The garden at home is bursting with produce right now. The peas and beans, kale and cabbage, chard Swiss and Rainbow are all featuring in the kitchen. Courgettes and pumpkins are in flowers. The raspberries, strawberries and blackcurrants often don’t make it as far as the kitchen. The tomatoes are ripening and the sunflowers are reaching for the [...]
Archive for the ‘Blackcurrant’ Category
14 Jul
TIME TO BRING IN THE FIRST FLUSH OF THE BLACKCURRANT HARVEST – FIRST WEEK IN JULY 2010
Fellow kitchen gardener Cathy Gaffney from down the road and her daughter Jenny helped this year to pick and share blackcurrants while the weather was dry. I get a generous crop from just two blackcurrant bushes – or ‘Ribes Nigrum’ as the Romans (or Michael Palin in ‘The Life of Brian’) might have said! A [...]
27 Jan
PRUNING BLACKCURRANT BUSHES WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM AN ORGANIC EXPERT – THIRD WEEK IN JANUARY 2010
This mild and still weather after the ‘shock and awe’ of the BIG FREEZE really makes me appreciate the occasional foray into the garden. I was recently at an organic gardening talk by local experienced grower Nicky Kyle who asked me to pull a few raffle tickets as part of a fundraiser for disaster relief [...]
17 Aug
CUTTING BACK ON RASPBERRY CANES AND BLACKBERRY BUSHES – THIRD WEEK IN AUGUST 2009
This is now the week to look towards the jobs that come around each autumn. Cutting back of raspberry canes and blackcurrant bushes marks the beginning of autumn. I’m glad to report another good year for the blackcurrant bushes. The raspberry canes were new so I did not expect a bumper crop but hope for [...]
23 Jun
Mid-June review.
The garden is full of lif right now. It’s fantastic to see how much growth there has been in the last month. The weather has been almost ideal, with lots of bright sunny days and the occassional shower to keep things moist. The video gives a quick tour of the garden and it’s interesting to [...]
16 Feb
February, 2nd. Week- Pruning fruit trees & Blackcurrant bushes
Second week in February Pruning the Apple Tree My fruit trees and blackcurrant bushes especially need to be pruned in the New Year before the sap rises and buds open. The garden is too small to allow the apple tree, in particular, to grow as large as it would in the wild. A long-armed loper [...]
