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.

Still alive

Hello!

Just a quick update to say Matt's Patch is still alive although slowing down now.

We're still getting loads of raspberries from our autumn canes. There is even one cucumber still growing in the greenhouse!

Today Emily and I went and lifted all the potatoes that were remaining in the allotment. I wasn't holding out much hope given the prolonged dry weather earlier in the year.
However, we were rewarded well and best of all we got loads of Pink Fir Apples! I was panicking a bit because I could not remember where I planted them with the other spuds. I made a little map when I planted them but they were missing off that too! Anyway, I boiled up a couple to try and they are the finest potatoes I have tasted for a long while. Fantastic flavour and of course a great shape!

I'll upload some pics tomorrow (no promises though!)

First Strawberry!

Just a quick one to say we had our first strawberry of the year last week.

First strawberry of the year

Obviously there was the ceremonial cutting and sharing of it. Only three ways mind, as Mrs Matt does not like strawberries!
It was off one of the three strawberry plants that were taken last year as cuttings from runners and kept in the greenhouse over winter and only went outside about a month ago. There are lots more fruit on them and we've had another red one since. Yummy.

Newly laid turf

The people who lived in our house prior to us moving in decided to put round beds in the middle of the lawns. Now this may look pretty - well, they would if they had nice flowers in them - but they are a royal pain when it comes to mowing.

So a couple of weeks ago we decided that we'd do away with at least one of them - the one by the greenhouse. This is what it looked like (pic taken winter 2008-09)

This was how the lawn looked before Emily's work

So we started the job and Emily took it upon herself to dig out all the plants that were in the bed. This was not an easy task considering the vegetation was in full growth. After a few hours of hard work and sheer determination she had dug everything out. Well done Emily - fantastic job!

The next day I set about squaring off the edges and levelling the earth. I gave it all a good soaking and then laid some rolls of plush new turf.

This is the result:

New lawn

After laying the turf I kept it well watered over then next few days to make sure the roots didn't dry out while it was knitting into the earth.

The hardest job was making sure that the new turf was level with the existing garden. In some places this is not quite right but there's not a lot I could do about it at the time.

We're really pleased with it and it's opened up the lawn a lot. We plan to do the other round bed in due course.

Cucumber News

I'm growing four cucumber plants this year which is almost certainly too many (I know the picture has five seedlings but one was a spindly outcast). But I'd rather have too many than not enough. Again I bought a packet of all-female plants to save the hassle of having to remove any male flowers. The variety is Passandra and is 'mini' type - you pick the fruit when they are about 15cm long.

After a few days in my home-made propagators this is the state of them on the 24th March:

Young Cucumber seedlings

Well, it's nearly 10 weeks on and now look at them! The cucumbers themselves are already a nice size. The biggest one at the moment is over 5cm so not long to wait ...

Loads of flowers on the cucumbers

They've been re-homed into the old recycling boxes and I've put up some netting in the greenhouse for them to climb up. Hopefully it should be able to bear their weight.

The Courgettes are getting bigger

And here they are in the very overcrowded greenhouse! My only concern now is that as they grow they'll start to block out light to the other plants.

Lots of pots in the greenhouse

If you look closely you can see the irrigation system which is part of another hi-tech project and will be reported on soon - once it's up and running!

Germinating Courgette

Both last year and this I've grown courgettes from seed. What has amazed me is how large the seedlings are and how quickly they grow.

So this got me thinking - a germinating courgette seed would be the ideal thing to film in timelapse.
So I downloaded the trial version of HandyAVI and set it up in the office with a webcam pointing at a small pot containing compost and one zucchini seed.

HandyAVI is a very cool piece of software - it can do lots of things beside timelapse. I set it up to record a frame every 3.5 minutes. After a few days I was rewarded with the following video:

Even thought it seems bright in the office, it seems that the seedling grows taller than normal, searching out better light.

Been a while

My goodness I can't believe it's been sooooo long since I posted anything.

So, a quick round up of what's been going on is in order.

I've planted lettuces - lots of lettuces - and they've come up well and gone into the planter outside with a second crop in the greenhouse. I've been a bit more sparing with the seeds in this second lot as the first batch was far too many!

Hmm, maybe too many lettuce seeds

Last year's sweetcorn did not do very well at all and I think I read somewhere that they don't like their roots being disturbed so this year I've planted them in the inner cardboard tubes from loo rolls. You then put the whole thing in the the soil when you plant it out.

Sweetcorn, in toilet roll tubes

On the allotment front, the weeds and grass have been growing faster than I'd have thought possible - far faster than anything that I could grow myself!
I've been slowly digging out areas for planting, with this bed containing peas and runner beans. I've put mesh over the top to try and stop the birds having a free lunch.

Peas and beans under mesh

After a couple of weeks the peas have made an appearance - nothing much of note from the beans though. It's been far to cold and dry. May seems to have been quite a rubbish month so far.

The peas have come up despite the dry weather

The frost we had in early May has hit everyone's plants, potatoes especially. Luckily mine had not come up too much (they were planted on Easter Sunday) so the leaves they lost seem to have been replaced with new green growth. Hopefully they'll catch up. Somewhere I have a 'back-of-an-envelope' map of what varieties I planted where. I'll have to find it so I know what's what before too long.

Frostbitten potatoes

I must update more often... I must update more often... I must update more often... I must update more often... I must update more often... ;-)

My allotment

Well, after being on a waiting list for just under a year, I finally have a key to a local allotment site where I have taken on a half-plot

My half-plot, in colour!

It's got a bit of grass and things growing at the moment but I think it all the soil was turned over last year so it shouldn't be too much of a job to get it in some kind of growing order!

I have not seen any of the other allotment holders so I don't know what the neighbours are like. I'm sure I'll get plenty advice on how to progress as the days start getting warmer and growing season starts proper.

I can't wait to get started ...

This year's potatoes

The other day I got my seed potatoes from Coventry market. All in all, I got just over 3kg for £4. When I counted them up, there were 75 tubers - I think I may have gone a bit over the top, oh well!

They're now sitting under the window in the garage, waiting for the weather to warm up a tad to get them chitting.

This season's potatoes chitting in the garage

This year I've gone for a few different varieties:

• Red Duke of York - 1st early. 10 tubers, 0.4kg
• Pentland Javelin - 1st early. 15 tubers, 0.5kg
• Kestrel - 2nd early. 23 tubers, 0.8kg
• Pink Fir Apple - salad. 11 tubers, 0.5kg
• Charlotte - salad, 16 tubers, 1kg

I think most interesting of all are the Pink Fir Apple ones which are long and knobbly - needless to say, you don't peel these! Despite their strange appearance they are supposed to taste great. Can't wait to find out.

Pink Fir Apple potato tubers

4-Bed Rotation System

In anticipation of preparing my allotment I've been looking into how the 4-Bed rotation system works. The idea is to have four beds and rotate the veg grown in them every year. The aim is to avoid a build-up of pests and diseases specific to certain vegetables.
Now the key is in the word rotation, rather than just swapping vegetable beds around, as this video from Gardener's World explains.

In a nutshell the order of rotation is:

1. Potatoes. Plant in well dug soil with lots of manure.
2. Legumes (peas, beans, etc). These will deposit nitrogen into the soil by storing it in their roots so make sure you leave the roots there at the end of the season.
3. Brassicas (broccoli, calabrese, cabbage, cauliflower, etc). These love the nitrogen that's been left by the legumes.
4. Root vegetables (carrots, parsnips, etc). These don't need huge amounts nutrients. Any excess will just go into the foliage and not increase the size of the root.

Onions and other alliums like leeks and garlic can go in with the legumes as they like the same kinds of conditions.

Each season you move the vegetables round in order, with the potatoes following the root vegetables after the ground has had a good dig and more manure.

Well that's the theory and it makes sense on paper. I wonder how it'll work in practice!

Some more information on 4-bed rotation is here.

Picked my allotment!

After about a year on a waiting list, I finally got to pick my allotment today!

Not wanting to take on too much in one go, I've gone for a half-plot, affectionately called 40A!

Although it's only a half plot, it was bigger than the other halves I was shown and seemed bigger than half of the only full plot that was available. Mine is on the 'larger' side of the access drive whereas all the others were on the shorter side.

It seemed in quite good condition - no massive build up of grass or anything. I think the bloke said that the person that had the whole plot couldn't cope so handed half back, after getting it nearly ready for working.

I should get my forms and stuff by the back-end of next week.

Right - I'm off to buy some potatoes.

And onions.

And carrots.

And broccoli. You get the idea.

Green Tomato Chutney (at last)

I've been meaning to write this up for ages!

With my left over green tomatoes there is only one thing to do - Green Tomato Chutney of course! I looked about for recipes and it seems like everyone's got their own, so I borrowed bits from all over the place, but the main idea was taken from margeland.co.uk

I had to adjust the quantities to marry up with the amount of tomatoes I had. I also sterilised my old coffee jars in a Milton solution overnight (the same strength as used for babies bottles).

Now the main point of this Matt's Patch entry is really for my own benefit (to record the recipe) as I think the resulting chutney is a little too sweet - not much mind, just a tad. Sort of heading towards a sweet tomato/onion relish. Having said that it is very nice and is beautiful on some strong mature cheddar!

One thing that surprised me about Green Tomato Chutney, is that I thought it would be mainly, well, green tomatoes. However that's not the case - there are a lot of other ingredients.

Ingredients

Ingredients:

• 650g green tomatoes
• 330g cooking apples, peeled and diced
• 340g shallots, peeled
• 300g sultanas
• 300g demerara sugar
• 300ml malt vinegar
• 1 chilli
• 1 piece of ginger, about 1cm
• 1 tsp salt

The weights above are what I put in but as a rough guide I think they are about half the quantity of the tomatoes (600 vs 300).
Method:

1. Prepare the tomatoes. Wash them and cut them in half or smaller if they are quite big.
2. Cut the chilli in half and remove the seeds.
3. Peel the ginger and gently squash it a bit to allow it to release its flavour.
4. Place the tomatoes, shallots and apples in a food processor and chop them up, but not too much.
5. In a large, deep cooking pot place the chopped items along with the vinegar, sugar, raisins and salt. Mix well.
6. Add the chilli and ginger and stir again. Put the heat on and bring the chutney to the boil. Keep stirring to make sure the sugar dissolves and the bottom of the pot doesn't catch. (It was at this point I panicked that I'd overdone it with the vinegar but it all turned out ok in the end, though it does get in your nose while it's cooking!)

Just starting to cook


7. Once the mixture is at a good boiling stage turn the heat down to a simmer. Simmer the chutney for at least an hour, if not more. Also you will need to stir the chutney from time to time.

Coming along nicely


8. Once the chutney has attained a jam like consistency it is done. Take out the chilli and ginger and discard.
9. Carefully spoon the chutney into the sterilised jars. It is a good idea to make sure the jars are warmed too so as not to crack when the hot chutney goes in! You want to pack the chutney in so there are no air bubbles.
10. Create a seal over the surface of the chutney with a bit of folded clingfilm. Put the lids on tightly.
11. Leave the jars to cool thoroughly. It is this process that 'seals' the lids on tight! Once opened keep the chutney in the fridge.

Two jars of GTC!

Next time I make this I will reduce either the sultanas or the sugar, just to ease off on the sweetness.

News at last

Hello! I'm back! I can only apologise for the prolonged absence. So without further ado here's what's been happening on Matt's Patch in September and October.

After all the rain we've had in August the last two months have been gorgeously warm and dry. This has helped keep the raspberries coming. This is how many we picked yesterday (with still plenty on the canes as we head into the shorter days of November):

Raspberries still going

Along with the raspberries our tomatoes in the greenhouse kept cropping too. Now though they have slowed down so I decided to harvest them all. The plan is to make a green tomato chutney - I'll have to dig out a recipe somewhere (unless someone can recommend one).

Last of the tomatoes

Back in June we planted carrots in two buckets in a corner of the greenhouse. We just let them get on with it. The thinking was that as they got bigger, I'd thin them out as and when we needed little carrots for the children. However they never really seemed to take off. Maybe they were too densely planted. Anyway, on the weekend Megan and I picked what was left in the buckets. Their sizes varied quite considerably, and considering that they were a small variety we did get some decent sized ones. After a clean-up this is what we were left with:

Bright orange carrots

On to my planter. Although the last couple of months have been very mild, the lettuce that was in the planter just stopped growing. Likewise the peppers never did much. I think they definitely need to be in the greenhouse, or at the very least under some cover to get extra heat. This is the best one, from of six plants! (unfortunately the photo is out of focus but by the time I noticed the pepper had been used in a chili con carne!)

One red pepper

So, after collecting the veg that was still in the greenhouse, the time came to give it a good clean and get it ready for more planting.

So I'm going to have a little think now, about what can be planted - either in the planter or in pots in the greenhouse - which is unheated.
I'm also going to write up my experiences in the first year of Matt's Patch and what lessons have been learned.

A nice clean greenhouse

Spud Issues

It's not all plain sailing in Matt's Patch. The other week I was out inspecting things and had a look at the potatoes that were growing at the end of the garden. This is what I found - all the foliage was just about dead!

Dead foliage - is this blight?

I've no idea what had caused it so I did a bit of digging (no pun intended) on the internet after hearing horror stories about blight.

Still not a lot wiser I read one article about blight that said you should cut off all the vegetation and burn it if possible. Then not dig the potatoes for a couple of weeks so that the blight that falls on the earth dies before the potatoes come up. So as a precaution I cut it all down and got rid.

When we returned from our week camping in Cornwall, Megan and I went to dig up the spuds - if there were any! Actually we got quite a lot:

Desiree and King Edwards

Ideally they'd have been left to grow for longer so that the King Edwards got bigger but that was not an option in this case.

Upon closer inspection some of the individual potatoes had lesions on them. Not all of them, and not all over the ones that did have them.

What is this?

Some of the potatoes had scabs on them

I now think that this is scab, probably Common Scab but if anyone knows for sure then please let me know and what I could have done to prevent or treat it.

All in all, not too bad for my first experiment with growing potatoes!