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oliverstoned View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 02 2011 at 08:51
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Originally posted by oliverstoned oliverstoned wrote:

Lemon cake?

Yes! Approve
 



My mother used to cook an english recipe called "lemon square", a thin lemon cake, very sugaree. Delightful!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 02 2011 at 08:51
Originally posted by timothy leary timothy leary wrote:

Organic is always best, keep it simple



Sure, i'm only on organics.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 13 2011 at 14:57
So we're starting off with surviving rosemary, thyme, oregano, chives, mint.  I picked up our first newbie, a cayenne pepper plant. Headbanger
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 23 2011 at 10:01
Planted 12 raspberries plants last weekend, lot of strawberries and i'm attacking "vintage" old tomatoes strains, begun sproutings into micro-greenhouse. Just bought some salad & french beans seeds that im about to plant directly in soil outdoor. The growing season is open!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 23 2011 at 10:05
I grow my own spaghetti.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 23 2011 at 10:08
^ somebody has to do it, mine always flop down after a rain, maybe i should stake them up??
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 23 2011 at 10:18
Originally posted by toroddfuglesteg toroddfuglesteg wrote:

I grow my own spaghetti.
Good to see someone is keeping the old traditions alive Approve
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 25 2011 at 11:15
Gonna plant the snap peas today and think about stir fry in about 60 days
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 24 2012 at 11:34
Earlier this year we had an attempted break-in - nothing was stolen or damaged, but it made me realise that security was a little lacking - so we fitted security locks and f-off huge padlocks to all outside gates and doors - more for comfort than actual security since any determined fief can get into anywhere if sufficiently motivated, but at least it deters the casual light-fingered oportunist... Anyway, this is gardening thread, so what's this got to do with growing your own fruit and veg you may ask, and that's a fair question. Well, it now means that my herb patch is no longer as easily accessible from the kitchen as it once was, and rapidly fell into neglect and disuse.
 
So I made a herb table just outside the kitchen door using a cheap wooden potting-bench and a plastic "grow-bag" tray I  bought from the local DIY store then filled it with pots of herbs and a few pepper plants:
 
In this appallingly bad photograph there is: parsley, three kind of thyme, two kinds of mint, three rosemary plants, two chili peppers and 12 chili pepper seedlings in three varieties, garlic, fennel, marjoram, oregano and Greek basil.
 
I've also a raised bed for vegetables that we've had to cover in a net to keep the cats off:
In there are butternut squash, mange-tout, runner beans, beetroot, edamame beans, leaks, pak choy, rocket and some unknown variety of "salad leaves" mostly all harvested.
 
And growing across the roof of our "veranda" (aka car-port now used as a covered patio) is a white grape vine that's doing rather well (though it was only planted to provide shade):
...and yes I do have a mirror-ball and several tea-light lanterns hanging beneath it.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 24 2012 at 12:37
^ Looking good and I am sure will taste better than any store bought.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 24 2012 at 13:34
I have no problem with store-bought - most of it tastes just fine - some home-grown tastes different (not necessarily better), but not enough to get excited about - home-grown tomatoes can taste better than some supermarket toms, but again, not amazingly so. I have a slight hang-up with foodmiles, but nothing that would stop me buying strawbewrries out of season and I certainly cannot grow enough to keep me supplied with fresh strawberries even in summer. Fresh herbs are something else - they are *better* than dried by a very long way in most dishes ... though slow cooked stews probably need the robustness of dried herbs.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 24 2012 at 14:54
^ Home grown tomatoes taste much better than those from supermarket. But it depends. In our shops there is food from Poland, Argentina, apples from Spain and potatoes from USA, instead of food from our country. So we have a garden,we had everything- strawberries, peas, potatoes, beans, tomatos, apples, some oregano, onion....But then we had no time and we reduced our food to tomatoes, beans and potatoes. And we're trying own wine, because we live in wine region. And also we have cherries and apples on trees in the garden. It depens on the care, but in my view your own food taste much better. Smile
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there is water underground

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 24 2012 at 15:16
Growing your own food takes the mystery out of what you are putting into your body. What we can't eat because of surplus goes to the food bank. Most of our berries go into cordials which make great gifts. It is great to have a nice salad every day. We preserve seeds so we know their origins also. What you put into the earth will come back to you. We think of our soil as our external metabolism. Learning to grow your own food could become very important and we never stop learning.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 24 2012 at 16:22
My grandparents on my Dad's side had a nice size yard when I was a kid and did some serious summer gardening.  I remember the string beans and cucumbers in particular.  We by no means grow enough to live off of but have a nice blueberry bush out back.  A pecan tree as well but the squirrels always beat us to the nuts.  Herbs, tomatoes, and hot peppers are essential just because there's nothing like having them handy, herbs especially.  The dill crapped out on us rather rapidly this year.  Everything else is doing OK.  One of the tomato plants and the habanero are being a little slow.

Edited by Slartibartfast - June 24 2012 at 16:23
Released date are often when it it impacted you but recorded dates are when it really happened...

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 24 2012 at 17:29
Originally posted by timothy leary timothy leary wrote:

Growing your own food takes the mystery out of what you are putting into your body. What we can't eat because of surplus goes to the food bank. Most of our berries go into cordials which make great gifts. It is great to have a nice salad every day. We preserve seeds so we know their origins also. What you put into the earth will come back to you. We think of our soil as our external metabolism. Learning to grow your own food could become very important and we never stop learning.
None of that means anything to me I'm afraid. I'm not into "organic" food, I'm not health conscious, I'm not at one with nature and I like to think I'm adept enough at buying food at the market, grocery shop or supermarket to come home with a bag full of tasty fruit and veg and I haven't had a tasteless tomato or strawberry for years. I'm not a gloom and doom person either, so I don't see that learning to grow your own food is likely to be important at all, ever. I grow stuff and I eat it - I have no philosophy, reason or aim for that, it's just to eat it. It's fun to do and doesn't require that much effort - it's never going to save you shed-loads of money, it can make you feel good about yourself for doing it, but there is no logical reason why it should - you put seeds in the ground, keep the watered, pick off the bugs and slugs now and then, ands when they're ripe you harvest them and eat them - nature does all the hard work.
 
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 24 2012 at 18:23
You think it does not require too much effort? Maybe because you are not much of a gardener.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 24 2012 at 18:50
Originally posted by timothy leary timothy leary wrote:

You think it does not require too much effort? Maybe because you are not much of a gardener.

No, small scale home food gardening doesn't require too much effort.  Even what my grandparent's grew.  When bean picking time came, they'd enlist the kids and get us to snap off the ends. 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 24 2012 at 18:56
Small doesn't take much. What we are doing is not small. Our garden is one third of an acre.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 24 2012 at 19:32
That sounds like roughly my grandparent's area.  Maybe closer to a 1/4 acre.

On this lot we have about 3/4 acre, but after the areas the creeks take up, all the trees and the right of way at the street, we'd be lucky get 1/8.


Edited by Slartibartfast - June 24 2012 at 19:38
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 24 2012 at 19:38
Originally posted by timothy leary timothy leary wrote:

You think it does not require too much effort? Maybe because you are not much of a gardener.
I'm not anything of a gardener - I'm an anti-gardener. I plant stuff, I look after it, water it on dry days, it grows, I eat it. I don't see that as effort - sure my veg bed is only 2m by 4m, it's raised so I don't have to bend down to dig and weed it and it's protected by nets to keep out pets and vermin - weeding is a few minutes work once a week - two watering cans of collected rain water each night if it hasn't rained that day and the job's done in less than 5 minutes. This year I grew salad leaves from seed sprinkled onto wet coir compost - in a week they were fresh shoots that could have been cropped and eaten there and then, a week later we were snipping off individual leaves to eat, some of the stronger ones were picked out and planted in the raised-bed to grow into mature plants - none of that was effort or required special "gardening" skills. Anything that requires too much effort is the law of diminishing returns. I used to grow potatoes direct into the ground but that is a complete waste of energy having to double-dig heavy clay soil and then spread manure into the trenches then having to dig them up a few months later for a few pounds of spuds - I can yield almost as much growing them in a plastic sack for considerably less work. It's the same with strawberries - growing them in containers is far less effort than growing them directly into the ground and they yield just as well, if not better. Anyone who thinks growing a few veg for the table requires a lot of effort is either doing it wrong or growing the wrong stuff. I got my daughter growing tomatoes and beans in a grow-bag at her London flat last year - all she did was water them every night and pick them when they were ripe - any more effort than that and she wouldn't have done it. I'm not a gardener at all - I'd rather sit back with a beer and watch stuff grow than spend all weekend "gardening".
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