Happibun's Journal

I am afraid to say that Tesco buckwheat does not sprout well. Perhaps the grain has been irradiated or treated in some way.

Despite a promising start with a few little shoots appearing after a week or so, I ended up with a bad smelling soggy mass in the jar. Yuk.

I disposed of it within a fortnight of soaking.

At least I can use the rest of the grain in stews or soup :-)

Just starting another batch off.

We are told that there is cold weather on the way, and we have had a couple of frosts already, but today and yesterday the sun was shining, and I had a chance to potter about in the garden before the Arctic winds arrive.

I trimmed back the Virginia creeper on the front of the house from rooftop level to 6’ from the ground, and tided leaves and rubbish from the front garden.

I hacked the jasmine in the back garden back a bit, but need to do a more thorough job, as it is choking the bent plum tree. I gave the newly planted lawn it’s first cut (it’s so small, I did it with scissors!), swept up leaves and took all the bird feeders down for a major clean.

The purple passionflower has only just stopped flowering. The frosts finally got to it, or perhaps my pinching out the main stems to bush it up a bit next year finally brought it up short. Three shrivelled spent flower heads are all that remain of it’s bountiful display. I am very impressed by its earlier efforts, so I will forgive it.

Not quite so the Strawberry plants in Bunlett’s pot. All through the summer, the harvest was meagre, just the occasional shrivelled specimen, more seed than flesh made it in to the harvest bowl. I had not got round to grubbing them out of the pot, and now I find the damn things are fruiting. Even more strange, there are two really big strawberries, just starting to blush pink. I honestly don’t know what to do with them. It is too early to pick them, but surely the coming frosts will damage the fruit beyond edibility. What gives with these plants?

My Nerine lilly is in full flower.

This is the only one of three bulbs that I planted that actually bloomed, and I dare say that the other bulbs probably got grubbed up by accident within a year or two after they were planted.

Perhaps I should plant more, it is so lovely to get a big flower at this end of the year, but it is also special in its isolation. It looks like a star in the darkness, or some kind of delicate firework.

After this, there is not much more until the snowdrops break out.

This just romped away!

By the time I harvested it, the leaf blades had grown too tough, it was a bit like eating grass. Also the roots tangle around each other so much that it is impossible to tease them apart in the jar. as a result of that I had to eat the sprouts all in one go.

I cut off the green shoots and kept the grain and roots because they were not so tough.

The taste is somewhat strange, there is definitely a hint of bread or grain in it, but green-ness also. It is a very mild flavour.

Next time I will harvest this much sooner. Before any green shows in the shoots will probably be ideal.

I’m just marking that we had our first ground frost of the autumn today. It was not a hard frost, but there was ice on the ground. It seems very late this year.

I bought a bag of organic wheat grain from the local health food shop.

Given my previous bad luck with grains in the sprouter, I was going to make sure that the seed was viable, and I guessed that this would be the way to do it.

I was intrigued to see what the sprouts tasted of.

Littlest came back from his Beaver Scout meeting tonight clutching a plant pot with a daffodil bulb planted in it. This has come about through the Marie Curie mini pots of care fund-raising campaign which is aimed at 3 to 11 year olds. Each child is given a daffodil bulb to plant and care for, whilst the parent sponsors the plant as it grows. The money raised goes towards home nursing care for people with a terminal illness

I am glad to say that it looks like I have a healthy and thriving population of Green shieldbugs in my garden. I have spotted plenty of immature ones earlier on in the year, and now it looks like next year will be catered for too. I spotted this pair pootling about on a leaf of my Himalayan honeysuckle in the sunshine this afternoon.

I managed to photograph this rather laid back game of chase, I don’t think that the female was too bothered about being caught, as she dallied around long enough for me to get her in focus.

I had to leave them soon afterwards, I’m helping out in Littlest’s classroom on Mondays. I like to think that they appreciated me not bugging them any more.

:-)

This has been a very happy plant, it loves where I planted it and has been romping away all summer.

I decided to hack it right back, perhaps it will give me even bushier growth next year.

I had plenty to give to a friend when she called round this evening, and I guess I will have a go at drying out the bunch I have left.