Alderandash's Page

I was given two lovely blueberry bushes for my birthday back in the spring. I wasn't expecting too much from them this year, after all the wet weather - but we've just started picking our own, home-grown blueberries! I just hope the bushes survive the winter...…

Done it. I've finally planted out the sweetcorn. This year, as part of the great polyculture experiment, I wanted to try the  'three sisters' - a traditional Native American method, where you plant corn, squash and beans all together. I think the  idea is that the corn provides support for the beans, the beans fix nitrogen - and the…

Today I made this year’s batch of Elderflower cordial. The smell was amazing as the flower-heads sat steeping in a bowl on the kitchen counter. It’s not exactly healthy – the recipe called for 1.8kg of caster sugar – but it does taste GOOD. Bottled summer. 

Continued (with recipe) here.

This weekend I planted out my first proper 'polyculture' veg bed. Polyculture growing just means mixing plants in together, rather than having each crop in separate rows.  The weather has been so rainy, I ended up with a all sorts of different seedlings all ready to go out at once, so I dug over one part of the veg garden and put everything in! There was a bit of method to the madness - ie salads near the path where I can reach them, tall beans near the north side so they didn't shade…