For those of you who are not ‘signed up’ to receiving our bi-monthly Newsletter, here is the latest issue.
To get it straight to your e-mail box, just ask!
Harvest time
October 20, 2018
What's New Beer, Brecon Beacons Open Garden, Cider, Firewood, Fruit, Grwyne Fawr, Harvest, onions, organic, organic growing, Potatoes, Spice, Sustainable living, Vegetables, Welsh garden Comments Off on Harvest time
The hot weather at the start of the summer has definitely had a big effect on many of our crops. Without going into the usual veggies, spuds
onions
beans, beans, beans …. we have had maybe our best ever returns from a number of different sources.
Let’s start with the less well known. The Sichuan Peppercorn tree has yielded six spice jars worth of dried peppercorns, three times more than the last good crop. This might not sound a lot, and in purely monetary terms is only about £15 worth – but ours are organic and come from a happy tree! Very fiddly to pick and even more fiddly to separate the husks from the seeds (it’s the husks we need) the resultant spicy stir-fries make it all worth while.
Sichuan on the left
In the greenhouse, I’ve just picked 30lb of white grapes which have yielded 2 gallons of pure juice
and it looks as though the black ones
will yield at least double that, so there’s going to be a few bottles of wine in the racks in the not too distant future.
Outside, I’ve collected about 240 pounds of our Tom Putt apples 
, most of which is now either casked up as cider
or in the freezer as pure apple juice.
Staying on the ‘booze’ front, the Fuggles and Goldings hops overwhelmed me this year. It takes a lot of hop flowers to make any weight at all.
Hops on the right
One needs about 4oz of dried hops for a five gallon brew of beer. To get 4oz dried needs around 30oz of fresh hops. Doesn’t sound a lot? 30oz fills a full sized carrier bag to almost overflowing – that’s a lot of hop flowers! Two brews are already drinking nicely and there’s enough dried and frozen for the rest of the year!
And now it’s time to ‘harvest’ some firewood!
It’s all go at Nant y Bedd!
First prize
August 6, 2017
What's New Charles Dowding, Llanthony Show, Open Garden, organic, prize winner, Vegetables Comments Off on First prize
Yesterday was the annual Llanthony Valley & District Show and Sports. The weather wasn’t the greatest; wellies and 4x4s were the order of the day. In addition to the usual vegetable show classes, the Garden Club runs a number of classes for – for want of a better term – vegetables in the ground. This year there was really only one class which we felt was for us – Most Productive Vegetable Garden.
So we entered, and won! As Sue is now saying, it shows that a veg garden can be both pretty and productive.
Here’s a few of the veg the judges thought worthy of the title.
Cabbage
peas
Sturon onions
and the piece de resistance
the runner bean arch
This year we’ve been following the No-Dig philosophy of Charles Dowding. Seems to be working!!
