In February I wrote about Aldi selling cheap fruit trees, well I’m pleased to report that the two apple trees I had bought seem to have settled in very well in spite of the dry conditions we’ve had during March (I admit, I didn’t water them as much as I should’ve).

Flowering Golden Delicious Apple tree

Flowering Elstar Apple Tree

I’m sorry for the very crappy pictures, but it was raining and my phone could not cope with the lack of light so well. In any case I’ll keep posting updates of how the trees are doing, maybe it’ll be useful for others who are considering whether or not buying fruit trees from Aldi is a good idea.

Close up of Golden Delicious blossom

Exciting things are happening as the days are getting longer and sunnier (?!). My first batch of wild strawberry seedlings is growing very well indeed. Soon I’ll have to transplant from their individual 3cm cells to bigger pots. Hopefully if the weather improves I’ll be able to harden them off and plant them outside also to free up much needed window sill space.

And something odd is going on with the biggest plant – it has actually developed a tiny little runner! I’m not sure yet what I’ll do, let it root in another pot or cut it off so the little plant conserves more energy but it’s definitely interesting. This especially since all I had read and heard about alpine strawberries was that they tend to not send out runners…

Also, the batch of Yellow alpine strawberries I had sown in February is doing very well indeed. Comparing the two, the batch sown in early spring is growing at a faster pace than those sown in autumn. For months over the winter it seemed like nothing was happening, but with these new little seedlings, it’s all happening a bit quicker. In a few months time I’ll be able to see whether there are real differences in when they start producing flowers and fruit.

I know I know I’ve been neglecting the blog. I’m sorry. After a particularly nasty flu, a trip to see my mom and weeks of preparation to make the house halfway presentable for my in laws’ visit, I couldn’t gather the energy to write anything.

Anyway, I mentioned a few months ago that I had planted two apple trees from Aldi. One Golden Delicious and one Elstar. Both are now flowering and looking very healthy and pretty indeed (photos to follow if it stops raining!). Also, the huge amount of house / diy and other work I had been keeping myself busy with lately meant that I had a bunch of apples going soggy in the kitchen and they needed to be used up.

No better time to try apple pie recipes, considering from next year onwards I’ll hopefully have plenty of my own homegrown apples to eat!

I’ve always been fond of the various versions of traditional Dutch apple pie (“Appeltaart”) which are available pretty much all over Holland. For my own version I did not put any raisins or sultanas in because somehow that always ruined the pie for me when I ordered it at a cafe. If you like raisins in your baked goods, go ahead and add a handful (perhaps soaked in rum or something?)

“Appeltaart” recipe

(24cm springform tin)

300g plain flour

200g butter

100g sugar – I used mostly lightbrown sugar mixed with some white sugar

pinch of salt

1 egg – beaten

4-5 apples – the recipe I used as my inspiration called for firm cooking apples, but I used soggy eating apples instead and it turned out exactly how i wanted it)

1-2 tbsp sugar – for seasoning the apples

cinnamon – to taste, at least a pinch or two

(handful of raisins or sultanas if you’re into that sort of thing)

Start with cold ingredients for the pie crust. First mix the flour, sugar and salt together. Then add the butter cut into cubes (the colder the better) and most of the egg (the rest you reserve for glazing the pie from the top). I used a pastry cutter to start combining the butter and flour/sugar. If you don’t have one of those, or the butter is cut sufficiently small, use your hands (cold hands are better) to rub the butter into the flour until you get even looking crumbs. Combine them together to make a dough. I found that mine was quite crumbly and fragile, perhaps you’d have better luck using a bigger egg. If the dough won’t hold together, add a tiny little bit of water to combine it. Line the springform tin with baking paper and keep both the tin and the dough in the fridge. Preheat the oven at 180 degrees Celsius.

Next peel and core the apples and cut them in small slices, around 5mm thick. Then sprinkle the cinnamon and sugar to taste (use more if the apples are tart or if you prefer a sweeter pie). Because I was worried my apples might just cook down and get watery due to them already being soggy, I also added a tbsp of ground almonds to make the filling hold together more and a squeeze of lemon for extra flavour.

Take out the dough and tin from the fridge and roll out about 3/4 of the dough as thin as you can without making it too fragile. Maybe 5mm thick. Put it in the tin (it helps to roll fragile dough around the rolling pin and unroll it carefully over the tin). If it tears apart, no problem, just squish it together in the tin. The sides should be lined with dough approx 4-5 cm tall. Next fill the pie with the apple pieces, make sure the level of the apple filling is similar to the edge of the dough on the side. Depending on how sturdy your dough is, make a pretty covering for the top. I cut the dough into strips to make a lattice style top. Had it been less crumbly and fragile, I may have tried my latest pointless kitchen gadget – a lattice cutter. You could also get really creative and use cookie cutters to make nice shapes and put them on top of the apple pieces. The advantage of apples as a pie filling is that they tend to hold their shape fairly well.

Bake for about 1h at 180 degrees Celsius, or when it’s golden brown and the apples look cooked. Cool down in the tin before eating (due to the amount of butter in the crust, it needs to cool before being able to hold its shape better. This pie tastes even better the next day.

As I’ve detailed elsewhere (How to grow strawberries from seed) I have never had any issue germinating strawberry seeds, no matter what other websites or people say. In fact, nearly all the seed packets of alpine strawberries that I’ve ever bought came with some notice or other that they may be tricky to germinate. Same was the case with the packet of Yellow Alpine strawberry seeds I sowed in late February. Look at them now! I think the vast majority of seeds came up without any problem, and it only took about 2 weeks.

Yellow Alpine Strawberry seedlings

Wild strawberry seedling

Now I know that the title of this blog post is a lot more excited than a rational person should be about having made some yoghurt at home. After all, plenty of people do it all the time. But somehow whenever I tried, something or other had gone wrong and I ended up with something not quite the same as yoghurt. Let me walk you through my failed experiments.

1. Nothing much happened…

I don’t recall whether I actually followed a recipe or not, but my first try, many months or years ago may have come from the reasoning that, yoghurt is just milk changed by bacteria. So let’s just mix some milk with some yoghurt and see what happens.

Nothing happened. Even after keeping the mixture in the airing cupboard which does get cosy and warm whenever the heating is on. I ended up with just very watery sour smelling stuff that didn’t make me want to eat it for breakfast. Still it didn’t smell all that bad so I cooked with it and nobody got ill.

Cause of failure: I didn’t heat the milk. The bacteria never got a warm enough environment to do their work and thus the yoghurt never set.

Or: The yoghurt used as a starter didn’t have live bacteria in it. Unless the yoghurt you use is labelled to contain “live/active cultures”, “live bacteria” or is “probiotic”, don’t bother with it. It’s not going to make milk into yoghurt.

Or: You heated the milk, and added your starter yoghurt when it was still too hot and thus killed all the bacteria. A good guideline would be to make it comfortable to touch. I’m not a clean-freak so I tend to test the milk temperature by dipping my finger in it. (Don’t worry, I do wash my hands before doing that)

2. Yoghurt-slime

My second try, a few weeks ago did cause a change to be seen in the milk/yoghurt mixture! As I opened the containers of yoghurt and tilted them, the result looked promising indeed! The yoghurt seemed to have set! However as I tried to take a spoonful out I quickly noticed that something was wrong. Rather than breaking up, the “yoghurt” sort of held together in until it tore off the spoon in rather gelatinous globs. I had created Yoghurt slime.

Once again, this sort of texture didn’t inspire me to eat it. Although it smelled yoghurt-like and not offputting, so I finally forced myself to try a little bit. The gooey texture was obvious even in the smallest drop of it. It was simply hideous and I knew I had failed once again.

Cause of failure: After some online research I came to the conclusion that although I had heated the milk beforehand, I didn’t heat it enough. Apparently the protein in the milk causes long strands to be formed when the yoghurt sets, which makes the texture slimy. To counter this you have to boil the milk first to break up the proteins that cause this phenomenon, then cool it down to a cosy, lukewarm temperature before adding your starter yoghurt.

3. It’s liquid and smells rank

My third try at yoghurt making failed as well I’m sad to say. I boiled the milk properly, cooled it down, put the starter yoghurt, and checked after keeping it in the airing cupboard over night. It was liquid. So I decided to give it more time in a warm oven (heat at whatever the lowest temperature is, until it feels cosy when you stick your hand in the oven. Then put the yoghurt in there).

After a few more hours I decided that I couldn’t possibly justify keeping it in there any longer and put it in the fridge. It was still liquid. A day later I decided even if it’s liquid, I might as well try it and use it for cooking and when I opened it, it smelled bad and along the sides the white yoghurt was showing a tint of orange / yellow. I threw it away.

Cause of failure: Much like the first experiment, I don’t think it got warm enough to set. And then putting it in a warm oven just caused it to go bad. It could also be that the container wasn’t fully clean.

Now, you may wonder what I did to actually succeed in the end?

Making your own Yoghurt

Ingredients:

Milk (the more fat in the milk, the creamier the yoghurt gets supposedly. I used whole milk)

Yoghurt (the type that’s still live/active/probiotic!)

In a large pan, boil the milk until it froths up. Turn off the heat and let it cool down until it’s warm to the touch. Like a nice, warm shower (whatever you do, it shouldn’t be stinging type hot). If (like me) you forgot about the milk on the stove, heat it back up again until it’s nice and warm.

Mix in about two heaped table spoons of yoghurt to around 2 pints of milk. I don’t know if this is the scientifically correct ratio, but it worked for me.

After it’s properly combined, fill the yoghurt into a suitable container. Since I’ve had bad luck using individual glass jars, my last attempt was in a ceramic casserole dish with a lid.

Since I didn’t think my airing cupboard stays warm enough over night (we have the heating off at night), I preheated the oven at around 60 degrees Celsius until it felt nice and cosy, and put the dish in there. This was at around 6 in the evening. After dinner, perhaps around 10 at night, I turned the oven on for a little bit again to warm it back up. Then I left the yoghurt in there over night with the door shut.

In the morning it had set nicely, tasted extremely mild and smelled of yoghurt. And it wasn’t slimy! Success!

If you’ve ever tried growing plants from seed you may have come across certain common issues that may cause you to lose hope.

Although seeds have an extremely impressive hardiness to ensure their species survives, the resulting seedlings can be quite fragile. Depending on whether you’re trying to grow plants from seed indoors or outside, you may have encountered the following problems:

1. Seedlings disappear – This has caused me a lot of frustration when trying to grow outdoors. Whenever the packet says something is easy to grow and you should just scatter seeds on the ground and water it, more often than not I’ve had seedlings simply vanish on me. This especially with lettuce and other greens.

Possible causes: Birds, slugs and other animals who have a taste for succulent new growth.

How to avoid: To ward off birds, consider putting netting over young plants, if slugs are your problem (there are slimy tracks all over your seed bed), look into the various methods of slug control before trying again. Or sow in pots instead and transplant into soil when the plants are bigger.

2. Seedlings flop over and wilt away – quite a common problem when growing indoors or outside under glass. Your seeds germinate, and tiny plants appear. You get very excited and can already picture them once they’re big, but all of a sudden they stop growing, leaves wilt and they fall over and shrivel. You will see that the stems of the seedlings have become thin and darker at or just above the soil level.This problem is called “Damping off”.

Cause: various fungi present in the air or soil attack the seedlings. This problem is made worse when seedlings are in a very humid environment with not enough air circulation.

How to avoid: If you have to start your seeds indoors, for example for early sowing of tomatoes before the last frosts, let the seedlings breathe! You might be using a propagator with the lid on to help seeds germinate, once they appear, take the lid off! Your seedlings do NOT need a very humid environment and it just makes them more vulnerable to fungal problems.

Closely related: If you’re seeing seedlings fall over and dying but the stems look ok, you could be dealing with “Root rot”. Confirm by lifting the seedlings out of the soil, if the roots look manky and brown, that means they’re rotting. Ideally you want the roots to look white and healthy.

Ensure that the containers you’re using to grow the seedlings in has sufficient drainage. Not everything is a bog plant and consequently although most plants need enough moisture, they don’t like sitting in water.

3. Seedlings become very tall and fall over – You need 3 basic ingredients for a healthy plant: light, water, moisture. If the seedlings are getting very long and stretched until finally the stems cannot support their weight (aka: they’re getting “leggy”) it means there is not enough light and they’re struggling to reach the light by growing longer.

Cause: lack of light

How to avoid: Put the seedlings in a sunnier place, but be careful not to allow the sun to scorch them. Or if they’re already in the sunniest spot and lack of light is simply due to the weather or season, you might want to use artificial lighting. Also, if your seedlings are already leggy and you don’t want to sacrifice them, try supporting them with a bit of wire until they get stronger.

4. Seedlings wilted and died – If the seedlings have just suddenly wilted and look quite dry, chances are they’re not getting enough water. A lot of seedlings start off small with very small roots. People make the mistake of trying to water them by misting them and keeping them in a humid environment (as above, this is wrong and might cause them to rot), instead they’re meant to get moisture from their root system!

Cause: Seedlings are not getting enough water / or they’re being dried to a crisp on a sunny windowsill.

How to avoid: Water the soil, not the plant. Ideally you have grown your seedlings in seed trays sat on top of an undertray so when you water the soil, the excess can drain off. Don’t water too much though or you’ll get other problems. Keep your seedlings in a light place but remember that a sunny windowsill can get very hot on a bright day!

I’ve been eagerly waiting for this for months, and keeping a close eye on the weekly email newsletters from Lidl & Aldi but finally it is time!

Yesterday unexpectedly I found some large containers full of fruit trees outside my local Aldi even though it hadn’t been mentioned in the newsletter! They had multiple varieties of Apple, Pear, Plum and some Cherry trees as well for £3.99 each. I guess lucky for me that it wasn’t advertised so they had a pretty good selection still, sometimes it can get a bit crazy with people hurrying to buy up the best varieties before I have the chance to get there after work.

Anyway, I’m very pleased to have purchased a both a Golden Delicious and Elstar apple tree. According to the labels the trees will measure 1.5-3m in height depending on how you prune them, so it seems they are on less vigorous rootstock which suits me perfectly. In spite of this though I don’t think I could accommodate more than two trees in my garden unless I start pulling other things out, but I’ll admit I was tempted to buy a few more varieties anyway!

As far as I could tell, my local Aldi had: Bramley, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Elstar, Golden Delicious apples, Conference and Doyenne du Comice pears, Morello Cherry, Opal and Victoria Plum. So if you are like me, just waiting impatiently for spring and cheap fruit trees in supermarket, you might want to check out your local Aldi quickly before they sell out!

Also – from the 16th onwards they will be selling Mediterranean shrubs again (along with some more gardening stuff). Last year I bought a little Lemon tree, which is doing quite well overwintering in the living room and is in full flower at the moment. This in spite of my bad planning last year where after buying it in spring there was no space indoors. This of course meant that the poor thing was outside battling the elements in the last of the spring frosts. Not something I would recommend  as all of its leaves curled up and fell off.

People are often sceptical of fruit trees at these low prices, but a little googling reveals that plenty of others have got decent results with these trees. The only thing to consider is that the trees are fairly young so it might take a few years before you get a decent harvest. Also, you’re not going to get a wide range of varieties. In any case, I’ll try to post some pictures of both the trees and whatever progress they make over the next few years.

I may have mentioned it before but I am an avid bargain hunter / cheapskate. So my weekly shop tends to be from Aldi both because it’s convenient, and quite cheap, and a lot of their food isn’t as bad as some people think it is. (especially the cold meats, and unless I’m growing them myself, vegetables tend to be just vegetables to me).

So when I saw they were selling some Italian foods, I went ahead and purchased some Arborio Rice. Normally our household survives exclusively on Indian Basmati Rice so this made an interesting change and allowed me to cook proper(?) Risotto.

To make Risotto, one needs at least the following basic ingredients in addition to rice: Butter, Onion, Stock, some meat or veg for interest, salt & pepper, perhaps a splash of wine and some Parmesan cheese. The method is fairly simple, but time consuming and labour intensive.

Rather than use a crappy stock cube in boiling water, I remembered that I still had some pheasant stock in the freezer so that’s what I used. Plus some left over pieces of pheasant that I had braised in red wine.

Pheasant Risotto

Pheasant Risotto

Ingredients:

250g Arborio rice

Knob of butter (be as generous as you like)

1 large onion – finely chopped

1 clove of garlic – finely chopped

1 cup Wine (any type you like, I happened to have Rose)

Some sprigs of Thyme and Rosemary

Salt, Pepper, Red chilli flakes, plus any other seasoning you like.

Meat Stock (Pheasant in my case)

Shredded meat from said stock, or any vegetables you like; beans, peas, carrots, spinach, etc.

Method:

Firstly make sure to heat the stock while you start off the risotto.

In a sufficiently large pan or wok, heat some olive oil with butter and start sauteeing the garlic and onion with the herbs and chilli flakes until cooked.

Then add the rice and stir fry it for a while, until you notice it starting to stick. Also add any vegetables at this point.

Add your wine and stir the rice/onion/veg mixture until the wine has been absorbed / evaporated. The idea is to add liquid and cook it down repeatedly, letting the risotto pretty much dry up in between to the point of sticking a little bit.

Add some stock, cook it down again. Depending on how your stock is seasoned, add some salt and pepper and any other seasoning you like.

According to the instructions on the rice packet, it should have cooked in about 15-20 minutes. I found this to be quite inaccurate, mine took at least double that and in the end it was still a little “al dente” and certainly not overcooked at all.

So keep adding stock and stirring constantly (I did say it was labour intensive!), adding the shredded meat from the stock. Check what instructions your rice came with and start tasting at roughly 15-20 minutes cooking time to see if it’s done yet. You’re looking for the rice grains to be separate and hold their shape, but not crunchy. Just like pasta, you want the rice to still have some “bite” and be firm inside, however not too hard to eat! After stirring and adding more and more liquid you will notice that the Risotto has developed a silky, creamy textured liquid around the rice grains. This is the starch coming out of the rice and exactly as it’s supposed to happen!

If you feel it’s cooked to your liking, turn off the heat, add some more butter, grated parmesan cheese, any fresh leafy herbs you like and additional salt & pepper if needed.

I served the Risotto with some additional pieces of pheasant and roasted cherry tomatoes. Also, I added saffron quite in the beginning for some extra fragrance and colour, though I may have gotten a little colour, I couldn’t distinguish it in the finished product so I left it out of the recipe.

Anyone who has ever grown strawberries or other berries particularly loved by our feathered friends has probably shared in the same feeling of frustration and disappointment. To wait for what seems like forever for that first fruit to ripen to a gorgeous colour, salivating at the thought of its juicy sweetness, only to find that it has been eaten by something before we had the chance to harvest it ourselves.

Birds are great in the garden for a number of reasons. Not only can they be pretty and entertaining to look at, also they help get rid of certain pests. For example they may eat slugs which may also be responsible for destroying certain garden crops. But of course, we feel envious and spiteful when instead of ridding the lettuce of slugs, the birds decide to raid our soft fruit plants and shrubs.

We may even consider putting up fruit cages and netting to avoid such things from happening and I’m sure this is a quite effective way of protecting your allotment crops. But honestly, who wants to have a backyard covered in unsightly netting. Plus, putting up netting wastes precious time and energy we would rather spend elsewhere. So what to do?

Well, it seems that birds are mainly attracted to some of our favourite soft fruits like Strawberries and Raspberries because of their colour!

So the easiest way of birdproofing your strawberry plants is by growing different colours of strawberries.

There are some very nice varieties available that produce yellow or white fruit which birds will simply ignore. These may not be as attractive to look at as “proper” red ones, once you get over their “unripe” appearance, the flavour might surprise you.

Some suggestions:

White Soul / White Delight – Fragaria Vesca (alpine strawberry)

Yellow Alpine / Yellow Wonder – Fragaria Vesca (alpine strawberry)

Both of these are fairly similar looking plants, compact yet abundant as alpine strawberries should be.  And the fruit is small and white or yellow respectively and full of sweetness and flavour!

There are also some conventional type strawberries to choose from:

Pineberry – Fragaria x ananassa (Sold by a lot of names incl. “Anablanca” or “White dream”

Supposedly these taste of pineapple rather than strawberry but I can’t comment because I haven’t tried them. They seem to be extremely expensive to buy though!

Birdproof Raspberry tips:

So once you’ve sorted out your strawberries, you’re curious about raspberries as well?

Once again, you can opt for a yellow fruiting variety such as “Allgold” or I’ve recently come across one called “Twotimer Sugana Yellow”.

And what if you’ve got a bit raspberry patch already and are not interested in changing all the canes you ask? Well instead of going all neat-freak on your raspberry canes and tying them up to prevent them from flopping over, how about just ignoring the mess and letting them be. If they lean over as they grow and start bearing fruit, the leaves work as a rather useful shield to make the ripe berries less visible from above, and therefore fewer birds are likely to notice them!

Early spring – or depending how you look at these things; late winter – is traditionally a time for planning for the upcoming gardening year. I thought I’d get things started by making a list (for myself mostly at this point!) of all the food I have growing permanently in the garden. Considering most vegetables are annuals or not very winter hardy, this is mainly going to be a list of fruit bushes and herb plants.

Fruit trees:

None in the ground at this point. I had a small plum tree but sadly it had to go due to a bad case of silver leaf fungus.

On the bright side, I have been moving some plants around and created space for one or two small apple trees. But I have not yet chosen the varieties I would like to grow.

Lemon tree (potted) – After a challenging first year in the garden (not helped by my purchasing and putting it outside in a pot before the last frost had passed) it seems to be doing extremely well now. I’ve kept it indoors for the winter and it is absolutely covered in flowers, with one actually developing into a mini lemon already.

Not technically a fruit tree, more a shrub – I’ve got two very small Japanese Flowering Quinces. Technically they are ornamental but the fruit can be made into jelly just like normal quinces. I had a stray flower or two in late autumn so I’m hopeful they’ll flower and fruit this year in spring also.

Soft Fruit:

Raspberries – lots of them! These are well established canes, which seem to have been in the garden for many years. They fruit in July mainly and although it can be hard to keep up with them during that month, I might want to plant some late fruiting ones as well because by September I really start craving the fresh raspberries again.

Gooseberries – I planted two green ones and two red ones last year, sadly one died and I’m too disorganised to remember which where planted where. I expect my first harvest this year and then I’ll see what proportion of green and red I’m left with.

Redcurrant – Out of the two I planted last year,  only one made it. But it’s looking very promising for this season.  Once again, this year I’m expecting the first harvest.

Blueberries – Two tiny little shrubs at the moment. Hopefully they’ll fruit this year for the first time.

Loganberry/Tayberry – Not sure what it is, but I planted a cane of something that looked different from a raspberry last year. It’s quite small so I’m going to have to wait and see what the fruit looks like.

Green Grapes – Last summer I picked up a bargain grapevine from Aldi which I intend to train along a fence. Not sure what sort of progress I can expect this year.

Rhubarb – Ok not really a fruit, but I like to eat sweet preparations of it so I’ll keep it in this section. There is one great big “Glaskin’s Perpetual” and another much smaller one which might be Victoria, not sure. The big Rhubarb plant was very productive last year even though I only grew it from seed around 1.5 years ago. The other one I only planted last year and it didn’t grow very big yet but this year I should be able to harvest from that one as well. I would love to grow some more from seed (I’ve been collecting different varieties) but for now my garden is simply too small!

Strawberries – Too many to mention at this point. I’ve still got around a dozen decent sized “mainstream” type strawberry plants, with a similar quantity of small runners creeping through my flower beds. Add to that around 15 little Alpine Strawberry seedlings and a huge selection of seeds which I still need to sow this spring, I’m sure I’ll be swimming in strawberries this year!

Passionfruit – I’ve trained a passion flower to grow up a fence panel. It’s not very big so fingers crossed it will survive the winter and flower this year.

Elder – One by now 2 year old Sambucus Nigra “Black Lace”. It is almost 6 feet tall now and I am looking forward to lots of blossoms for Elderflower cordial this year. I doubt if I’ll leave enough to develop into berries.

Herbs

Sage – Two types – purple sage and a very attractive variegated green sage. Although I’m worried about the purple one, it looks very sad indeed and I might just need to replace it this year.

Rosemary – One small plant and a few cuttings. Not nearly enough but hopefully they’ll grow quicker than I’ll need to use it for cooking.

Thyme – Two plants of simple green thyme, generally enough to cover my needs. I would like some different varieties though.

Mint – I’ve been having some issues growing mint, last year the plants didn’t recover from the winter really, maybe I’ll have to refresh them this year.

Lemonbalm – upon moving into the house we found a vast patch of lemon balm all along one edge of the garden which I’ve pulled up for the most part. I don’t have enough use for it to grow that much, and it just takes over everything else. I did keep some in a pot though.

Parsley – Two types ; flat as well as curly parsley. These I planted from supermarket pots a few months ago after my previous batch of parsley had gone to seed. If they are anything like the previous ones they will soon take over the herb bed and I’ll have plenty of parsley for all sorts of interesting recipes (parsley pesto anyone?)

Oregano – grown from seed a few years ago, this is still going strong. It’s not very tasty for cooking I’ve found. So for now I’m just keeping it because it looks pretty when it flowers.I should probably buy a proper plant somewhere because apparently oregano is a little unreliable when grown from seed and you should propagate it by other means if you want to be sure of good flavour and scent.

Coriander – Because this is used quite a lot in Indian cooking, I always make sure I have some coriander. But so far I’ve been too lazy to grow it from seed and always just planted a supermarket plant in a large pot outside. The reason it’s in a pot is because slugs absolutely love it. So if I put it in the ground in between my other herbs, it hardly takes longer than a few days before there is nothing left.

Chives – I probably grow more than I need but it’s very easy to care for and is supposed to ward of certain pests so I’ve got plenty of chives growing in the herb bed.

Tarragon – Fingers crossed my little tarragon plant will make it through this week’s cold snap. It’s still too small to harvest from but hopefully that will change in a few month’s time.

Other plants

Chilli – I experimented last year with a packet of “mixed” chilli seeds. Firstly I was curious what type of chilli would grow (I’m still not sure, I only got one all of last year and it was sort of fat and stubby and not particularly hot. Though that could have been due to my impatience in trying it.) And secondly I wanted to see whether there is any benefit in letting a chilli grow as a perennial. Considering last year was quite disappointing, I’m hoping I’ll get some early flowering this year. And in addition to this plant, I will try to grow some from seeds collected out of dried chilli’s I use in cooking.