I have a big favour to ask you all and that is to give your honest and much appreciated opinion. Please feel free to drop me a private message to my email address [email protected].
Me and my Dad have been talking about opening up a small business since before Christmas now and for a few months we have been planning and jotting ideas down including setting up a website, blog and designing products. The shop will be called ‘The Allotment Gardener’ and we will be selling handmade and vintage items with gardeners in mind. There will be vintage items such as pots, galvanised tubs, sieves, containers, enamel ware, jugs and tools etc. We would also be crafting wooden dibbers, plant rulers, boot scrapers and tool racks as well as sewing jackets, shirts, aprons, bags and tunics.
We were simply wondering what you guys think, would you buy items like this and how much would you spend for a handmade item? We would always try to keep the cost as low as possible, taking in account the price and quality of fabric, the time it took to make etc. Here’s a few rough prices: Jackets would be £95.00, tunics and dresses £50.00, shirts £55.00, bags £19.00 upwards, Dibbers £15.00, Notebooks £15.00.
We just wanted to do a bit of market research before diving straight into making all the items, because obviously you are who we want to be making these items for and we don’t want to get it all wrong
For now though, at this precise moment I currently have 4 hessian harvesting bags for sale. I made one for myself last year and it’s proved so handy! You can harvest and carry flowers aswell as vegetables, use it as a groundsheet when pruning fruit bushes or weeding and also use it as a small log carrier. I wouldn’t be without mine so I wanted to create some more to share with everyone. They are 75cm square, have a handle on each corner and are made from superior hessian. They are £19.00 each with £3.00 postage to the UK (£4.00 EU and £5.00 Everywhere else)
The bottom three photographs feature my own bag which has been used for the past 7 months. The photograph below is a brand new, freshly made version.
If you are interested in buying one then please comment below and I will send you an email and we can proceed through Paypal. There are 4 currently for sale right now but I can always make up some more
It’s time to draw the winner of my handmade journal give-away and I just wanted to say thank you to all the 116 people that entered. I’m so grateful for all your support and interest in this journal and I’m sorry to those that didn’t win, but if I ever source any leather then I will definately be making them to sell!
So the Winner is…. Vicky Neish!
Congratulations to Vicky! I will contact you shortly
For Christmas I made my Dad one of these little A5 journals so that he could write any notes, ideas and lists down whilst on his allotment. Of course I just had to make myself one and so far it has proved very useful indeed, it has my seed list in, my plan, my to-do lists and I’m sure by the end of the year it will be jam packed!
Spring is just around the corner and I am giving you the chance to win your very own allotment notebook so you can get planning for the year ahead. It’s made from real leather with ‘Allotment Notes’ stamped on the front and there is a grey cord to keep the book shut. There is a pen holder inside as well as some handy little pockets.The best thing about this journal is that the notebook is removable so it can be used every year, just simple replace the A5 notebook once it is full to the brim with all those important notes!
All you have to do is simply comment below with your full name and one reason why you are excited for Springtime to arrive.
I will draw the winner at random on the 1st of February 2015.
It’s Christmas eve and I’ve literally just finished making the last handmade gift! Like usual I left everything until the last minute but I do feel a little proud, all my presents this year are handmade and I can’t wait to see everyone’s face’s tomorrow when they open they’re gifts.
I just wanted to quickly say how grateful I am for all you lovely people that follow this blog, watch my videos and follow me on instagram, facebook and twitter. All your support has been so amazingly brilliant and I just wanted to say thank you before the festivities begin and before I stuff myself on homegrown veg and delicious turkey tomorrow.
I hope everyone has a lovely Christmas and a very Happy New Year! xx
It’s that time of year again and hasn’t it just come around so quickly? I do love Christmas time though, the traditions, the songs on the radio, christmas dinner and of course spending time with the family. I do apologise for the lack of posts but I have just been so busy getting ready for christmas and of course there was plenty to do on the allotment along with videos to film. I did get round to putting a few metres of tinsel in the shed as well as a little christmas tree and some lights on the allotment, it looks very festive indeed!
There’s been plenty of jobs to keep my busy up the allotment, I managed to plant my grapevine, sow some broad beans, plant the garlic and tulips, plant some herbs and get the chicken area dug and leveled out ready for the coop to move up. Winter has caught up with me though and I never got round to weeding or digging over other areas of bare soil, so my allotment it looking a little bit sorry for itself and a tad messy, hence the christmas decorations to try and cheer the plot up!
Now that the allotment is being tucked away for the Winter I can concentrate on the christmas presents. Over the past couple of years I have tried to make my gifts, whether it’s sewing, cross stitch, woodwork or jewellery. There’s something special about making a handmade gift for someone and I just love taking the time to create each unique gift. Next year there are plans to create allotment themed hampers for the family, my allotment will hopefully be more planned out and ready for it’s second growing year with lots of herbs, flowers veg and maybe even some eggs!
However, yet again I have left the gift making process a tad late and I’m starting to get a little stressed, there is only 10 more days until Christmas!
I hope everyone is having a lovely and stress free run up to christmas x
When I decided to make a little pond for my allotment I never thought for one second that it would be such a success and I am so unbelievably happy with all my new little allotment residents. So far I’ve noticed 8 frogs on the plot, I was moving a pile of pallet slats one day and counted 8 amongst the wooden pile (I felt rather guilty that I had moved their home but I needed to weed!) Today I saw 4 of them in the pond, it looks like I might be swamped with frogs next Spring. Not that I’m complaining at all, it would be so interesting to watch tadpoles grow and the more the merrier, especially if they all eat the slugs!
The area around the pond was originally going to be filled with flowers, I planted a climbing rose and a rose bush next to the shed in the Spring and they have both bloomed extremely well. Around the rest of the pond I sowed a wildflower mix and planted a few self sown flowers. Now the mix was a complete failure, 90% of plants which grew around the pond turned out to be weeds, a few wild flowers appeared but it definately wasn’t how I expected the pond area to look. However, the flowers which I planted there as seedlings were a huge success, they were Verbena, cosmos, scabious, zinnias and calendula. I’m thinking next year I’ll grow more of the same flowers, growing the seedlings at home and planting them out later proved to work quite well, this way I will beable to grow the flowers that I love and any weeds that decide to grow can be picked out straight away because I’ll be able to identify them. Amongst the flowers I have decided to plant a grapevine which will climb up the side of the fruit cage, it’s a red seedless variety called ‘Flame’ and it can grow well outdoors in the South of England if facing the sun. I will plant flowers which are lower in height around the base of the grapevine so that there’s no competition, and then the higher flowers like verbena and cosmos will go around the edge. I just can’t wait to be able to pick my own grapes, even though it will be in a few years time!
Now back to the frogs, earlier on I said I felt guilty about destroying the frogs ground cover. They loved to hide in the weeds and amongst the flowers and they particularly enjoyed finding cover under a calendula that had spread over the waters edge, even though it was dead. So off I went to create a special little house for my allotment frogs. This simply consisted of a log pile made from off cuts of my hazel archway, and a cracked terracotta pot turned upside down. And of course I needed to make a little sign for their new home! I really hope they like it, and next year I’ll be sowing lots of flowers around the pond for them to enjoy too.
Since owning my allotment I have ended up trying new foods and finding out that I do in fact like vegetables that I had previously turned my nose up at (I used to be extremely fussy!) Cabbage is one of those vegetables that I have fallen in love with and because my Dad was already set on growing white cabbages I decided to grow some red. I only planted one row of red cabbages at the beginning of the year and all 6 of them produced beautiful heads, although some are rather smaller than others. The only dilemma I have is that we are struggling to eat them and they are on the verge of rotting in all this wet weather we are having. It seems that over winter I need to thoroughly plan my allotment out, decide what to grow and be strict with succession planting.
Now because it has been so miserable and wet lately I thought I would try adding my red cabbage to a soup and I’m pleased to say that it was a great success and surprisingly very yummy! This is a very hearty soup, perfect for warming you up after working up the allotment in the cold, and it is also the perfect way to use up all those cabbages too. Enjoy!
Red Cabbage, Sausage and Haricot Bean Soup
Prep Time: 25 Minutes
Cook Time: 35 Minutes
Ingredients:
1 tin of haricot beans (or a handful of dried borlotti beans which have been soaked!)
2 tablespoons of cornflour
6 cups of vegetable stock
1lb of potatoes
2 leeks
3 garlic cloves
6 pork sausages
1/2 lb of red cabbage (half of a large head)
1/2 a cup of thick double cream
Salt and Pepper to taste
Instructions:
Heat some olive oil in a pan and add the garlic and leeks, cooking for 4 minutes and stirring often.
Fry the sausages until they brown.
In a bowl combine the corn flour with 1/2 a cup of vegetable stock until the cornflour dissolves. Pour the mixture into the pot containing the leeks and garlic and cook for 2 minutes. Add the remaining vegetable stock, potatoes and the sausages into the pot. Season with salt and pepper, bring to the boil and then simmer for 20 minutes.
Take off the heat, remove the sausages and use a hand blender to mash up the potatoes and leeks. Cut up the sausages and add back to the pot, adding the shredded red cabbage and haricot beans. Cook for 10 minutes then stir in the cream and cook for a further 5 minutes.
I’ve recently being trying out a few recipes for a little Youtube series I’ll be filming soon called ‘The Allotment Kitchen’. I love cooking and now that I’m growing my own food I’m being more adventurous with recipes and ideas and it would be great to share it with everyone. I’ve also found that theres a lack of recipes out there for allotmenteers who want to enjoy the crops that they have so lovingly looked after and cared for. I for one, love the idea of growing a something for months, taking care of it and making sure it doesn’t get eaten by slugs, to later turn it into a meal and be able to say ‘I grew that and it was delicious!’
Now I have never hidden my obssession with swiss chard from you simply because I am so in love with it and I want to spread the word! I first grew this amazing leafy vegetable last year when I first got my plot back in July 2013. It was going to be one of those crops that I could plant later in the year to fill in some empty spaces. I had never heard of it before then and I am so glad that I decided to grow it, it’s delicious and so easy to grow. For instance, last winter I left the chard alone with no cover and it kept on producing and never faltered. It is my super crop that just keeps on coming! The only down side is that it doesn’t have a long shelf life, which explains why you don’t see it in the supermarkets. You have to basically pick it when you want to eat it before it goes limp and lifeless.
One of the main recipes I use chard for is a yummy quiche, but it’s also great in omelettes and can be eaten just like spinach. Today however, I cycled off to the allotment at lunchtime to harvest some chard leaves and treated myself to a special lunchtime treat (one of the perks of working from home!)
A simple recipe but boy was it delicious, definately one for the new Youtube series! Simply boil 500g of swiss chard in some salted water for 4 minutes. Drain the water away and place on the bottom of a pie dish which has been rubbed with butter. Add a few slices of chorizo, crack 4 eggs onto the mixture and season with salt and pepper. Last but not least drizzle in 2 tablespoons of double cream and cook in a oven heated to 180C for 15 minutes.
I’ve just realised that I never officially announced that I’m getting chickens so here goes… I’m getting chickens! (can you tell that I’m a tad over excited!?)
I’ve always wanted chickens, I love the lifestyle and idealism of collecting eggs in the morning, letting the chickens roam the allotment and simply enjoying they’re company. So when I checked the allotment rules regarding keeping chickens it said ‘No birds or animals other than hens or rabbits shall be kept on the allotment garden(s).’ I decided to write to the local parish council to see what they said on the matter and they basically said yes! I was over the moon! I started to look for a chicken coop straight away and fell in love with this rustic, second hand coop on Ebay and after days of waiting for it to end I managed to get it for a bargain price of £10.00! It needs a fair bit of work, a good clean and it is extremely heavy, it took 4 grown adults to carry it up the driveway but I’m determined to make it into a perfect little house for my future chickens.
I instantly knew that I need to take some weight off of the coop so that we could lift it a little easier, my allotment is at the back of the site with a 60cm wide pathway leading up to it so it would have been impossible for 4 people to carry the coop up to my lottie. Therefore we decided to take off the nesting box which would lessen the load but also gave me the chance to build a new one to put on the side of the coop. This would make my life a little easier as access to the side would be far better for me to collect the eggs. The nesting box is also being made so that it is removable so we can attach this part to to the coop once it is in position up the allotment. The original roof and the floor have also been removed and these will both be cut at home and then attached to the coop up the allotment.
All that is left to do now is to finish cladding the nesting box, make a lid for it and add some bolts and locks to stop the foxes getting in. I also need to cut the floor and the roof to attach them later and I’m going to make a new roosting pole which will be removable so I can clean it easier. New bolts for the front doors and I’m even tempted to make either some little curtains for the windows, or make some small wooden shutters! Last but not least is the paint, I can’t wait to see it all finished with a nice bright paint job, all I need to do is decided what colour!
My latest video is up and running over on my Youtube channel. This week I’m busy harvesting lots of crops and I also show you all how to make a leafcutter bee hotel for 50p!
