God I love growing our own

[pargyle]

Yes, some smoke of beech sawdust and air drying.

They look really tasty Goran ... proper food.

 

[Goran]

They look really tasty Goran ... proper food.

Yes. Without any chemistry added to enhance flavor, color, etc.. Smell and taste as it should be. When we have to buy some meat in shops, later when preparing meal.. comparing to this homegrown.. Sometimes this meat from shops I can't eat how bad it tastes.. And yet how this meat from shops has all the certificates about high quality and standards again not rarely stinks as rotten.. I think the system is rotten. Chicken from shops I don't eat at all, it is by me health hazard..

 

[JamezF]

Sometimes this meat from shops I can't eat how bad it tastes.. And yet how this meat from shops has all the certificates about high quality and standards again not rarely stinks as rotten.. I think the system is rotten. Chicken from shops I don't eat at all, it is by me health hazard..

I can absolutely understand this. A lot of our meat we buy from the butcher in the local village, but that's a family business and one of the sons runs the small farm that supplies their lamb and beef. He's one of my neighbours. Other meats come from small local farms too (and they'll tell you which ones if it isn't obvious from their labelling).

Once you reach the "industrial" scale for meat production it's just horrible, which is partly why over the last few years as a family we have started eating less meat and paying for the best quality we can afford when we do.

My wife was looking at the packaging on some product sold by Tesco the other day. It contained chicken which had been imported from Thailand. I'm sure I can guess why the chicken comes from Thailand, and it's highly unlikely to have anything to do with the birds being kept according to high welfare standards and tasting excellent.

James

 

[JamezF]

My plum tomatoes are Polish Linguisa

Do you know of anywhere selling seed for these in the UK, Dani? This evening I have mostly been putting seed orders together

James

 

[Erichalfbee]

Do you know of anywhere selling seed for these in the UK, Dani? This evening I have mostly been putting seed orders together

James

No. Mine came from Canada but if you want only twenty seeds or so I keep some back every year so you are welcome to those

 

[Garry R]

Once it was dark this afternoon I planned to melt down a load of Bramley apples for apple sauce and fruit leather. Everything has gone pear-shaped though

Not sure I can fix that.

James

How about one of these James!!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/19541594...oTC9c7yT0gxQXO/IJywOQ0r0w=|tkp:Bk9SR8LH_N-eYQ

 

[philipm]

Do you know of anywhere selling seed for these in the UK, Dani? This evening I have mostly been putting seed orders together

James

Try Premier seeds direct they have quite a good selection of seeds.

 

[JamezF]

Try Premier seeds direct they have quite a good selection of seeds.

Sadly not in this case

James

 

[JamezF]

How about one of these James!!

That's an amazing bit of machinery! Very hard to get a sense of the scale of it. It looks enormous.

James

 

[JamezF]

No. Mine came from Canada but if you want only twenty seeds or so I keep some back every year so you are welcome to those

That's very kind of you Dani. The only ones I could find last night came from Canada too. I'll PM you.

I'm finding some of the tomato varieties, particularly F1 types, are becoming more awkward to get hold of this year. Last year Apero F1 was available pretty much anywhere. This year several of the larger places seem to be out of stock and when I did find somewhere that had them the price had gone up 33%! Almost 70p per seed for tomatoes is getting a bit extreme I think.

Fortunately the cuttings I took from tomato plants back in October seem to be doing ok so far. A bit too well possibly, thanks to November being so mild. Given some growing lights I could probably take cuttings off these now

James

 

[ldwgs]

Do you know of anywhere selling seed for these in the UK, Dani? This evening I have mostly been putting seed orders together

James

they are on sale at 25 seeds for £3.02 Organic Heirloom Tomato Vegetable Seeds-polish Linguisa A - Etsy UK

 

[Erichalfbee]

Greenlane are in Canada

 

[fian]

I have been picking my crop of kiwis (green variety). Pollinated by bees and free of chemicals and pesticides.

 

[JamezF]

This morning my daughter skinned these:

They still need a bit of a clean, but I reckon they'll last us a while

James

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

That's certainly what I'd do for a small number of apples. I was planning to use forty though. When it works that little device can probably peel, core and slice an apple in fifteen to twenty seconds including putting the apple on it and removing it. From my point of view it's quite efficient

James

you should try this

 

[JamezF]

Seeds for next year have started arriving which is always nice. Wasn't sure when that would happen thanks to the issues with the postal service.

One packet that hasn't arrived yet that I'm really looking forward to is seeds for a Malawi Piquante chile which is allegedly the variety used to make Peppadew pickled peppers, to which I am rather partial. I've grown them once before and the plants got to almost six feet high, but possibly thanks to the weather that year I didn't get any ripe fruit.

Genuine seeds for Peppadew chiles are quite hard to get hold of because the company that makes them owns the entire stock and doesn't let anyone other than their contracted growers have them. I've even collected seeds from the jars of peppers and tried to germinate them in the hope that just one might have survived the pickling process (a long shot, certainly), but never been successful.

James

 

[pargyle]

My broad beans have survived the frost - they had flopped a bit but I re-staked them last week and they are now looking much better, the fleece over them saved them I reckon. Took the covers off my onions, shallots and garlic and they are all well up through the mesh on top of the raised beds and 100% growing. Need to put some mesh round the side of the beds to stop the blasted squirrels and fox digging though when I take the mesh off the top. The peas I repotted in the greenhouse and which were further protected with a small poly greenhouse are 6 or 7 inches tall and looking very healthy.

Time to start off some spring onions, a second crop of broad beans and think about gettiing some Charlotte seed potatoes ...

 

[JamezF]

Think you planted your broad beans before I did mine, but mine are only a few inches tall. My garlic (all in the polytunnel and greenhouse this season because of rust) has got to about 8" tall though. Don't have onions yet. I shall sow those towards the end of January I think, along with a second batch of broad beans.

Fortunately squirrels and foxes seem to have found other interesting places to play. My problem at the moment is, as for most of the year, deer. Next year the brassicas may well have to stay under butterfly netting for the entire winter.

James

 

[pargyle]

Think you planted your broad beans before I did mine, but mine are only a few inches tall. My garlic (all in the polytunnel and greenhouse this season because of rust) has got to about 8" tall though. Don't have onions yet. I shall sow those towards the end of January I think, along with a second batch of broad beans.

Fortunately squirrels and foxes seem to have found other interesting places to play. My problem at the moment is, as for most of the year, deer. Next year the brassicas may well have to stay under butterfly netting for the entire winter.

James

Yep ... 1st November and in the greenhouse ... it was so mild they took off like a train ! They were potbound and I planted them out when they were about 6" tall ... the smallest are now well over a foot tall and some are 18". Just hope we don't get any more heavy frosts.

 

[enrico]

Yep ... 1st November and in the greenhouse ... it was so mild they took off like a train ! They were potbound and I planted them out when they were about 6" tall ... the smallest are now well over a foot tall and some are 18". Just hope we don't get any more heavy frosts.

Mine all got hammered in the cold spell.