Ketchup catch up

We went to the market on Saturday morning and, on the veg stall, they were giving away 4kg boxes of very ripe cherry toms for £2! Not ones to pass on a bargain, we snapped it up to make some ketchup!

Here's a summary of the process, which took quite a lot of time because of the volume!






The finished product, 5 bottles of ketchup and 2 of chilli ketchup...



and I have to say, it's absolutely delicious!

It's all over!

At last, after 3 weekends of work, the pergola and paving is complete! We finish the weekend once again, absolutely knackered, but satisfied to be done!

Here it is:




We're so pleased with it, even if it does look a bit orange at the moment! I have planted the hop on the right, with the fig tree in front as well as some wild strawberries which I had in pots but I thought would be lovely rambling around the base of the fig once they get the chance. I can't wait to see how it develops over the years as the greenery takes over. I have ordered our grape vine (Kentish Claret) to go on the left hand side. I can't wait to get a little bench to go underneath it...hopefully next weekend!

As you can see, the lawn has taken a bit of a battering so I have sowed some grass seed and hopefully it'll recover in no time.

Other news of the day is that our beautiful Hollyhock took a battering in the wind today and sadly one of the stalks snapped. Sad for the front garden but happy for the house because I stripped the flowers off and filled a couple of vases. Lovely!




It's got to be bedtime soon. It's been such an active weekend with all of the digging and two outings on my new bike. I'm so glad I'm working from home tomorrow - lie in!

I want to ride my bicycle

Tonbridge, despite being a small town, has 3 bike shops! The best, in my humble opinion is a little shed crammed full of second hand bikes run by a man who, we are told, as a further 200 in his garden at home as well as a load more in a lock up! For some time we have been pondering whether to get a bike so, finding ourselves with a free Saturday morning, we paid him a visit.

We were seriously tempted by the tandem he had standing there but decided that it might not be very practical! So, I am now the proud owner of a very lovely metallic orange Puch Sprint...



Isn't she beeeeeooootiful? I immediately popped down to one of the other bike shops (somewhat larger!) and got her a basket which I think she wears very well indeed.

I haven't really riden a bike for at least a decade but was pleased with how well I got on. I did a turn of the park, discovering a little village of barges on the river which I didn't know existed. I let Matt have a go too. The bike man is going to see if he has any vintagy men's bikes at home so we will pop back next Saturday to find out and, fingers crossed, we can both have one!

1 more of our 52 meals

We managed to have another of our 52 meals to save the planet (from Home Farmer magazine - aiming to grow enough to make 1 meal a week from your own produce) last week - stuffed courgette (stuffed with breadcrumbs, nuts, tomatoes, courgettes flesh and cheese)with new potatoes and salad. All from the garden! (apart from some of the stuffing)



Very excitingly, we are also getting loads of ripe tomatoes. We have always suffered from Blight in the past and, as such, have always had to make do with green tomatoes but tihs year we have red! We have just had some for dinner with cheese and ham on toast - yummmm!

Wild flower meadow

For Christmas my sister, Katy, gave me a couple of packets of wild flowers, one of which I scattered down the back of the allotment where nothing else will grow and they've done remarkably well. Here is a selection:

Pergola shangrila

On Saturday night I had my last hen night of the year (number 5!) and Matt his penultimate wedding (number 4) so we went our seperate ways to eat drink and be merry. This made it doubly difficult to get up early on Sunday morning to lay a patio but lay we did...for 11 hours! We cam frustratingly close but the weather and the final episode of Sherlock conspired against us so we put it on hold and have just now finished.



The garden looks like a building site still, and the poor grass is suffering but by the weekend (in which we have nothing to do - hurrah!) we will have it all cleared and I will be spending Saturday digging a nice big hole for the giant pot I've bought for the fig tree while Matt finishes the patio edges and we attach the trellis. I might make a trip to the garden centre to get some nice shade loving plants for the back of the patio, where this is a little strip of mud.



After we finished there was nothing else to do that have a celebratory cheese cake and shandy. A meal fit for royalty!

A Blue day

Saturday was an emotional day for us as we said goodbye to our little Blue. Poor thing has always, in the 7 months that we've had her, been sickly, and has been laying softies for a couple of months. She hadn't eaten for days so we took her to the vet and he confirmed what we thought - egg peritonitis. It's fatal 99% of the time and although she looked perky we decided it would be cruel to keep her alive just for our benefit so the very nice vet let us say goodbye and off she went. We know we did the right thing but still sad to see her go - we always love the under-chicken and she was certainly that!

Pergola-la-la

I have been thinking about a pergola for some time. An odd thing to think about I'm sure you'll agree but I have been certain that our garden really lacked it. Our neighbours gardens are so empty of plants etc (although one side is getting better) that we don't get anything filling any space so it makes our garden feel even emptier! So I decided a pergola was the answer...

This weekend just gone we took a couple of days off so we had some time to get it done. We took our little car down to the local timber merchants and placed our order, which they prepared straight away (very nice chaps) - we managed to fit it all in the car and get it home without losing any out of the open boot (phew!).



Two very hot and sweaty days later we got the main posts up:



I'm afraid I don't have a photo of the finished product yet. The cross beams are now on (not in this photo). We are also going to put some trellis panels on the left and right hand side (to the left and right of the main posts) for the grape and hop to grow up. The fig tree is also going to go into the ground in front of the right hand side.



We also still have the patio to finish. We tried to get some nice reclaimed tiles from the local reclamation yard but were shocked to discover that they were £3.50 each (we would have needed 250!), which is considerably more expensive than those that we've seen before so plan B was Homebase where we found some nice-ish brick tiles. Not perfect but they'll do! We need over 200 of them so I did 2 shifts bringing them home in the car so that it wasn't too heavy. I still have one or two more loads to go but couldn't face it this weekend so I will need to get up early on Saturday to get them while Matt starts preparing the ground for laying them.

The chickens decided that we needed some assistance with the pergola. This is Rom, who decided that a pile of bricks would be a good place to sit (she just hopped up there. Isn't she clever!)



Blue, who is still quite ill and having antibiotics, was also trying to help Matt by removing bugs and worms from below the ladder. Isn't she good.



Having dug out the post holes, and some of the paving area, we made a nice pile of soil on some tarpaulin ready to go down to the allotment. The girls, however, had different ideas. Apparently a neat pile is not the done thing and a nice flat dusty spread across the lawn would be much better: