Just a bit more of my spring garden project... These are parsley, rosemary, basil, chives, sage, something that tastes of garlic but I can't remember its name (it's not wild garlic - it looks like a silvery grass) lemon thyme and lemon verbena on my kitchen window sill. They brighten up our terrace, which frankly, needs it.  

These are three different tomato plants which I bought at the organic food store yesterday. One's called an 'Oxenherz' - 'Ox Heart' - presumably because of its red, heart-shaped fruit, one is a small cocktail tomato (at the front) and the other is an ordinary red one. We're not going away this summer, so I thought I'd risk it and try growing tomatoes on the terrace again. God willing, we'll have more sun  than we had last year.

 Mixed lettuces in one of my 2x4s, with one square of winter portulak and another of spinach. So far, (thank you Lord) the slugs and snails have kept off it. I heard recently though, that old coffee grounds keep slugs at bay, so I'm going to try this out. 

 Because of the ravaging the deer gave my sweet peas last year, I thought I'd try sowing the seeds in window boxes on the terrace. It's far more sheltered than outside in the garden, being roofed with undulating plastic sheets, and I was able to sow the seeds in plastic trays inside in March, planting them out in April. I really hope we'll have a wonderful tangle of colour and scent here in the summer evenings.

Three butternut squash saplings. I sowed these out

a couple of weeks ago. Only one germinated of

those I originally sowed, so I tried another three and two have got going. As soon as the Eis Heiligen are over (May 10-15) I'll plant them out. It would be wonderful to have the trellis which I made last year come into its own this year at last.

Sowing Seeds and SFG Update

 I finally made it outside this morning and have done some work in the Square Foot Garden. :)

After winter finally took its welcome leave, I cleared up the SFG beds, was delighted to find that my rocket had survived again, and collected three large sacks of horse manure from a local riding stables, one of which I have worked into the soil. I also worked in some compost.

I have also managed to dig over what has been, for the last two years, my potato bed. I dunged it, and after ordering 25 green asparagus rhyzomes, I planted them out in the middle of April (some were a but mouldy because I left them in the plastic bag they were packed in a bit too long - but most were ok) and I now have two rows of wonderful asparagus shoots sticking up.

I've sown 'Blaues Wunder' flax seeds from Bantam (guaranteed GM free) between the two asparagus rows, which will not only look pretty in a while, but which will also be good for the soil and asparagus. The soil here is very sandy, but this is ideal for asparagus, and so far the shoots look fine. The great thing about asparagus is that it doesn't only taste wonderful, but after planting it out, it basically looks after itself for years. I can't harvest it until next year at the earliest, so it'll be great just to let it grow, give it the occasional dunging and have the joyful anticipation of years of scrumptious green asparagus spears every May-June. Bees love sunflowers, apparently, so I've transplanted some bird-sown sunflowers which were sprouting on our terrace and sown some organic sunflower seeds in the middle row where the flax seeds are, between the asparagus rows. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the whole bed looks in a few months' time. Hopefully, spectacular and an eye-catcher for the whole garden.

I have planted spinach seeds, which are now sprouting well too. A square patch of sandy soil next to my 3x3 SFG bed is now planted out with GM free sweet corn seeds which I also got from Bantam. I bought them at my local EBL organic food shop.

Sugar snap peas, or Mangetout have gone into five squares of my 3x3 and in three squares I've also sown more Blaues Wunder flax seeds. Three Spring Cabbage seeds have been sown in three 4x4 squares as well. In the square patch on the right of this next picture, I have sown 15 sweet corn kernels - and really hope that they'll take well to the soil.

I was thrilled to discover some common morels growing in the bed of apple mint behind the beds in the left hand picture which I have dried and can add to any dish that needs mushrooms. That was a blessing. They only appear for a short time in spring, and then only after rain. Apparently they are highly sought after and not easy to grow commercially. I put a couple into a beef and Guiness stew at the beginning of April. Delicious.

Oh yes, and bang on schedule, like a little miracle, the Golden Oriole is fluting away here for the first time since last summer. It is such a thrill to hear this beautiful bird, which sounds so tropical, in the oak woods around our house. It is really incredible to think that it migrates all the way from Central or Southern Africa and India and arrives here to breed every year, on the same day, 3rd May. Absolutely amazing.

Gripe

I haven't written for a while, partly because I've had so much work to do, and partly because I've been really put off by the new blog layout which has been forced on us. It was perfectly alright before and I liked it that way. Why do people always think they have to change everything all the time? I have enough to do without having to take extra time to get used to a new format, however good it might look. I also don't like the fact that it was forced on everyone by default.

What in the World are they Spraying?

Apicoectomy - natural mouth washes

Not a very nice topic - but I've just had one of these unpleasant operations, and now have a throbbing mouth and stitches. The alternative would have been worse pain, and probably losing a tooth at least, eventually.
Did you know that camomile tea is a brilliant and mild wash for wounds? I used to use an ointment called 'Bonjela' for the occasional mouth ulcer when I was a child, (you can still get it in the UK) but when I came to live in Germany, I couldn't buy it, so I began to use camomile tea instead. It's just as effective.  So I'm drinking camomile tea for the wound in my gum now.

Another good wash is salt water. It's wonderfully disinfecting. When I had my ears pierced at 18, I used salt water to dab on the wounds in my ear lobes. They healed up in no time. I also use salt water with a dash of lemon juice for a sore throat in the early stages. It tastes weird, but gargling with this every 10 minutes or so really helps.

 Thanks to  that wonderful blog, 'Down to Earth', which I seriously think is one of the best simple living blogs I have ever read so far, I have been inspired to pull myself together and finish making my sloe gin. I've had a lot of language teaching work in the last three months, which has put a lot of things on hold, but due to some root canal treatment which has meant I've had to cancel teaching for the rest of the week, I have some time on my hands. So having finished preparing all my next immediate lessons this morning, I decided to hit the gin. (In the non-addictive manner, of course. I'm
on penicillin, after all ;))

It's a very simple matter of decanting the gin through a sieve through a funnel into pretty bottles. It has been sitting still for three weeks since I stopped turning the bottle and its contents upside down and right side up for two months, every day. Write and stick nice labels on the bottles (thanks to Lakeland Plastics for those) and hey presto!

Sloe Gin

Went for a walk with a friend this morning to pick some of the last sloes left on the whitethorn bushes bordering the woods at the back of our home. There were just enough to make a whole bottle of sloe gin, for which you need:

1 bottle of gin,

175g sloes

125g sugar

Wash and prick the sloes all over with a fork or something similar. Decant the gin into a convenient jug. Fill the bottle with the sloes and sugar (a funnel is helpful for the sugar) and then pour as much of the gin back into its bottle again as will fill it. Screw on the lid tightly. If there is gin left over, use a screw-top glass jar for any remaining sloes, more sugar and the left-over gin. Screw the lid on well, and turn bottle and jar upside down one day and right side up the next for the next two months. Then once the sugar is all dissolved and the alcohol has taken on a deep red colour, strain the contents through a clean cloth into a bowl, and pour into a jug. Clean the gin bottle of any residue, and pour the sloe gin back into its bottle - or into other clean bottles. Nice idea for presents.