Better gardeners

I think I've been moaning enough about my poor poor garden. Endless rains and hot and dry weather  both sucks when you have clay as soil. This soil is blue clay, so you can't even make bricks out of it, bah.

But it's not all misery. I've been improving soil in my veggie plot for 7 or 8 years now, and I see so much changes! There's plenty of worms, weeds have changed from thistles to nettles and chickweed, and after even this summer of floods and drought my soil is still workable, I can dig it easily. Of course it would be much much better if I could use mulching to cover everything, but right now I can't get enough mulch to to that (a lot of little things like a new mower which shreddes grass into atoms so I can't use that anymore). 

Another thing is that water was an issue this summer. We have our own groud water well, and when groundwater levels are low,  we have only little water. And due to several little things, again, I didn't save water for watering (like breaking tap in my huge watertank, it's about 20 years old and the tap was plastic...).

Weather is something I can't change, but I can prepare for it. Next summer I will be better prepared, that's ok.

But. There are bunch of much better gardeners around. 

I was at 'Sumawalk and dug some potatoes from my parents potatofield. Their potatoes have grown nicely,  sandy soil that keeps moisture is ideal for potatoes. Well, it's ideal for everything but beets. But those cucumbers?

Our neighbour ( half a kilometer away from our house) was fetching his dinner ingredients from his garden/field and greeted us with "Would you like to have some cucumbers? I don't want to toss them to compost and I already have my share at my root cellar." It was very fortunate indeed that I had my potatoe bags with me. I picked 10kg of cucumbers- some of which were way too big - that was all I was able to carry home. I had those potatoes already...

I've made a test batch of relish, in next batch I need to reduce amount of sugar and use just a bit more vinegar.

Another walk in the woods. Yellowfoots are there. Mother Nature is so much better gardener. 

That's about it

Last night was 1,5C. Haven't checked pumpkins yet, but if they have survived this, next cold night will kill them. I tried to close polytunnel door, but zippers broke, or rather the plastic around zippers. I need to order another cover before spring. And I need to relocate anything worth saving from polytunnel before we'll have anothet cold night.

Gardening wasn't very productive this summer. Too hot, too dry and then too cold, whole August has been around or below 15C,  and nights have been cold. My damson was eaten by hare,  so I got like 5 fruits. Oh well, if hares were so hungry they needed my damson to survive, I let them eat it.

But I'm lucky my family will survive without my gardening skills 😁 It's just it would be nice to be able to feed my family myself, you know?

No waste pie

Or quiche. I found a packet of thinly sliced sandwich ham ( pålägg) which was already past it's use by date. There's two kind of dates here, best before and use by; best before means that product is at it's best until thst date, but it stays edible a lot longer (if it ever goes bad at all). Use by is more strict, it means this stuff is safe to eat before this date,  and might be bad or even dangerous later. I opened the packet and it was fine. But it was way too much to eat in my breakfast bun, so I thought I should bake a pie. Or quiche. Whatever, pie is easier to say and write.

I made my basic pie pastry and rummaged fridge for other ingredients. Some old hard Italian cheese (best before 27th July; it might be past it's prime because I've opened and eaten some of it but I quess it will keep until Christmas) and leftover of some emmental and soft cheese. End of zucchini, some wilted beet leaves. A carton of cream (best before 22nd July, but cream keeps a lot longer).

A much more than just a packet of ham about to be fed to 'Suma. She got few slices, so no worry.

I'm trying to avoid food waste, and these savoury quiches are easy and tasty way to use up leftovers and forgotten treasures. This one will be our lunch today, and my lunch tomorrow.

Just add mushrooms

At some point I calculated our gamily needs about a ton of vegetables (veggies, fruits, berries etc) in a year in order to get out five a day portions. And about a ton of carbohydrates, like potatoes, rice, pasta abd so on. So that's two tons of food from plants. Then add bread, crisps, popcorn and other cereal or potato based snacks... No wonder I feel like I'm just going in to the shops or coming from them...

It would be a cheap solution to grow everything by myself - if only I could do that. I might have mentioned few times our soil is dense clay, and there's not many plants that thrive in clay. And we have groug water very near surface, so fruit trees don't grow in our yard (even if we wouldn't get frost until late June and again in early August).

Being stubborn I still try to grow at least some of produce we use. I have some plants growing directly in the soil, and I have 5 raised beds/grow boxes.

This year I've been lucky with lettuce, it's been way over 6 weeks since I've bought any lettuce and there's more to come. I planted all lettuce in containers,  lettuce don't grow in clay at all.

All green beans we eat come from my veggie patch ( it's only up to 5kg, I use green beans in soups/stews, curries, stir fry's and chili con/sin carne type of things. Should eat more, green beans are one of crops that actually give a good harvest in most years.

I had high hopes for potatoes, but this dry and hot summer meant I have only small (cherry sized) potatoes. I guess I planted about 5kg of souds and might get harvest of 20kg? Anyway we have our own potatoes until September, it's not much but it is at least something.

Tomatoes are producing. Pea sized cherry tomatoes and cherry sized beef tomatoes... and I don't think it's all my incabability of growing, because my mother has been complaining the same thing. Plus they had someone eating tomato plants in their green house!

I've got two pickling cucumbers so far. This is the last year in the ground, next year I need to plant them in grow bags, containers or raised beds.

No glut of zucchinies, I've only got one so far. Only male flowers on any of my pumpkins and courgettes. I just don't get it - I've plants in directly in soil, in raised beds, in containers... I've been fertilizing them, and watering. Some of them frow in shadow, some in direct sunlight... I just don't get it. What's wrong with me and my cucurbitas?

Even my beets are sulking, those few which survived that thunder storm right after sowing... next year I'll plant seedlings again.

And my poor peas. Pidgeon hunting season is on...

Carrots are doing fine. Corn is still not producing cobs, but they are growing nicely. Might be too late to hope any harvest, there might bee frost nights soon.

At least my black currants were producing a lot of berries this summer.  I froze as much I could fit in the freezer, maybe 10kg? And myother made us cordial/juice to drink.

But now it's autunm and rains are here. I have foraged mushrooms every day this week, and we have been eating them every day. Chanterelles and porchinies. Os has porchini slices in his pizza instead of bought mushrooms. So far I think we have eaten about 10kg of mushrooms! And that is a lot!

When I take 'Suma to het morning walk,  I usually pick some porchinies, they are dense mushrooms so if I have five it's over 300g, and after work I take anothet walk in the woods and pick a small bag of chanterelles and few porchinies, so it's about 700g per day!

Soon we have eaten enough, and there's some left I can freeze/dehydrate. If I can get 40 bags to freezer, that's enough for the whole year (one meal per week during the off season). One bag is roughly 500-600g of fresh mushrooms, so one meal=one portion per person. Some years we have more, some years less, mushrooms are wild produce and I have no control what so ever over them. But so far nature seems to be much better in this producing edible food thing that I am.

Second jab

This week I got my second jab. Another nurse, she wasn't as good in jabbing as the first one. This time I felt the needle and stuff injected, but it wasn't bad. Just felt it. My vaccine is Moderna, and they say it has more side effects to others. Well, I got high fever on the next day (over 39), but not with my usual fever headache. And I was SO tired. I slept three hour nap in the afternoon after work and 10hrs night. Yesterday I was a bit off, but that's it.  Now I'm feeling fine. I'm waiting to get that funny wasp sting reaction next week, I know most people don't get it. I had it with my forst jab, but didn't have that high fever. We'll see 😆

Youngest boys will get their first jabs next week during school hours, so I have to make sure they have their social security cards with them (as id). 

Oh well. It's raining, and Baby Boy wanted to go outside early. Maybe he is willing to come back inside?

But 'shrooms!

Finally some rain!

Since wednesday we've had some on and off rain. Wednesday I travelled (by train!!!) to the very big city to farewell party for my co-worker who's off to another office for over three years. We had a lot of sparkling wine😆.  Evening was planned to be a picnic, but for the first time in 5 weeks it was raining bucketfuls. So I put my picnic blanket on the office coffee room's floor - nothing will spoil MY picnic!

I know, my co-workers think I'm bonkers. But at least the leaving one already knows that, he has known me and my brother since my brother moved to Danmark.

It was lovely small gathering, and eventually we spent some time on nearby rockcliff watching sunset. And THEN we slept in a HOTEL!!! First time since March 2020.

Now I have two weeks before hb's nephew's wedding, and I'm planning to isolate myself until that.

Garden isn't producing much, but at least we get all lettuce we need. This seems to be ok year for beans,  apart from broad beans which seems  hate hot weather. My black currants are loaded, berries might be small but bushes are full of them. I have four chili pods growing, there's a lot of flowers but it's a bit late.

I pulled most of garlic today, not much but a lot better that nothing! There's still few on the other frame,  so I will have enough to plant next years cloves later.

Big Brother wasn't amused. Rain and thunder is not his favourite weather.

Book worm

I used to profilic reader. And I mean it, I used to read a book a day, sometimes two. When boys died, I lost reading. I couldn't read a book - I couldn't even read an article out of a gardening magazine. Heck, I couldn't even read product labels of the food stuff I was buying!

But I've always been a reader, and it was another thing that hurt me,  another thing I lost with my children.

It took me years to be able to read any kind of fictional texts,  scientific and professional stuff came back first. And now I hope I've gotten reading back to me.

Last week d had to go to town because she needed a new bank account, internet banking stuff etc. So visit to bank was needed - we had to book meeting beforehand, and when I contacted that specific bank I got a meeting... In five weeks! It's impossible to rob a bank nowadays. Firstly, they don't let you in unless you have booked a meeting, they'll check your id before you even step inside the bank! And most notably, they don't have ANY money in bank!

Anyway, we managed to get everything done and on our way back to our car we spotted a small book shop of old/used books. We stepped in, and I lured d to look for reference books for her art and I was drawn to a scifi shelf... Now I'm owner of Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth (edited by J.R.R. Tolkien's son Christopher). It was labelled 40€ which was way above the price I could pay for one book. D found wonderful huge anatomy book (with a lot of drawings of dead people - what is that thing with anatomy drawings and dead people?) I found Asimov's The Gods Themselves and another scifi book I've wanted to read ever since it eas published,  but it's been available only in UK and I'm not there. I don't buy my books from net. And I don't read ebooks!

I left the Tolkien book on the shelf, and when we stacked other books on the till the owner told me he could sell me the Unfinished tales a bit cheaper. After some hmmms and ummms he made an offer I couldn't refuse! I won't be buying anything for quite a long time, that quick visit was way too expensive... but I know I'll be reading the Tolkien book for years. Asimov is already read. I sat down on Friday night and I thought I'll just read the first few pages. After four hours I had only few pages left. So I thought I might as well read the whole book in one sitting.  I hadn't read it before, but it's the same age I am! It was about time to read it!

But honestly, I don't remember when was the last time I was able to read a whole book in one go. And it was nice to find out that I'm still able to do that.

Tolkien book will not be read in one go. It will be read during several years. It's heavy, text is unfinished (as per title) and not a story, not even a background story, it's compilation of Tolkien's notes. 

I'm quite convinced my children will hate when I'm gone. I'm sorry.