This and that

We've made our monthly groceryshopping and cleaned the entire first floor. I shouldn't be surprised that I don't have strength enough to water the gardens. After all I've got a flu and have less strength than I usually have. But it irks me, it really do, since I can see that all plants are thirsty. Tomorrow I'll take another day to just clean up and make everything easy and fun to care for.

As for my harvests I can now take 100g (3.53 ounces) tomatoes every other or third day. I've only harvest cuttings once, and that was 40g (1.41 ounces) which may sound little, but it filled a litre (1/3 gallon) so I got enough for a (small) family sized sallad anyway.

Last but not least; we may not have won the Eurovision Song Contest, but a swede won best in show at Chelsea Flower Show. Ulf Nordfjell designed the Daily Telegraph Garden at the show, and you can see it on the first picture here. Thing is, how should I celebrate this? Hmmm... a cup of herbal tea and a sandwhich, I think. Tallyho!

A look in the green book 090417

I haven't brought it out for a while now - at least not for the blog. The cold from Hell still lingers and my first enthusiasm have waned a bit so my writings tend to be short.

So.

I now know better how much water I use every time I water the gardens. This is what I wrote the 14ht of April
"Water needed 12.3 liters [3.25 US gallons]
Bokashifluid 20 milliliters [0.7 US ounces]"
"Soften 15 liters of water" [4 US gallons]"

12.3 liters of water is the smallest amount of water I''ve used while watering. A sunny day the plants craves up to 20 liters (5.2 US gallons). I start to ponder if I really need to soften all that water, but at the same time I remember those thick, yellowish crusts that developed on top of the soil when I didn't do this, so I press on. Those crust can harbour fungus and I have enough work with fungus gnats and thrips as it is.

The big need for water have made me upgrade my tools. Now I'm not only use the ten liter jam cauldron, I've added the five liter everyday kettle.

6th of April
"Popcorn sprouts ready! Bitter and a surprisingly sweet aftertaste. The seed is still hard - better to be used cooked or as babyleaf."
My quest for sprouts I can eat continues. I liked these popcornsprouts, but the hard corn made them difficult to eat so the can remains in the fridge. I'm planning a larger babyleafgarden with popcorn, sallads and peas. Will be fun!

16th of April
"Had two sugarsnap pods 10g harvest."
Yupp, the modest start of my harvest my friends. 10g (0.35 ounces) sugarsnaps, I'm not exactly calling BBC or CNN, but it is still pretty cool.

Something I will write about this evening is the letter I got in the mail today. I have a habit of attending every contest I can find when I'm visiting a fair, and it turns out I won a gift certificate at Plantagen (swedish plant mall) on Nordica Gardens. Jaaaaaay, I can shooooooooop!

Ain't that the life?

Today I took my first harvest from the turnip/carrot/scallion box and added nasturtium leaves to that. Unfortunately my husband made sallad of it before I had a chance to take a photo.

I just wanted some culinary facts on garden sage!

This photo is called "sage" and the photografer is Sporkist. You can read more about Sporkist and watch his photos here.

Jeesus!

I'm starting to get quite a lot of garden sage in my boxes, and have reached the "what am I to do with all this?" stage. Ordinary gardeners mostly reaches it in the autumn, but I suspect I have to live with it the year around.

I decided to make a search on the web to see if I could gain some deeper knowledge about this plant - and maybe find one or two recipes.

I learnt one thing pretty fast. Sage attracts bees, people who wants magic in their life, and people who likes to smoke things.

If anyone of my readers are half way to Tescos or Walmart I have to make you disappointed. There are many kinds of sage, and the variety that do have hallucinogenic effects is an american one, not for sale in ordinary grocery stores (at least not in Sweden). But all kinds of sage are poisonous in bigger amounts, so don't serve it as a salad or to pregnant women.

I'm not a big fan of fooling around with magic, so I skipped those parts. I wanted recipes - or at least some general culinary advices. In the shadow of all "magical uses" my harvest seemed a bit meager.

Sage is used with fat fish, pork and mutton. It's particularly popular in Italy where it's often used together with rosemary. Cheese is also spiced with sage. Whatever the use it's preferable to use fresh leaves, since the aroma disappears to some extent with drying. It is possible to use it in tea to cure colds (works sometimes), but be frugal both in the dosage and the length of the cure - see above.

Ah well, I'll make another search - on food fora this time.