spuds

Good news post.. I've never had much to do with growing potatoes, partly because I'm a growing novice, partly because occasional contact with spud plots have generally involved pulling up blight ridden rotters. However, this lot have not only been lucky with the weather (ie sun and rain at the right times) but have also been easy, psychedelic*, and delightfully edible. They also serve as a nugget of permaculture - expressed way better than that.

So, this is what happened, and what can happen again..

• You find a spare bit of land (not dug or weeded or any of that tiresome nonsense), ideally next door to some chickens.and lay old cardboard boxes (flattened) on it. (If you don't have a garden or allotment but have a tiny bit of spare yard, try to procure some old tires, stack on said bit, and pretty much follow as below).
• You then chuck some old hay that the rain got last year (or grass cuttings I guess) and put as much as possible on top (in our case about a foot high), pulling it apart if too condensed for growths to push through.
• You take several varieties of potato 'seeds' that someone else has kindly got and left in the sun to start chitting. You nestle them in towards the bottom of the hay near the cardboard, making sure they're covered. You leave them, hosing occasionally if it's unusually dry and sunny. You wait and wait, adding more hay/straw replete with chicken poo from the chicken area next door (or from friendly purveyor of ditto; compost might be a good alternative if this also not an option).
• You then get very excited when you see your first baby leaves popping through, hopping happily, singing sweet praises; or you might just nod sagely.
• You carefully add more chickenpoohay up and around the fledgling leaves.
• You wait, water, wait more, marvelling at growth of potato crops and entire absence of weeds around.
• There's comes a time when stems are thick and leaves plenty, and you fancy some mash or a jacket. You go down to the bed, pull up some hay around a plant, have a quick rummage, and hay presto, there's some spuds. Or if you feel really adventurous, you can just delve in blind, feeling for the big'uns. And there's one of the joys, you don't have to dig up the whole plant with all its fruits at different stages - you just pluck medium or ginormous ones, and leave the babies to keep growing.
• You gobble up, delighting in taste, shape, and - if you decide to grow 'blue' (actually purple) varieties, the *psychedelic look of your mash.

Here's the benefits:

• use up 'waste' materials (cardboard/hay/grass/poo etc)
• no digging
• no weeding
• no piercing of prime spuds with orrible garden fork
• no wastage of tiny potato foetuses
• no washing off heavy soil (you might still like to rinse them!)
• you can have Easter egg hunts in the summer, with loads of free eggs; and not feel too silly doing this as an adult
• you have millions of delicious organic versatile veg for almost no cost
• you're out and about in the rain and sun

Colourful...

...but nothing compared to 

the rainbow chard next door

More appetising than it might look!

All home grown, apart from cuc & tom

(growing in the poly, should be ready soon),

and the camembert (maybe one day)

elderflower fizz

Well here's another joy of summer. The smell, the taste, the feel, the...quest before the very brief season of the flowers of the elder passes for another year.

This part of North Cornwall seems to have a remarkable shortage of elderflowers - or maybe everyone else has thought of this before us - but this at least makes for lots of sunny bike rides and walks searching the lovely lanes and paths near us. Oh, how spiffing famous five! In fact, you don't need to thwart too many baddies and jaunt off on ever so many jolly jaunts to do your thing - a bag full of heads (flowers, not Russians) will do it. And remember, children, to leave lots of flowers for other fizz makers, and for the insects and tree itself!

As I'm somehow in Enid / Delia mode, thought I'd lecture a little more. You probably know how to suck eggs etc, in which case please ignore all below.

I can't remember exactly what we did, chucking lots of stuff together, but here's the River Cottage recipe which sounds about right Hugh.. This makes 6 litres = about 7 bottles*

4 litres hot water

700g sugar

Juice and zest of four lemons

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

About 15 elderflower heads, in full bloom

A pinch of dried yeast (if it's not clearly fermenting after a couple of days)

Mix it all in a fat pan or mixing bowl, cover with tea towel and leave for a few days. Then strain through muslin cloth into old wine bottles, *leaving a few inches at the gap to allow gases to fill, thus hopefully avoiding nasty explosions (best to store somewhere nice and remote just in case...) We mainly used screw top bottles, but tried a couple of posh Grolsch type flip top jobs as well. I wouldn't recommend the latter - when you open them you feel like Jenson Button or some other brilliantly named driver, but unfortunately lose most of it as it erupts out. Screw tops can control release..

 

Leave in bottles for at least a week, and drink with barbecue etc. Lubly jubly. If you tuck in after a week, wonderfully fragrant and sweet but hardly alcoholic; leave a few weeks longer and dryer but more pokey - the choice is yours.. Discovered it's also very good on fruit salad - if you happen to be feeling healthy, and in the sweet position of having no OJ but a cellar (thought we'd store it in the hole under the cabin) of this stuff.

 

 

Tiny bit more here.