Busy in Garden at Home #2

Well the back garden is slowly getting there now, The brewshed is now up. Took all day to do it, but it's looking good, at least it was a dry day when it was put up, makes a change what with the weather over the last few months. The ground is still soggy as hell out there still.

I really need a few dry days, so I can go over the whole brewshed with a preservative. It has been done once already but because it's a ex-display unit I want to go over the whole lot again.

This coming Thursday we will lay the decking, where the blue tarp is, but until then I have plenty to do on the inside. Most of the brewing equipment is now in the brewshed, I still have to bring the ready to drink wines and beers up from the garage and some old furniture that I'll be using.

I already part built two kitchen units and along one of the walls and laid a 2 meter worktop on the top. Still all needs leveling and finishing. (My birthday present from the good lady wife).

Time for the 1st beer in the brewshed. A pumpkin ale, lovely ..

The Brew house : Part 2

Well the back garden is slowly getting there now, The brewshed is now up. Took all day to do it, but it's looking good, at least it was a dry day when it was put up, makes a change what with the weather over the last few months. The ground is still soggy as hell out there still.

I really need a few dry days, so I can go over the whole brewshed with a preservative. It has been done once already but because it's a ex-display unit I want to go over the whole lot again.

This coming Thursday we will lay the decking, where the blue tarp is, but until then I have plenty to do on the inside. Most of the brewing equipment is now in the brewshed, I still have to bring the ready to drink wines and beers up from the garage and some old furniture that I'll be using.

I already part built two kitchen units and along one of the walls and laid a 2 meter worktop on the top. Still all needs leveling and finishing. (My birthday present from the good lady wife).

Time for the 1st beer in the brewshed. A pumpkin ale, lovely ..

Bottled: Two Wines. Parsnip and Elderberry

Bottling day today for the Parsnip wine and the Elderberry wine.

The Parsnip wine is nice and clear and the Elderberry is a very dark thick red.

Ten lovely bottles of booze all ready to age a bit in the cool. Had, as you do, a quick sample of each while bottling, the parsnip wine is sweet and quite nice even at this stage, the Elderberry is superb very fruity and medium dry.

Fermenting Chillies (part 2)

Well, after leaving these chillies sitting in brine since October 2013, I thought it was about time I did something with it.

After some reading, I decided to bottle them up as a kind of Tabasco. ie a thin sauce that I could used to add a little kick to my cooking or even use as a base for other sauces.

I strained the liquid via a sieve into a jug pressing out as much of the liquid as possible. Boiled the strained liquid for 15mins then hot bottled into sterilized bottles (Starsan)

 

Had a quick Ph test and it's at 3 so that's a good sign. Tasted nice without adding any extras, heat level around 3 out of 5, so not to hot, about the same chilli heat as a real Tabasco sauce and quite fruity.

All in all a successful use of my extra 500g of fresh peppers left over from last year. I plan to get some more bottles and make some sauces from one of these but for now  I'm quite happy with the result.

Fermenting Chillies (part 1)

Back at the end of my chilli growing season last year I had way to many chillies that I knew what to do with. I have them dried whole, frozen whole, pickled and ground to a powder all over the house in Jars and bags.

So when I had to harvest the last of  the Chillies in the greenhouse I didn't know what to do with them all.

I have a book called Abundance: How to Store and Preserve Your Garden Produce Growing Harvesting Drying Pickling Fermenting Bottling Freezing by Alys Fowler. In the book there is instructions for making your own Tabasco Sauce. So back on the 24th of November 2013 I started of my own Tabasco/Pepper mash.

I cut the tops off of 250g of long sweet peppers and 250g of small hot chillies and wizzed them up in the food processor, seeds and all to make a fine pulp, put these in a jar with 27g of salt (5.4% by weight). The book says 30 parts chilli to 1 part salt which is 3.3% but I didn't get enough fluid from the chillies so I had to add a little more. After 2 days there still was hardly any liquid so I topped up the jar with some boiled and cooled water and sealed it up with a airlock in place.

There is so much conflicting information on making a fermented pepper mash/sauce that I now don't have a clue what to do now that it's been sat in the jar for three months, it did ferment for quite a few weeks but has now stopped by the looks of things.

I can smell the aroma of chillies through the cling film and it smells good. From what I have read 5%+ of salt is what is classed as a strong brine solution so it looks as though I have far to much salt in this ferment. Ah well, the up side was that I had next to zero mold on the top ( kahm yeast ) so that's a good thing I guess.

I think the next stage is to add vinegar, I'll check the Ph before I do this, I have read that it needs to be below 4.5 so that nasty bugs don't grow in it. I'm going to need a bigger jar as well.
 

Busy in Garden at Home

With the allotment all waterlogged and in chaos, we decided to make a start on the garden at home.  In previous years we have grown very little at home, a few raised beds with beans and peas and some herbs with the occasional tomato and a few things in pots.  With Simons hobby of home brewing and wine making going so well, we thought it was time to relocate him to the garden, and he is at that age when every man needs a shed of his own!  So plans started to create a garden to accomodate all the things we needed, room for the chickens, a safe environment for our grandson to play in, a man-shed and a little space to still grow a few things.

What we started with..... basically a big chicken run surrounded by knackered fencing and a few bushes that were past their best.  Mud everywhere and not a good environment for man nor beast.



First task was to relocate the chickens into the middle so that new fencing could be put up all the way around.  The neighbours liked it so much that they also had theirs done!



Next step was putting the chooks in their new home, Simon sorted out a nice enclosure for them sheltered up next to the house with their fencing around the pond, nice and safe now for grandson who is not at any risk of falling in.



A roof has since been put on to stop the chickens perching on the fence.  Bless them.  Only one left the enclosure for a wander around the garden and that was most probably because she fell off on the wrong side, they seemed to quite like sitting up there.  They are quite happy in their new spot.

Next step was the concrete base for the man-shed.  Or man-cabin.  Incredibly we had one dry day for the concreting to be done and it has rained every day since.  Hard as rock now though and waiting for delivery of cabin.



All in all, its coming along.  Raised beds are staying, predominantly for our kitchen garden herbs, may do some hanging baskets with tomatoes or chillis and lots of room still for things in pots.

 

 

 

 

 

The Waters Have Gone Down

Felt brave enough to head down the allotment today to survey the damage caused by the flooding.  Elsewhere in Somerset the devastation is immense and everyone down this end of the world are feeling the pain of the relentless rain and storms.   With houses and businesses being flooded out and many lives in such disarray it puts the flooding of an allotment into perspective really.  Strange to be down the plot today with no trains going past on the mainline, so used to them thundering past, yet now there are no trains running west of Weston Super Mare, the line between Taunton and Bridgwater is underwater, and the Dawlish line is completely gone.  Looks as though more bad weather is heading our way so no sign of an end to it all yet unfortunately.

We were expecting to wade to our plot today, especially as the water was so high in January, however we were very surprised to see the waters had receded.



Still some standing water around but ours has drained away now.  With the bank all built up around though it must have just soaked away as there was nowhere else for it to go.  In previous years it would drain into the culvert via the 'badger run' but that has been blocked up now.

Glad to see the garlic, elephant garlic and onions are still there, I have no idea how they survive so long underwater, they must be very hardy.  Shed is pretty sodden, don't think it will survive being moved now, the woodchip floor looks like papier mache.  Lost one pane of glass from the greenhouse, otherwise not too much damage done.  Not going to do anything down there now until the Spring comes, just in case it all ends up underwater again.  And the ground is just to waterlogged to do anything too constructive anyway.

Allotment AGM this week but I will be at work so Simon may go on his own, I may follow on after work.  I find AGMs quite disheartening though, it all feels like a big boys club with the same old people nominating the same old people every year, the majority of whom do nothing constructive or contributory throughout the year. Would be nice to see some new blood on the committee with some energy and enthusiasm for taking the site forward.

On a happier note, garden plans at home have been going well, will do a new post to show what hard work has been going on!

 

More seed sowing.

Well February is here, still wet, still cold, still windy. We haven't been down the allotment for quite a while, almost seem to have lost the heart to do anything down there since the destruction. We will carry on but for now we are just staying away and working on bringing on some vegies ready for the spring.

Anyhoo... Started some more seeds in the propagator today.

Tomatoberry and Golden Berry, you don't get many seeds in these packets so I hope germination will be high. The Tomatoberry had 7 seeds in the packet, and the Golden Berry had 18 seeds. So at over 6 quid retail for the two packets they anit cheap. On the backs of both these packet, it says that they can be grown outdoors, but I may grow them in the greenhouse or polytunnel I'm not sure yet.

It looks like germination for the Golden Berry may take a while as on the back of the pack germination can take up to 3 weeks!!! Hey Ho.. no rush with the weather like it is.

The Brew house : Part 1

A few weeks ago my dear wife said "You need a shed.", Now I thought humm good idea, I could store my brewing kit in there and wines and beers that where ready in bottles, that will save me having to go to the garage to get a beer or a bottle of wine.

Well the plans have got a little bigger and we are doing a complete overhaul of the back garden. This now includes not just a shed but a log cabin 12ft x 8ft in 28mm wood.

So I'm now having not just a storage shed but a brew house. Yay Me!!!

First job was a tidy up, fence the whole back garden to give us an area to work with and sort out the layout of this major project.

What a mess!! And the rain is making it even harder work, mud everywhere.

Our next door neighbors also decided to get their back fence done at the same time and between us we have gone 50/50 on the cost to do the adjoining boundary fence as well, but smaller panels so we can still chat.



Now that the fences are all done, and looking very good. The chickens have been relocated by the house. The whole front of the garden by the back door has now been graveled over, so Jane can now tend the chickens without getting to wet or muddy. Also makes it handy feeding them fresh scraps right out the window.

Under the blue tarp, because the dam rain will still not let up, is the 12 x 8 ft concrete base which was laid yesterday and it's nearly 6 inches thick to give a good base for the Brew house.

Looks a little better than it did, it's all coming together slowly. I've got loads of leveling still to do out there, but when the concrete is dry at least the brew house can be built.