Poppy Leeder's Kitchen & Garden: 2014-06-01

The wildflower bed

One of the beds in the garden when we arrived had a horrible straggly hedge along it, and all sorts of rubbish dumped beneath it. It was completely wasted space, and I was keen to put more plants in to provide food for both us and all the animals and insects that visit the garden.
So out came the hedge, the bed was cleared of all the rubbish, and in went a wild plum hedge (with some wild pears and a few others thrown in too). I then spent the next 6 months planting wildflowers seeds and plants that will need to be in a permanent position (cardoons and jerusalem artichokes)

In all these pictures it is the hedge/bed on the very right hand side of the pictures (although you can also track the changes to other bits of the garden in these pictures)

March 2013: its unclear that there is even a bed under all the plastic rubbish, book case and the straggly hedge....

April 2013: ...yes there is a bed under there, straggly hedge still there, but most of the rubbish has been removed

May 2013: and now the hedge has been removed too

May 2013: with the wild plum hedge in and two cardoons planted too

June 2013: the wild flowers are starting to take over and the hedge is growing well

September 2013: the bed is looking very lush with lots of wildflowers getting established

May 2014: the wildflower bed - the wild plum hedge survived the July 2013 heatwave (thanks to all the waterbutts). Lots of wildflowers are in the bed now: salsify, red campion, white nettle, poppies, forget-me-nots. Its buzzing with all sorts of insect activity now.

Foraging produce 2013

2013 was a fantastic year for berries and fruits so the larder was bursting by Christmas with jams, conserves and various alcoholic concoctions!

I've made the usual - bramble jams and jellies, crabapple jelly, wild plum jams and jellies, Apple butters, Greengage jams, and lots of blackberry and apple jams and jellies.
Sloes were also abundant so we made lots of sloe gin, and also tried our hand at sloe vodka and blackberry vodka.

But by far the best drink I made was blackberry cordial. This is a recipe in Pamela Michael's wonderful 'Edible wild plants & herbs'.

Blackberry Cordial

I made 500ml of blackberry juice by rubbing blackberries through a sieve, then added a 500g of sugar and honey (the recipe says either so I added half of each). 8 cloves are meant to be added next, but as I'm not keen on them I only added 2, and then I included 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. This was all brought to the boil, simmered for 5 minutes then left to cool at which point I added 8 tablespoons of brandy and bottled it. Its a wonderful rich thick syrupy drink, it needed to be diluted about 1:6 and I guzzled loads when I had a really bad sore throat as it seemed to be the only thing that soothed my throat.