keep meaning to make compost tea with it but am too cowardly as it is supposed to stink - perhaps this year.

In the background are some of the galvanised dolly tubs I use as planters. last year they had potatoes in them followed by courgettes.  The bottoms have rusted through but that doesn't matter. I have one still intact which I use for Horseradish as it likes wet conditions. Rhubarb and mytle are both planted in barrels.

I potted up some dog's tooth violet bulbs at christmas and they are nearing flowering now and are in a coldframe waiting to be planted out. Also with them is a frame full of cowslips which I bought cheaply from B&Q (3 plants) and divided up to make 12 plants. Beyond the cowslips are some 5 inch pots of sweet peas. 

Two of the pots are dwarf sweet peas sown from seed I saved from last years plants and three pots have overwintered from seedlings which potted up in the autumn. By the way, these lovely victorian style cloches were presents. The latest one was a Christmas present and came from Crocus - I love browsing the Crocus website see http://www.crocus.co.uk/

I also put some hazel twigs around the broad beans which I planted out last week. I have now sown in the greenhouse (in loo roll tubes) some seeds of the Crimson broad bean to provide a succession. I first came across this variety from the Heritage Seed Library as they were donated to the library by a lady living in Kent, just down the road from here. They have proven so popular they are now available from several seed companies.

I have just harvested some carrots for dinner. I planted these last august in a barrel with some old growbag compost. I like using multicoloured carrots - have a look at the picture of the ones I pulled up today. I just broadcast the seed on the surface of the compost and lightly covered with vermiculite. The carrots then grow to fill the available space - they vary in size but you do get a whole barrel of them and best of all - no carrot fly. The carrot fly flies close to the ground and up in the barrel the plants are out of reach. You do tend to pull more carrots than you need as its a bit like playing lucky dip! 

I have finally given in and bought some organic slug pellets. The slugs have a particular fancy for my pansies and violas and some have found their way into the greenhouse and are having a go at some emerging shoots.

April in the Kitchen Garden

Hooray some sunshine this afternoon and I spent some time in the garden. I lured the hens into the fruit cage where they happily spent a couple of hours turning over the ground and hopefully finding some slugs. I spent some time weeding raised beds and transplanting seedlings into the new bee plant area as well as scattering seeds on bare patches. I put down some crimson clover and tufted vetch seeds in the meadow. I bought some mixed viola plants during the week and have edged the beds with them and also used them to plant up a lovely purple glass container for the house.

The bees were out in force and finding red dead nettle in flower as well as a speedwell and lesser celandine. I walked around the meadow and the violets are out and some self heal. Cuckoo flower and cowslips are on their way. Suddenly all the fruit trees are in bud and the hawthorne is showing green. I saw a couple of ladybirds (of the English variety), the continental ones are still crawling around the window cills in the house.

I planted out little gem lettuces which have been growing on the greenhouse. I have a raised bed (6ft x 4ft) with an integral cold frame made to the Geoff Hamilton plans (gardeners world).  Follow this link to the HDRA Garden Organic website for instructions on how to make one using timber, water pipe and plastic sheeting  click here  Under here from left to right, I have mixed leaves, radiccio, little gem, hispi cabbages and radishes . There are also lots of corncockles appearing under here which I will move. I planted a couple of roses, a Charles de Mills and a David Austin lucky dip from the bargain bin at Notcutts - it didn't have a label so I have no idea of the variety.

My friend Sian has designed Carol Klein's new book - Grow Your Own Garden and it has inspired me to divide perennials and take cuttings for the first time. I potted up a whole tray of hardy geraniums divided up from a small clump and also taken softwood cuttings of sage and garden pinks. Last autumns penstemon cuttings survived the winter - unlike the ones planted in the garden - and are now growing away happily.

I have separated the poorly hen from the flock and she is now in an ark by herself. She has damaged an eye and is not coping well with only one eye working. Today she looked a bit brighter, I am dosing her with Baytril and bathing the eye with aloe vera so fingers crossed.

Here is a picture of the potted up geraniums in the greenhouse. Behind them are lavender Hidcote plugs which I am growing on. They arrived as mini plugs a couple of weeks ago from Thompson & Morgan (84 in total).

More tomorrow as I plan to spend Easter Sunday in the garden if the weather is not too bad.

Meet the Girls

I have kept a few hens in the garden for over 10 years now. Sadly due to visits by the fox and despite my best efforts to keep him out, none of the current girls are more than 3 years old. Jemima (because she survived the last fox visit) is a white leghorn hybrid who is definitely the boss. She is a small, very upright hen with a large red comb and is very partial to fingers so you have to take when feeding her. She will also pick slugs off the bottom of plant pots with a little encouragement - a very handy skill! She loves sitting up high in the run and looking down on everyone. She lays an enormous cream coloured egg.

The other hens are all less than six months old and just in lay for the first time. I have three cream legbars - Milly, Molly and Mabel. They are very pretty hens with brown and gold plumage, Milly & Molly have black tails and Mabel's is grey. These hens lay the holy grail of hen keeping - blue/green eggs - colours you can on the F&B paint chart! Each lays a different coloured egg from the palest blue to olive green. Henrietta and Nora are black & white speckled hens - Nora has feathered legs and both lay a small dark brown egg. The final two are Ambers called Sugar and Spice both are creamy coloured and Spice has brown speckles, they are very friendly.

Their home is a 30x20 foot run under the shelter of a large pine tree which gives some protection from the rain. I have netted the roof to keep the collar doves out. I lock the hen house at night as I have discovered the hard way that foxes can climb vertical fences.

They are particularly fond of cauliflowers and cabbages which disappear in seconds under a scrum of greedy chickens. I have banned them from the kitchen garden now as seedlings are beginning to appear and the girls are very effective rotovators in their efforts to find worms. They escaped at the weekend and it took me ages to round them up. Friendly and biddable when they are in their run, once out they turned into fully fledged members of the escape committee and couldn't be tempted back by anything. Needless to say the grass always looks greener.

The chooks are fed organic Layers Pellets which they find less exciting than kitchen scraps and left over pasta, they are also very fond of fish and chips. The also get a handful of mixed corn. Because they are in a restricted run I also give them oyster shell and grit to keep their gizzards healthy and calcium levels up. The run has a good covering of wood chips which keeps the mud down and gives them a good layer to have a scratch through. Last year we had some tre work done and consequently have a large pile of coarse woodchips - perfect. I have also been using them to mulch around newly planted trees and shrubs over ground cover fabric to help keep the roots moist.

Today I collected half a dozen eggs. Hen House Poulty in Teston, Maidstone is a good source of all things poulty and supplies all you need to keep your own hens. I got my cream legbars from Dudley at Highdown Poultry near Tenterden.

welcome to my blog

Well this is the brave new world - first Twitter and now my very own blog, welcome one and all. Spent the day in the greenhouse pricking out crimson clover and Sanfoin grown for the bees. The chickens escaped from the run and ran amock in the kitchen garden, mad for the new grass and then discovered the joys of digging for worms in the raised beds. I must be more careful with the gate! I have been creating a new flowering area principally to grow nectar rich flowers for my bees to enjoy. I broadcast seeds last autumn grown elsewhere in the garden and now have corncockle, crimson clover, sanfoin, phacelia, borage, mullein and teasel all coming through. I have emptied packets of poppy seeds in the area too so have my fingers crossed for a good crop.

The new willow "fedge" is coming to life. This is a simple cross weave made with prunings from the willow tunnel and planted through weed surpressing fabric and mulched with bark. The idea is to hide the compost bins, although when the hazel platt grows this should help to. Thanks to the squirrels raiding last years nut crop, there were lots of young hazel trees springing up in the vegetable beds.