Sparrows love string

The sparrows in my garden have been pulling bits off the string I tied up the bean poles with. I think they've been using it in their nests. This video is from June:

Fruit and veg that can survive slugs and snails

 

I have a major slug and snail problem in my garden, to the extent that if plants can survive my garden, fundamentally they can survive slugs and snails. I have had such a bad year for slug damage that I've barely been able to grow any brassicas or root veg at all. Currently I have a few surviving kale plants (mainly in copper slug rings), plenty of rocket (when I can get it to grow at all it survives them fine). and a few surviving chard plants. Slugs and snails have chomped their way through everything else (or at least, I'm assuming they're the guilty party, certainly my seedlings vanished). But I'm pleased to say that my rhubarb is surviving fine. I took the slug ring off when it was still pretty new to the garden, and although it does have holes in its leaves, it's grown well and is looking strong, with no damage to the stems. 

In other triumphs, the sweetcorn is also doing fine, although none of the corn I planted directly in the ground has survived. I think the slugs probably got it when it was still tiny. I learnt from Gardeners' World this week that the further apart you plant sweetcorn, the more cobs it will produce per plant. If I'd known then what I know now, I would simply have put the plants further apart.

My tomatoes were also a pleasant surprise. I haven't had much time for gardening this year, but when I went out and looked at them, a lot had grown quite big. It just wasn't initially visible until I staked them. Some even had green tomatoes growing on them. They do have some slug damage, but they are surviving well overall.

My broad beans, on the other hand, have been an unmitigated disaster. They ended up getting black fly, then they got rust, then – rust obviously being tasty to slugs and snails – they got devoured by slugs and snails, all before I could get any crop. I'll be lucky to get as many as 4 pods of beans from them this year. It hasn't been so bad in previous years, but this year, growing amidst my wild flowers, they've done appallingly.

They do not grow well with plants that can harbour snails. Some of my beans are doing OK though, despite sharing with other plants. The ones that didn't meet a snail-y death even went so far as to strangle some of my other plants.

The raspberries are also doing well - despite also getting some rust. They never get snail damage. The squashes only just survived though. If I hadn't put them in slug rings and gone on slug patrol to get as many slugs and snails as possible, they'd be dead - as would the two surviving sunflowers of the 15 I planted.

On the plus side though, the garden does look pretty and is bursting with wildlife (albeit with rather more slugs and snails than I'd like).

Flowers and slugs outcompeting the veg

We have so many slugs and snails that every year is a difficult year for slugs and snails for me. This year is no different, but somehow, despite COVID, I've had less time for the garden than usual this year, so it feels more like the slugs and snails are doing more damage and that I'm fighting more of a losing battle.

I didn't originally put slug rings around my squashes, as they were so big they wouldn't have fitted inside. But the slugs soon saw to that, and I put rings round the surviving ones to preserve what was left!

My decision to have more flowers around the veg may have been a contributing factor, as they give the slugs ad snails  more places to hide. In particular, I am a little worried for my beans, which I planted around the flowers instead of taking out the flowers I had grown from seed either before they flowered or before I out the beans in. The flowers grew much taller than I had expected, and I clearly hadn't paid much attention to the seeds in my mix, as I was surprised to discover myself growing both borage and cornflowers and also by how tall the cornflowers got. Time will tell whether the runner beans survive this. Other beans have been eaten back to the stem by greedy snails, but the runner beans seem to be hanging on in there, and I hope that when they grow taller than the flowers they will do well.

My broad beans seem to be faring better. They have more been planted alongside the flowers than in among them. However, the black fly have finally arrived, along with a bit of rust, so they're not doing any better than they do in other years.

The climbing roses at the bottom of my garden are looking glorious. They remind me of a bride in all their white finery, and I have taken to thinking of them as "the bride", despite the fact that they are actually two plants. They don't compete with anything, as there's too much shade at ground level to grow any vegetables down there.

My rhubarb is flourishing. Sure, it's got slug damage (the leaves are clearly only poisonous to humans), but considering it dropped every single one of the leaves and stalks it came with, the current number of leaves is very reassuring for me, even if they are a bit slug-battered.

Wildflowers in the vegetable garden and No Mow May

 My vegetable garden this year has been even wilder and freer than in previous years (despite my laid-back approach to weeding). This year, I positively sowed a wildflower seed mix and left those of the self-seeded flowers I like the most growing where they planted themselves.

As a result, my legume (beans/peas) and cucurbit (this year just squash) beds are full of flowers. I'm not sure if it's because of this or all the rain we've had this May or the dry April or just dumb luck, but for whatever reason, my broad beans, which I fitted in at the end of the bed, barely have any black fly yet. Normally, by this time of year they're absolutely covered in them. So they're much healthier than they usually are, which is a real bonus. 

I am, however, left with a bit of a conundrum: do I need to remove some of my flowers to plant my beans (some of which I started in the greenhouse, others of which I was given by a neighbour), or can I just get away with fitting them  in between the flowers? I'm going to try the latter approach, although I'm going to go on slug patrol first, as I've noticed that every single one of my brassica seedlings (radishes and turnips have been devoured by slugs and snails so that barely a trace is left. If I hadn't seen them appear with my own eyes, I'd just have thought I had dud seeds. 

All the seedlings you can see in the picture are self-seeded nasturtiums. I still don't know what happened to the root veg I planted - dud seeds or slugs. There are, at any rate, a lot of slugs and snails at large in my garden at the moment, possibly due to all the rain. Luckily, they seem not to be interested in my mangetout, so those at least have survived.

I've also been doing No Mow May. Despite all the rain, the grass hasn't actually grown that much yet, except at the edges, so mainly it just looks a bit messy. It's possibly not the best month for it, as I mainly have daisies coming up at the moment, whereas my lawn is much more diverse later in the year with clover and speedwell and buttercups (and you get to see a lot of those flowers, as fortnightly is the most it ever gets mowed).

Lemon chili crumble cake (Streuselkuchen)

This is another German cake recipe from Dr Oetker that I've adapted to make with ingredients available in the UK. The original is available in German on https://www.oetker.de/rezepte/r/zitronen-chili-streuselkuchen. My cake tasted better on the second day than the first, possibly because I hadn't left it to cool for long enough before eating the first slice.

It makes about 12 generous pieces or 16 smaller ones, and you will need a 26 cm springform cake tin to make it in.

Crumble ingredients:

½ - 1 small red chili pepper (if you use one that is too mild, you won't notice it at all)

300 g spelt flour

60 g brown sugar (the original uses vanilla sugar, so feel free to use vanilla sugar (i.e. sugar that's been sitting with a vanilla pod in it) here)

Peel of 1 -2  lemons

150 g soft butter or margarine (plus a little extra for greasing)

100 g chopped almonds

Filling ingredients:

250 g apples (about 2 to 2 1/2) - I used golden delicious 

500 g quark (ideally 40% fat, but actually any you can get)

200 g sour cream (highest fat available)

80 g brown sugar

37 g custard powder

3 medium eggs

1. Grease the 26 cm springform cake tin. Preheat the oven to about 170 °C/fan 150 °C.

2. To make the crumble, clean the chili pepper of seeds and chop very finely (it's advisable to wear rubber gloves to do this). 

3. Place the spelt flour in a mixing bowl and add the remaining crumble ingredients. Using a mixer (pastry hook or similar), mix on low speed until crumbles form. (If you haven't left the butter out of the fridge long enough for it to go soft, you either need to wait until it does or rub it into the flour like you would for pastry first, before adding the other ingredients)

4. Spread a good half of the crumble on the bottom of the springform cake tin and press down. 

5. Place the tin on a rack in the bottom third of the oven and bake for around 15 minutes.

6. Put the tin with the pre-baked base on a cake rack and allow to cool.

7. Press a good half of the remaining crumble mixture into the springform cake tin to form a 3 cm high rim.

8. Other than the apples, put all the the remaining filling ingredients in a bowl and mix well.

9. Wash the apples, core them and optionally peel them (I did, but the original recipe mentions neither peeling nor coring). Cut them into small cubes and spread these on the base.

10. Pour over the filling mix, then sprinkle the remaining crumble on top. 

11. Put the cake into the bottom third of the oven and bake for about 50 minutes.

12. Loosen and remove the sides of the springform cake tin. Let the cake cool on the bottom of the tin on a cake rack for at least 2 hours.

Supporting autumn fruiting raspberries

Autumn fruiting raspberries are great. You just chop them down in ground level in February and they grow again, giving you lots of lovely fruit year after year (in my case in late July and August) with very little further effort. You don't even need to support them. But, if like me, you are growing them right next to a path and/or the doors to the greenhouse and/or shed, you might want to, as otherwise they do tend to scratch at you as you walk past.

In previous years, we have used bamboo canes with string tied around them to try and keep the raspberries in. But the raspberry canes have proven stronger than the canes. So what we've now done is buy wooden stakes. The wooden stakes were approximately 180 cm long with pointed tips, so we could bash them more easily into the ground.

We used a mallet to drive them about 30 cm into the ground and then tied string around them at three heights to keep the raspberries in. We actually did it while the raspberries were almost ready to fruit, but doing it before they grow is probably more sensible.

Here's a picture from last year:

You'll notice that since last year, we've also added some paving slabs to make a path. These are not concreted in. We just removed patches of lawn to make them level with the grass. This is fine for us, as their weight keeps them in place, but if you have anyone or anything come into your garden that might injure themselves on unsecured slabs, you're probably better off concreting them in.

Here's a picture of the garden as it is today. You'll notice that I've already got my first bamboo canes in one of the beds. They're for mangetout. And behind them I have broad beans growing. My beds are a bit messier this year, as I'm growing flowers in them before I put some of the veg in, and not all the mixed seeds I scattered have grown, leaving a rather patchy impression in the beds. However, the bees will appreciate any flowers I grow at all, and the sparrows also appreciate them. I've seen them devouring large chunks of leaf from some of the plants.

German Apple Bienenstich (Bee Sting) Cake

I've adapted this recipe from Dr Oetker's German website: https://www.oetker.de/rezepte/r/apfel-bienenstich-torte

Bienenstich is German type of cake. The word means bee sting, but it's not clear why they're called that, as they don't contain any honey. Instead, their key characteristic is their caramelised almond topping.

German cakes are usually delicious. But it's often hard to find the ingredients for them in the UK. I've therefore adapted this recipe so that UK ingredients can be used. I used Gala apples in mine, but if I make it again, I'll either pre-cook them a little ot try a different sort, as although these tasted good, they remained overly firm after being cooked. The cake freezes adequately. It doesn't look as good after being frozen and there's a little deterioration in texture (you probably wouldn't want to serve the defrosted version to guests), but it still tastes fine and is fundamentally still a nice cake you enjoy eating.

German Apple Bienenstich (Bee Sting) Cake

You will need a 26 cm springform cake tin (I've often been successful using a 23 cm tin and adapting the cooking time with other cakes, but this cake wouldn't fit in a smaller cake tin. You might get away with a 23 cm tin if you only only use 3/4 of the ingredients).

Ingredients

A little butter for greasing

Pastry:

350 g plain flour

135 g sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract (or essence)

1 pinch salt

125 g soft butter or margarine

2 eggs (medium)

Filling:

1.5 kg eating apples(this is usually around 11 or 12 eating apples)

250 g full fat crème fraîche

4 eggs (medium)

1 tbsp cornflour

85 g sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract (or essence)

1 tsp ground cinnamon

Topping:

75 g butter

75 g sugar

100 g whipping cream

150 g flaked almonds

Optional serving suggestion:

Whipped cream

1. Grease the base of the springform cake tin. Preheat the oven on to about 200 °C/180 °C fan.

2. Put the pastry ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix everything with a mixer using the dough hook to form a dough – start on on the lowest speed, then gradually increase to the highest speed. If your butter or margarine is too hard, this will take much longer (and you risk crumbs flying everywhere).

3. Separate the dough into two halves, then roll one half of the dough out on the base of the springform cake tin. Place the springform cake tin rim around it. 

4. Shape the rest of the dough into a sausage long enough to go all the way round the inside of the edge of the cake tin. Place it around the edge of the dough on the base of the springform cake tin and use your fingers or thumbs to press it against the sides of the cake tin, so that it goes all the way up to the top of the spring form cake tin.

6. Mix the crème fraîche with the eggs, cornflour, sugar, vanilla extract and cinnamon.

7. Core then peel the apples. Cut them in half, then cut each half into 6 to 8 slices (ideally smaller than I did). Layer the apple slices on top of the pastry in the base of the cake tin (the German recipe did not specify what it meant by "layer", so although I started off placing them neatly, I ended up piling them in. Possibly I should have tried to keep them in neater layers). 

8. Pour the crème fraîche mixture over the apples. 

9. Put the cake tin in the bottom third of the oven and bake for about 30 minutes.

10. While the cake is baking, make the topping:  melt the butter and sugar in a pan. On a medium heat, add the cream. Stir for about five minutes while the mixture thickens a little (mine did not thicken much at all).

11. Stir in the almonds. 

12. Once the cake is out of the oven, reduce the oven temperature to about 180 °C/fan 160 °C. Spread the topping over the part-baked cake, then return to the bottom third of the oven and bake for around another 40 minutes.

13. Leave the cake to cool in the tin on a cooling rack (this will take at least one hour). Then remove the cake from the tin. Serve with whipped cream, if desired.