Tag Archives: Oregano

Feeling hot, hot, hot. In January?

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Big thanks to Paul Greenstein once resident of East Dulwich now of Melbourne, Australia for sending us a couple of photographs of his gardening related exploits. Above is his garden at the moment (That sunshine makes us weep here as the weather is on the cold side in SE23 at the moment) and here’s some accompanying words from Paul:

“Garden looks a bit wild from this angle. There’s an Oregano bush that’s taken over one of the veg boxes. Apricot tree in the foreground. We had a good crop of Apricots this year after the tree was almost destroyed by the local possum. Apricot mead is on the cards. We’ve learned that you have to net the tree once it’s pollinated or the possum wins. Just out of sight is a Bramley tree that’s currently netted – this time it’s the parrots that eat all the fruit. Australian wildlife; either it’s trying to kill you or it wants to eat your fruit and veggies.

The weather is a bit crazy at the moment, we are getting 2-3 day runs of high 30’s (Celsius), then high 20s, with thunderstorms. On really hot days, we are banned from lighting fires (which makes a lot of sense). Still, this is nothing, we live in Melbourne, which is considered ‘temperate’ – i.e, it can get really cold here. Other parts of Australia like Tropical North Queensland, it’s shorts and a vest all year round…”

If you remember Paul also keeps bees in his garden and as he told us in his post last year here he had some Mead fermenting (above) and “each mix includes around 1.5k of honey. World’s oldest alcoholic drink apparently..”

We only made it once here and it tasted like battery acid so we didn’t even bother again.

“Mead Bottled! The cherry is made with Morello cherries, the rhubarb grows in the garden. The cherry is around 15%ABV, the rhubarb around 11%.” Looks absolutely wonderful, unlike the stuff we produced. Cheers for the report and the pictures Paul, they’re appreciated.

Talking of Mead we found this the other day advertising Penge’s first ever Wassail. We hadn’t a clue what it was, but the mention of “Bring something to make lots of noise – saucepans and wooden spoons are perfect” made us very interested.

Thanks to @rbrt1k on twitter who sent us a link to the wikipedia entry for the word/event. “Wassail is a beverage made from hot mulled cider, ale, or wine and spices, drunk traditionally as an integral part of wassailing, an ancient English Christmastide and Yuletide drinking ritual and salutation either involved in door-to-door charity-giving or used to ensure a good harvest the following year.“

Big shout to the Penge Wassailing event and we hope all goes well and you make a right old racket so we all can get a good harvest this year of apples. And potatoes, and carrots and onions etc. Big up with the wassailing!

Outside suprises

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More cold weather is on its way but the parsley and the carrots we sowed late in the day outside are perservering. There’s also some oregano still out there hanging in despite the cold weather. What’s odd is that the pot of it inside on the kitchen windowsill isn’t doing as well. We really thought that those plants dislike the cold weather or prehaps they can tolerate them once they are on their way (until it gets to -4 as it’s supposed to tonight). Any thoughts?

Also we’ve just read about carrot tops (the green feathery leaves that grow above) are making a comeback as an edible addition to the plant. We’ve read in one of those Adam the Gardener books that you can lighty steam them and they taste like spinach supposedly. We’ve never tried them but it sounds good.

It’s those little things

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Even though this growing year is far from over, every year is one of learning for us in the Weeds garden. Even if it’s the old “We won’t be growing that blimmin’ thing again” after a particulary bad crop, we’re always learning. We’ve been loving our trips to Lldl for the peat-free compost and the cheap seeds of theirs and learnt that peat-free compost needs a little helping hand with nutrients but it isn’t that bad for £1.99 and you can transport the bags easily on the bus.

This year we tried spuds in pots and bags which worked, even if they were small on the actual harvest, the chillies in pots are doing just fine (above) and the giant garlic turned out great too. We don’t usually have much sucess with garlic to be honest but we’re happy of the normal to larger garlic (instead of giant) which is now hanging up in the loft to cure (pictures to come). Most of them didn’t divide into seperate cloves so something else was learnt this week: “Garlic needs 30 nights at less than 10C over the winter for the cloves to develop properly. If this doesn’t happen, then you do just get one fat onion-like bulb” Alys Fowler mentioned that here.

And after trying a good few times it’s only this year that we are actually getting some oregano growing in pots. We imagine it’s not that hard to grow it’s just that we haven’t had much luck in the past and the time we went to Shannon’s to buy a plant they didn’t have any so we bought the marjoram instead. We’re well chuffed with the two straggly plants we grew from seed, it’s good being easily pleased.

The fruits of our labour

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We can’t believe that it’s July next week, how time flies (pic above: self-seeded poppy down the garden yesterday). It was just the other week we were thinking if there was going to be a frost or not so we could put those leggy tomato plants out. Gardening is all about patience and just getting on with it, the waiting game so to speak but we’re not very good at that. And talking of tomatoes we’ve got our first trusses of fruit developing on some of the plants we grew from seed (below). That weekly feed of comfrey liquid must be helping as well as sideshooting and a daily water.

The chilli pepper we were given the other week has now got fruits (below) and we were told by the patron of said plant that she started it off very early in January. We’ll be bringing the pot in this winter and see if we can keep it going next year. Peppers and chillies are perennials so we’re told, as it says here “...all peppers – that is sweet peppers and chilli peppers – are perennials, capable of living for several years. Peppers come from the tropics where there is no winter period.” The things you learn eh?It’s funny what with our “sow the seed willy nilly and forget we even sown them” method we still get suprised when something pops up like in the case of the oregano seedlings below. Yes it is in a pot with a plant label with “Oregano” written on it as clear as day but we’re still suprised. Perhaps we should have a colour coded spreadsheet with a map of the garden so we know when we sowed something and where. We reckon that would take the fun out of it though. Happy growing and may that spot of rain we had earlier today further boost up your garden’s growth!

We wanted summer and we got it

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Blimmin eck! How hot was it today? These two poppies which we’re sure we grew from seed a couple of years ago are blooming again. We gave them a good watering this morning as at its peak it hit nearly 29 degrees C today here in SE23.

We’ve got two trusses of flowers on our tomatoes (above), the gardening calendar is cracking on this year and it’s nearly summer solstice. There’s now warnings or a time marker which says “You have just reached the end of spring” or anything, time marches on as Jungle Wonz once sang.

Also we’ve been nipping out any sideshoots on our tomatoes and read in the Vertical Veg email newsletter about using the sideshoots on tomato plants as you would cuttings and we have one which looks like it may have taken root, well it hasn’t gone droopy yet (above).

And something else we love here as well are suprises. Here’s some oregano we don’t remember sowing growing underneath a rosemary bush (above). Now that’s a bit of a bonus as we do love oregano here! We bought a marjoram plant a few years ago as an oregano alternative which is doing great but it’s not the same. 30 degrees C tomorrow you reckon?

Not at all a bit previous

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We’re starting to think of next year’s gardening even if at the moment we wouldn’t want to actually go out in our garden as it chucking it down but it’s never too early to start thinking of next season.

We bought a lot of herb seeds last week to restock up on the pots just outside the kitchen (plus some poppies to chuck in the wild area) and hopefully get a few herb pots going on the windowsill. We’ve just noticed on one of the seed packets that the original common name for Borage was “burrage” or “llanwenlys” a Welsh word for “Herb of Gladness.” We’ve also just found out that the herb is used in the German green sauce known as Grüne Soße or Grüne Sosse. Good stuff!

Remember even if you’ve got a few seed packets in your seed box that may be out of date don’t worry they are worth trying (except Parsley that really needs fresh seed to start germinating). It’s all in the preparation!