Elderflower Champagne from 2011!

In 2011 I made elderflower champagne for the very first time.
It was beautiful and worked really well, using just the wild yeast hanging around on the flowers.

It really is a fantastic light summer drink.

Then I lost my recipe. Boo!

But today I found it!!!

It's a really simple recipe and a bit of a hybrid of various recipes I could find on the internet.

Elderflower Champagne
13 Litres water
1.3 kg sugar
5 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 lemons (juice & rind)
112g elderflowers (about 18 heads)

Elderflower champagne concoction

I can't recall my exact method, but I think it went something like this:
I poured the water into a large sterilised plastic trug and dissolved the sugar.
I removed as much stalk as possible from the flowers - I may have washed them first to remove bugs etc. Not too much washing though as that would wash away the yeast and delicate flavours.
Then I added the elderflowers and all the other ingredients to the sugary water and gave it a good mix.
Once done I then covered the trug with a damp tea towel and moved it somewhere warm.

I think I stirred it once a day for the first couple of days.
I did start getting worried when a little mould appeared on some of the flowers floating on the mixture on day 4. After looking on-line, people seemed to think this wasn't much of a problem. I decided to bottle then anyway.

Made mixture on 5th June
Bottled 4 days later on 9th June.
Made about 16 bottles - stored in Champagne and Prosecco bottles with plastic corks and metal cages.

At the time I knew nothing about making wine and had no specialist equipment at all. Hence no hydrometer readings and no clue as to how much alcohol it contained.

I've now started making wine properly (kind of) so know a bit more about things.

This year - when the elderflowers decide to come out - I'll make more.
But I'll probably make a batch with Champagne yeast and White Grape Juice to give it a little more body. And tannin from a cup of strong tea.

First Potatoes

Time flies!
Not all the great plans for my allotment have not come to pass.

Some have however, and less than three months on we have lovely salad potatoes!

First crop of potatoes

Emily and I dug up two plants - one Nicola and one of the Salad Blues.
We got a nice little crop.

Blue through and through

After drying in the sun they promptly got boiled and served with butter. Lovely.

The blue ones taste just like ... well, fresh tasty salad potatoes!

I'll try and take a picture of the current state of the allotment.

I've not been able to dig a lot of it so weedkiller has had to be used to control the rampant grass!

New Allotment

So after waiting a long while we've finally got an allotment in the village. Woo Hoo!

These were all new plots in the top of a grass field near the existing allotments. Now, naively I (and the rest of the new plot holders) was expecting the plots to be nicely ploughed and and all tidy, ready for planting. Wrong! They simply rotovated the grass and chopped it up into little bits for us to clear or dig in. Thanks for that!

Our new rotovated allotment plot

With all the rain that's been falling lately today was the first real chance of getting to do any work on the plot. The first problem was what to do with the sods of grass. I decided that I just wanted to get my potatoes in and worry about the grass later. So after pegging out a path down one side of my plot, I pegged out my first bed. I raked off the grass and piled it all up at the end of the plot. I plan to either dig it in somewhere else on the plot or cover it in black plastic and let it the grass rot down.

First plot for potatoes

I then came home for a spot of lunch - and to give my back a rest. My back has never hurt before but something happened today and I'm not liking it! Emily and I then returned with all our seed potatoes which had been going mad chitting in the garage for what seems like ages.

Mixed potatoes ready for planting

I proceeded to dig the trenches whilst Emily put the potatoes in. I then filled the trench in with the soil from the next trench. After a couple of trenches I decided that I could actually lose some of those sods of grass in the trenches first. Better late then never I guess. Emily was also in charge of the admin of recording what potatoes were going where.

Emily planting potatoes

So this is what we've planted (I'm writing it here to remind me of what's what later, when I can't remember anything!)

• Pink Fir Apple, 13 tubers
• Pink Fir Apple, 11
• International Kidney, 11
• International Kidney, 8
• Salad Blue, 9
• Nicola, 10
• Sharpe's Express, 10

72 tubers in all. Can't wait to try them - especially the blue ones.

Strawberry Flowers

I've had two strawberry plants overwintering in the greenhouse. It gets so cold, and they dry out so much that I think they enter some deep dormant state.

As the temperatures gradually climbed as spring arrived I took a little more care of them, like watering them for a start!

Needless to say they have come on in leaps and bounds now and have masses of flowers on them. I really need to start giving them some feed now. I believe they like tomato feed.

I was concerned that as they were in the greenhouse there would be no bees etc to pollinate them properly. However they seem to be doing ok and the fruits are growing so other insects in the greenhouse must be doing the job instead.

I'm not sure how old these are but they could well be in their third year now. The productiveness of the strawberry plant is supposed to diminish after three years, with the second year being the most productive. I think. What do I know, apart from the fact that I like strawberries! I can't wait! Bring on the strawberries.

Plenty of strawberry flowers

Baby sweetcorn

Although we love sweetcorn - well, all of us apart from Mrs Matt - the girls wanted to grow baby corn too.
So in addition to the few seeds of sweetcorn I had left over from last year I bought some baby corn.

Baby sweetcorn

They've pretty much all come up and are growing fast. Won't belong before they'll need putting in the allotment (more on that in a subsequent post).

Here's a quick look at what's growing in the greenhouse at the moment. Sweetcorn, various brocolli, herbs and far too many courgettes at the back!

Green greenhouse

RIP Tomatoes

On Monday 2nd April I was having a good day. I'd done lots of planting:

• Spring onions in planter
• Calabrese broccoli
• Romanesco broccoli
• Purple sprouting broccoli
• Courgettes
• Sweetcorn

I also started off our first batch of salads:

• Lollo Rosso
• Rocket
• Lamb's lettuce
• Little Gem
• Mixed red and green lettuces

I then thinned out my tomato seedlings - they were doing very nicely and needed their own space.

Then disaster.

A few nights later there was a really bad frost. This was the end of the road for almost all my tomatoes.

Tomatoes with frostbite

Even more annoying was the fact that I had an electric greenhouse heater that was left from the previous owners of our house. I'd not given it much thought and just shoved it in the garage.

No more frost here - hopefully

Anyway, after that frost I dug it out and tried finding some instructions for it on the internet. Whist I could not find any actual instructions, I found out that it has a Frost-Guard setting to make it switch on if the temperature drops below 5°C.

So now, this heater is plugged in and on the frost guard setting. I've checked on my electricity monitor and it looks like it kicks in during the night.

I know it's a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, but it's another lesson learned the hard way.

New Beginnings

Spring is around the corner and so Matt's Patch is being reborn. Yes - I'm back!

I have been given a new allotment in the village which means I should be able to spend more time there, or rather, it should be easier to pop in and do bits and bobs.
I hand over the cash and get to see where my plot is on March 5th.

In the mean time I have taken advantage of the slight warming of the weather to plant some seeds.

A week ago (Feb 19th) I planted the following:

• Tomatoes - Sweet Million F1
• Tomatoes - Alicante
• Peppers - multi-coloured rainbow mix
• Broad beans left over from a two years ago - will they work? I'll let you know!

Although I'll be getting a variety of potatoes from Coventry Market, I picked up a few of these blue ones while I have having a scout around the market stall. I think they're the same as these.