RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch 2015

Every January since 1979 people across the UK have taken part in the world’s biggest wildlife survey: the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch. Despite the name, you don’t need a garden to take part; many people visit their local park for the survey. Clare and I count the birds in the section of the estate we can see from our balcony, which includes two mature trees and planted bed of around 200 square metres.

Over the six years we’ve lived here we’ve seen fourteen bird species, adding blackcap to the list this winter. Five have graced our balcony: we’ve had single visits from a rook, a magpie, a wren, and a blue tit, and one year we had repeated visits from a pair of pigeons.

Our rather monochrome Big Garden Birdwatch 2015 results include the four usual suspects — feral pigeon, herring gull, magpie, and carrion crow — but this year they are joined by the pied wagtail, which are often seen around the estate but usually go into hiding during the birdwatch:

Cream Cheese From Yogurt

After making Paneer Tikka (we're so obsessed with that stuff!) I had a bunch of leftover yogurt. I had no plan for it and I was worried it would go off. When I started making cheese a friend of mine mentioned the cream cheese she had made from yogurt. I thought 'how hard can it be to google that'... well you'll never have to find out. I used this tutorial.

It's not a true cream cheese - shockingly that would require cream to make - but it is delicious. I found it surprisingly light with none of the cloying aftertaste I get from shop bought. After I took the cheese out of it's cloth I mixed in some herbs straight off the balcony. Stunning green chives that have only just popped their heads above ground after winter.

I hastily snapped this before breakfast where the herby cream cheese was a big success. For me at least. Stephen thought it was a little too tart from the yoghurt. Looks like a true cream cheese is one of my next experiments.

Grow Write Guild Prompt #10: Write about a plant that you do not understand. You tried. It died. What does it want?

Beetroot you bastard. It's not that I don't appreciate you. I adore you, you know I adore you. I go out of my way to buy you. I willingly pay for you. How can I love you more than that? And when I get you home I put you into a red flannel hash. And it seems like we are friends. We are friends aren't we?

Then why won't you grow? I've tried all different varieties: Cylindra, Boltardy, White, Choggia, Detroit. And the best you can do is a minuscule swell and a frantic bolt. I get that you might not like the conditions on the balcony. I try to put you in the biggest pots but still it's hot and dry. I'm sorry that I sowed you at just the wrong time this year. I'm sorry that you germinated to be met by a freak and harsh frost.

I'll do better. I'll do anything. so when I do my autumn sowing won't you grow for me?

[This post was written as a response to the 10th prompt of Gayla Trail's Grow Write Guild. Check it out.]

Grow Write Guild Prompt #5: Listen

I missed prompts 3+4 because I was busy with the planning and aftermath of the wedding for what seems like forever. Let's jump straight in with prompt five then.

Prompt five is all about listening to the sounds your garden makes so I've made two videos mainly to talk about the sounds I can hear from my balcony and allotment. Also there are some bits on what 'relaxing' sounds like to me (loud), how I feel about people who don't respect that gardening can sometimes be a job and is always work (they annoy me), and my feelings on getting pooped on (it sucks)

These are the balcony sounds:



And this is the allotment edition:



[This post was written as a response to the 5th prompt of Gayla Trail's Grow Write Guild. Check it out.]

Tulips

We spent last weekend baby sitting two cute and cuddleful guinea pigs. Looking after the two cuties is a reward in itself but and their Mummy and Daddy went to Amsterdam we got a bag of tulip bulbs. Exciting! They are out on the balcony now. We'll see if we get blooms this year but the bulbs are healthy so I'm going with cautious optimism. 

A post card for the fridge and a bulb for the balcony

Cornish Crewenna

Two questions for you. Where do people who live in the tourist town of Torquay go on their holidays, and what do they bring back as souvenirs? Last Summer we stayed at the beautiful Lamorna Cove in Cornwall. If you visit today you'll see that beauty but today I'm going to talk about it's past.

Lamorna Cove in Summer

Lamorna has a reputation for it's artists and writers. It has an industrial history of tin and stone. More importantly, to the gardener in me, it was famous for it's flowers. The climate of Cornwall made it possible to pick daffodils in January for Flower Markets in London and Birmingham. Glass houses mean that the natural climate isn't as important. Although the industry has left the daffodils remain. 

Our visit was in September, perfect bulb buying time. We bought the bulbs at The Old Mill Shop. The mill has been owned by the same family since the 14th Century. It's now a craft shop and sub-tropical gardens complete with peacocks. They had four varieties of bulbs. Early all of them. One promised to flower for November/December time. Conservatively we picked one that was a lovely buttery yellow for January flowers. Crewenna.

Daffodils Are Better Than Postcards

We knew that we probably wouldn't get a very early bloom. Even a balcony in Torquay isn't a Cornish Cove. As they were planted late and have only had a few months to establish I figured that would put them further behind. However, the first bloom pushed it's head open a few days before the end of January. I was pleased. Especially as they are so beautiful.

Oh No, It's a Vlog!

I decided I might try vlogging, at least so you can see what we get up to on the balcony in a bit more detail. Here is the first video where I plant some Jerusalem Artichokes and rationalise my lack of tidiness. Give it a watch if you can.

Revealing the Nibble List

This summer I swore, curse, ripped out my hair and refused to look on the balcony for days on end. Even my fuss free crops failed me. My chives barley stayed alive this year. My fennel, usually still growing strong, ruthlessly wilted and died back in June. My mint, for God's sake my mint, refused to do grow much at all. The kiwi that I begged for didn't take to it's new home at all and died after a few weeks.

Happy New Year... just let me finish bitching about last year first

This year I was the suckiest gardener that ever sucked. My plants must have thought I was death only with secateurs insted of a scythe. 

The weather didn't help. A dry early season when I needed at least a few days of rain to establish my crops and a wet autumn when I needed to harvest what wouldn't keep and sow for over winter without things rotting off. I never did get chance too, although I bet we would have had bumper winter crops with the mild weather.

I was so disheartened by the fate of my plants that I didn't get to fulfil my garden goals of finding a water storage solution and figuring out a way of composting that works with such a small space. Still there is always next year and despite the hardships I managed to harvest a few things.

I kept a nibble list attached to my fridge to record what I did harvest. My yields where down and the size of my fruits was pathetically small (hot weather, again!) but I did manage

• Three carrots from my overwintered carrots, my spring and summer sowing didn't take.
• Six radish, surprising as usually I can't grow them at all
• Five big salads worth of home-grown lettuce
• Fifteen salad garnishes on sandwiches and burgers
• One lot of mustard and chard for a stir-fry. My chard was severely, severely, stunted by the heat
• Four handfulls of Spinach
• 100g of blackcurrants
• 875g potatoes. Happy days!
• Ten handfuls of tomatoes, many small fruits continuing late into autumn.

So it wasn't all bad and, of course, there is always next year. My daffodils are trying to make and appearance already. 

Grow To Eat: Nasturtiums

There are fun aspects to eating flowers. Especially if you do it in front of kids who find it fascinating. Or 'those ladies' who Cara and I were talking about in the comments the other day, they are fun to tease. My favourite flowers to eat are nasturtiums. They have a lovely peppery taste. The leaves go great in salads. I've picked nasturtium leaves to sit on Michelin star plates and ate them from my plain ones. They also make a lovely salsa. The pods can be pickled although I've never done it.

Nasturtiums, on a cold Mofo morning

They are incredibly easy to grow and both the leaves and the flowers look great. They come in a multitude of colours, including vivid red. They are a fabulous companion plant. What's not for the edible gardener to like? My growing advice is this: acquire seeds, sow when frost danger has passed... that's it. I find mine grow steadily over the summer with a spurt in September. they die off with frost. Last year at Occombe we pulled the remaining Nasturtiums out of cold November ground with shards of ice hiding in the foliage and I still came home with flowers.

And their bright red jelly

When I get a few flowers I love to make this jelly. I can't remember where I scrawled the original recipe from but I spent last summer making it, tinkering with it and making it more British. It's a super easy jelly to make, you can do it in just over an hour start to finish and you don't need a jelly bag. The colour depends on the colour of your nasturtiums, I like to grow vibrant reds.

Food Issues: Organic friends

We’re passionate about organic agriculture. We pay for organic food, we volunteer to help grow it and we rant about how more people should have the option of good affordable organic grub. There are many reasons we prefer organic food and think it’s the best way to feed people. This one we’ve been paying close attention to recently. Stephen has been tracking the insects and uninvited plants that have ended up on our balcony. — Clare

When your garden is on a balcony three floors up, you don’t expect to see much wildlife. There’ll be no foxes, badgers, or hedgehogs — to make it here you have to crawl or fly. The sheer range of creatures that have done so has taken us by surprise, and this post details a few of them.

Probably the oddest visitors were two leeches (pictured right), seen a year apart, crawling across the glass of the balcony doors during wet weather. How they made it here is a mystery.

The most surprising visitors, at least in terms of making us jump, are the birds — you just don’t expect to look towards the balcony and see a large bird on it. For a short time we made a concerted effort to attract birds, using feeders that stuck to the balcony glass. Unfortunately the only bird they ever attracted was a magpie — and while I like magpies, I was really hoping for a selection of smaller birds. A carrion crow stopped by once, and for a few months two pigeons (who Clare calls our ‘pigeon pals’) frequently rested in the joists above the balcony.

During the Summer we’re visited by a range of pollinators, and towards the end of this Summer I started trying to identify the species, which included common carder bees (pictured left), European honey bees, common wasps, and the hoverfly Eupeodes luniger. We’ve also had some insect visitors most gardeners wouldn’t welcome, such as the large white butterfly and its caterpillars. Clare’s favourite has been the ladybirds, both for their beauty and their attacks on the aphid population.

Grow To Eat: Carrots

Carrots aren't the most glamorous crop but they are incredibly simple to grow and they are a good litmus test for the balcony gardener. It wont tell us if we are any good but it will tell us if gardening books are. I don't know about you but I own a few books that promise that container growing is easy and there are tips within to help you only to realise, reading the book, that the author probably hasn't spent much of their gardening career container growing. One of the best tests is if they discount the idea of us growing nice long carrots and say 'well I suppose you could grow the stubby ball kind'

The Carrots pictured in a previous MoFo. Because it's dark out.

We can grow carrots long too! All you need to grow a nice long carrot is unobstructed compost that goes down about the size of a long carrot. As I'm sure I've posted about before we grow ours in an office bin with holes in the bottom. It's orange. This amuses me. I've started sowing them with a cover of love in the mist which is gorgeous.

Grow To Eat: Tomatoes and Rough and Ready Gardener's Tomato Sauce

Almost every beginner edible gardener is enchanted by the idea of growing their own tomatoes. And why not? They are fairly easy to grow, if a bit needy. They'll even do well on a windowsill. As every gardening magazine is equipped with a free packet of Gardener's Delight come spring you may as well grown them.

We've been growing tomatoes ever since we started growing food and here is our procedure.

Home Grown (just not that big)

Potatoes in the sky

There are challenges unique to growing on a balcony and there are challenges that every gardener faces. This year a very hot late spring/early summer has left a lot of us suffering. On a balcony that is compounded by the already dry and hot nature of gardening on our balcony and... nothing, nothing has done as well as in the previous two years. And this has got me severely down, I don't want to go outside and I apologise to everyone who accidentally sees the balcony.

But there has been one bright point in an otherwise dismal year: or first crop of potatoes. I planted an seed potato from this years box to grow and covered it, as it grew, with more and more compost. It got to work. We didn't get a massive amount but 800g is nothing to complain about.

I bought a book: Jekka's Herb Cookbook

Another book that came out last year that I couldn't afford was Jekka's Herb Cookbook. As I love cooking, I love growing things and 'I'm not sure ask Jekka' (as in look it up in Jekka's Complete Herb Book) is commonly heard in my house Stephen thought it would make a good birthday gift. And it did.

It's a perfect book. It looks stunning. Hanna McVicar's illustrations look great and give the book an incredible vibrancy. It's a great book for those times when your horticultural eyes are bigger than your chef's belly and you end up wondering what do I do with all this damn fennel now?

Rosemary Bread chills out

Somebody has been eating my lettuce

I went out on the balcony to pick some lettuce to top a veggie burger. It's the kind of thing I do often. But this time I had a bit of a shock. Where had all my lettuce gone? It was there yesterday. And why is there a green leaf underneath the red... oh wait.

The Big Guy

This is what happened to my lettuce, and the leaves on my kholrabi. This tiny little caterpillar, bright green and jewel like. So cute you could cuddle it. If you weren't a gardener and it wasn't eating your crops. I guess I'm just a soppy fool though, I moved the little things where they can't harm my edibles. Am I far too soft?

And his brother

Glorious Greenfly

When I first started the balcony garden I was horrified with bugs. Horrified. I squished and squashed, I washed away, I bought a biological control. And none of it worked. I had greenfly, I still get greenfly. I might have even made the problem worse. Now the greenfly come. I let them. I wash them off anything I'm about to eat and occasionally get freaked out by the entire 'born pregnant' thing but I generally let them live. The good thing about nature is that eventually the predator with catch up with the prey. And then I get ladybirds.

Love Hate: the greenfly

Springtime Spinach

I love spinach and have been growing it on the balcony since I started. I grow spinach beet. It's easier and more tolerant of our high temperatures. I like to think it's maritime ancestry makes it feel more at home. But this year I've diversified slightly. Along with a large patch of spinach beet underneath one of our passion flowers I've also put in some true spinach.

Gorgeous Greens

The Second Box to Grow

Last Thursday our Riverford box to grow arrived. We got one last year so we knew what to expect: tough as nails plants that keep on giving. I ate many meals last summer courtesy of our box to grow. This year I don't expect a difference although I was a little disappointed that there are fewer herbs this year.

The Box Arrives

Al Fresco

Last summer I was getting one big salad from the balcony a week. It was great and I loved it. I can't wait to get back into the habit this year as the weather warms up and the lettuce becomes an unstoppable force. But we aren't there yet. Fortunately a head of lettuce from Riverford is currently filling in the gap

Partly bought, partly home grown: a new season salad

I'm a believer in big salads. Salads have to fill you, they have to have lots of greens (my favourite part!) crispy veggies, herby stuff and tasty, tasty toppings. Bring me dressing. Croutons are optional. Grains are good. Cheese is decent. Falafel are better. So today's salad was lettuce, spinach falafel, balsamic vinaigrette and a few yums from the garden

DIY Chalkboard Plant Markers

A combination of writing this post about my recycled milk bottle markers and using these lovely cute chalkboard markers at Occombe made me think that I did need a new system of markers. Not for my seedlings, they are fine, but I've been thinking for a while now that I need to bring more quirky, cute, decorative stuff onto the balcony. If only to be redeemed for the style sin of using plastic 'terracotta style' tubs.

Chive marker with added Totoro