Welcome back to Reads Retreat, the home of organically grown fresh veg in Raised Beds. This weekend we had a visit from Huw & Jane, as they toured round Kent en route to France. Huw asked if his camper van would fit on the drive, and it sort of did - ish! We had a great couple of boozy nights, and even managed a quick visit to the lottie to show off our latest gardening project. I was a tad surprised that they arrived bearing gifts of the horticultural variety, less surprised though by the quantity of alcohol consumed during their stay!
This lovely healthy Chilli plant was one of the gifts. Already bearing one Green Chilli, it also has a lot of flower buds on it just waiting to burst into fruit. Huw has been growing these quite successfully for a number of years, and passed on a bit of his knowledge, especially regarding how to "pollinate" the indoor grown varieties by gently squeezing the flowers with thumb and forefinger to simulate the work of insects. We'll be trying this on our various chilli plants and will let you know if it actually works!
This one was a complete surprise, a Vietnamese Coriander plant! It has tremendously fragrant foliage, and the plant itself looks really healthy. Huw & Jane told me to treat it like a Fuchsia (in terms of propagating cuttings) and hopefully we can get some success with doing this. It would be great to create a few more plants from this one, and make it go a bit further.
On Friday afternoon, this was to all intents and purposes, just a 6" pot full of soil. Huw assured me there were lots of coriander seeds in there, and lo and behold, 3 days later it is bursting into life! Cant wait to have fresh coriander in the next curry mmmmm that will be good.
There was also a couple of bags of "spent hops" to use on the allotment. This can be dug in and used as a soil conditioner later in the year, and its something we'll be needing a bit more of. Maybe I will get in touch with the Shepherd Neame brewery in nearby Faversham?
And finally, the bin men had to work a bit harder today when they collected the recycling! Crikey, what a lot of bottles!Thats about it for now, but if the rain holds off for an hour or so, I'll nip out to the garden with my camera, and bring you an update on the gardening front.
Thats it for now, thanks once again to Huw & Jane for their pressies, it was lovely to see you both.
Take care all,
TTFN.
