God I love growing our own

[JamezF]

Yes I do

Me too. No idea how much it costs to run. I'll try to remember to put it on the power meter next time we use it, though I guess it depends what temperature it's being run at. Last time it was out my wife was using it for drying basil which only needs about 40°C as far as I recall.

A quick check online suggests that the smaller ones consume about half a kilowatt, so maybe £3.50 per day is a fair upper estimate? At least the waste heat warms the house up if you're drying stuff later in the year

If you're thinking about buying one I'd really do a fair bit of research first. Ours is quite possibly fifteen years old and not available any more, but I'd almost certainly not buy it again if it were. It's round, when for some things rectangular would be much more convenient, and it's almost impossible to clean if stuff drips down onto the base (where it can run into the housing for the heater and fan). With the benefit of hindsight I'd probably choose one where the heater and fan were in the back or the top. Drying trays that fit nicely in the dishwasher may well be a bonus. Ours will, but only flat, so not many will go in at once. If the trays are suitable for making fruit leather that might appeal too. Quite a number of our apples end up that way, even the Bramleys.

James

 

[JamezF]

James where on EARTH do you get your skills and energy from? If they were buyable I'd be ordering. I'm loving reading all your posts. Ingenuity to the nth!

You're very kind. I just kind of get on with it, really In his earlier years my dad would turn his hand to pretty much anything so I guess that rubbed off on me. I remember he used to say that "It's amazing what you can achieve if you don't know that it's not possible". I think his dad might well have had the same kind of attitude towards life, but I barely remember him. And of course these days we have the Internet to further educate and/or misinform...

James

 

[JamezF]

I'll ask my wife. She's the one who makes it.

Bah! It seems the recipe came from Sainsbury's website and I can no longer find it. We have a heavily-stained and subsequently laminated printout that it may be possible to scan should anyone want it. It is a simpler recipe than the "delicious" one, being just marrow, preserving sugar, ginger, a chile and a lemon or two.

On the subject of courgettes and seeds that turn out not to be what is expected, in the Spring I sowed more courgettes than I wanted to allow for failed germinations, all a yellow variety because I like colourful food. I planted out the three best plants which a week or so later appeared to have been grazed by deer. In case they didn't make it I planted out three more. As it happens the first three are doing well, so today I went to remove the spares. But they're not all yellow! One is green. So I left it in the ground. It might be the one that provides the courgettes for the above recipe.

James

 

[roche]

Bah! It seems the recipe came from Sainsbury's website and I can no longer find it. We have a heavily-stained and subsequently laminated printout that it may be possible to scan should anyone want it. It is a simpler recipe than the "delicious" one, being just marrow, preserving sugar, ginger, a chile and a lemon or two.

On the subject of courgettes and seeds that turn out not to be what is expected, in the Spring I sowed more courgettes than I wanted to allow for failed germinations, all a yellow variety because I like colourful food. I planted out the three best plants which a week or so later appeared to have been grazed by deer. In case they didn't make it I planted out three more. As it happens the first three are doing well, so today I went to remove the spares. But they're not all yellow! One is green. So I left it in the ground. It might be the one that provides the courgettes for the above recipe.

James

Thanks for looking - I will check with SWMBO...

 

[JamezF]

For my next hare-brained idea...

Once or twice a year we have a few litres of waste vegetable oil. Not often, but now and again, we like to have proper chips with a meal and decent chips really cannot be made without the services of a stout, hard-thinking member of the mendicant orders, hence the waste oil.

As we're entering the tail-end of Autumn it may be a little late for this year, but I'm thinking I should perhaps have something to keep Frankenstein's Greenhouse above freezing should the weather turn very cold (as it did the winter before last, when temperatures didn't actually get above freezing for an entire week at one point). Tea lights under a clay pot are often suggested as a solution, but that would mean either making beeswax tea lights which seems like a poor use of wax, or buying them which I'm not keen to do.

So, if I get a large glass jar with a metal lid, make a small hole to one side of the top of the lid to let air in and a larger central hole to feed some braided cotton through and fill the jar with the waste veggie oil, what I effectively have is an oil lamp that might well last longer than a tea light and could also go under a clay pot or something similar.

Details remain to be worked out I'm sure, but I think I'm going to have to give it a try.

James

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

So, if I get a large glass jar with a metal lid, make a small hole to one side of the top of the lid to let air in and a larger central hole to feed some braided cotton through and fill the jar with the waste veggie oil, what I effectively have is an oil lamp that might well last longer than a tea light and could also go under a clay pot or something similar.

and the chip shop stink would linger over the whole garden.
I remember we tried using waste chip oil in the hunt van for a time, saved loads but all the kids in the villages we drove through would run out to the road thinking the mobile chippy had arrived early!!

 

[JamezF]

and the chip shop stink would linger over the whole garden.

A plan with no drawbacks

James

 

[roche]

I think the tealight thing was debunked a while ago... A large low-ish grade heat store using solar water heating with old radiators for both collection and delivery would be my choice. But I can see getting rid of some mendicant residue does have appeal. There is a very interesting article here on greenhouse design.

 

[JamezF]

I've never seen suggestions that the tea light thing isn't true though obviously if the external temperature gets sufficiently cold it definitely won't be able to help. I'll see what I can find out. I guess it shouldn't be too hard to work out the potential heat output.

James

 

[Goran]

Tomatoes, paprika..

 

[JamezF]

Tomatoes, paprika..

Those peppers look amazing. Are they all for personal consumption, or do you sell them?

James

 

[Goran]

Those peppers look amazing. Are they all for personal consumption, or do you sell them?

James

All for personal use. Price is too low for selling.. We eat a lot. Fresh, conserved, roasted, frozen, stuffed with meat, potato, rice, a lot of ajvar we make and eat, etc..
Tomatoes also we never buy, cause in shops it was picked when was pale green and conditioned to red - tasteless and useless, like eating cardboard..
Homegrown vegetables have smell, taste and vitamins.. When walking among paprika and tomato plants they smell without picking them.. Eating them is a bliss, like You already know by yourself..

 

[Erichalfbee]

Our tomatoes are being eaten. Not for much longer

View attachment IMAG0002.mov

 

[enrico]

Our tomatoes are being eaten. Not for much longer

View attachment 37214

I hate the damn things. They have been living in the roof of my garage, it stinks!

 

[roche]

Our tomatoes are being eaten. Not for much longer

View attachment 37214

You need a motivated cat!

 

[JamezF]

All for personal use. Price is too low for selling.. We eat a lot. Fresh, conserved, roasted, frozen, stuffed with meat, potato, rice, a lot of ajvar we make and eat, etc..
Tomatoes also we never buy, cause in shops it was picked when was pale green and conditioned to red - tasteless and useless, like eating cardboard..
Homegrown vegetables have smell, taste and vitamins.. When walking among paprika and tomato plants they smell without picking them.. Eating them is a bliss, like You already know by yourself..

So very true. My son is attending university about 250 miles away, having to cook for himself and buy everything at supermarkets. When he came home at the end of term he said that even our potatoes tasted much better than what he is able to buy. You'd think it was hard to go wrong with a potato.

I love peppers though. I wish I had more space available for growing them. Perhaps if we need more than one polytunnel for the chickens over the winter to comply with bird flu regulations then I will plant it with just peppers in the summer. The different colours and shapes make them such a pleasure to see on a plate as part of a meal. This year I have red, yellow, purple and brown varieties, some normal "bell" pepper shape and others conical. What we haven't really got the hang of yet is preserving them. It seems a bit unreliable for us, with some jars starting to ferment for reasons we don't really understand at the moment. We keep trying though because it's so nice to have them on home-made pizzas. Even in the depths of winter every couple of weeks I am outside in the dark at the pizza oven cooking pizzas or calzone

James

 

[enrico]

So very true. My son is attending university about 250 miles away, having to cook for himself and buy everything at supermarkets. When he came home at the end of term he said that even our potatoes tasted much better than what he is able to buy. You'd think it was hard to go wrong with a potato.

I love peppers though. I wish I had more space available for growing them. Perhaps if we need more than one polytunnel for the chickens over the winter to comply with bird flu regulations then I will plant it with just peppers in the summer. The different colours and shapes make them such a pleasure to see on a plate as part of a meal. This year I have red, yellow, purple and brown varieties, some normal "bell" pepper shape and others conical. What we haven't really got the hang of yet is preserving them. It seems a bit unreliable for us, with some jars starting to ferment for reasons we don't really understand at the moment. We keep trying though because it's so nice to have them on home-made pizzas. Even in the depths of winter every couple of weeks I am outside in the dark at the pizza oven cooking pizzas or calzone

James

We just freeze ours. They go a bit watery when thawed but if you dry them off they are fine for cooking.

 

[pargyle]

Tomatoes, paprika..

Stuffed peppers ... another one of my overriding memories of my times in Yugoslavia in the 1960's and 70's. Fabulous crop there Goran !

 

[JamezF]

We just freeze ours. They go a bit watery when thawed but if you dry them off they are fine for cooking.

I wouldn't dream of denying the usefulness of freezers, but I do like to try other ways of preserving food too. Especially if it means the ongoing storage isn't costing me anything It also means that the freezer space is available for things that are more difficult to preserve some other way. And for ice cream, of course Home-made vanilla ice cream is actually one of life's great pleasures. Such a shame that vanilla pods have become outrageously expensive over the last few years.

James

 

[Erichalfbee]

What we haven't really got the hang of yet is preserving them.

The only way I preserve mine is to roast them rubbed in olive oil, take the skins off and freeze in tubs. A skinned pepper is a different animal. Absolutely gorgeous.