How many of you have heard of Jerusalem Artichokes? Not the Globe Artichokes that you can easily buy in the supermarket, but Jerusalem Artichokes? No? No-one? Well you’re not alone. I hadn’t heard of them either until we were researching perennial vegetables.
Tag Archives: Sustainable Gardening
The last of the Fruit Harvest (thank goodness!)
If you’ve been reading our blog you’ll know that we are self sufficient in fruit. That is unless we decide we want a banana or pineapple which struggle in the UK climate. All of our apple trees can be found in the field where we keep our chickens so we make maximum use of theContinue reading “The last of the Fruit Harvest (thank goodness!)”
Who Knew Parsnips Are So Versatile?
The humble parsnip is a vegetable that only EVER was roasted in our home before we started our smallholding lifestyle. Like most things in our home we use the phrase “Waste not, want not” every day so we do much more with parsnips now.
Blackberry Bliss
We have a large fruit cage in our field where we grow raspberries and blackberries. I appreciate it’s not pretty, but who needs pretty when we really need fruit. It’s very productive with early golden raspberries, late red raspberries and right in the middle of the summer we have lots of glorious blackberries.
Our Cheap Fruit Cage is Paying Off!
Over this last winter here in the UK we were required by law to keep our lovely chickens either indoors or in fully netted enclosures due to Avian Influenza Restrictions. We bought three 3m x 6m polytunnel frames that we connected up and covered with bird netting. It was much less space than they wouldContinue reading “Our Cheap Fruit Cage is Paying Off!”
For the love of Elders
This week we have been making elderflower cordial and its made me think about the underappreciated Elder tree. We have lots of elder trees on our smallholding and we make maximum use of their flowers and berries in season. There are so many uses for the flowers, berries and wood too it’s baffling that theseContinue reading “For the love of Elders”
A Sustainable Closed Loop Eco-System (or The Cycle of Poop!)
We try to live as sustainably as possible. We make use of as many things produced on the smallholding as possible and that includes all of the poop that the chickens produce. We like to call it “Black Gold”. Yes, that’s right….chicken poop is an asset for a sustainable smallholding. We were recently asked whatContinue reading “A Sustainable Closed Loop Eco-System (or The Cycle of Poop!)”