Sharing posts from my wordpress blog

[edonald774]

Winter spiced tea recipe

Winter spiced tea recipe

Spiced tea was a recent discover for me, and to be honest, at first I wasn’t sure. Now however I am a full on convert. It’s another of those little comforters for the dark cold months we are about to embrace.

So where did this come form? Well for me, it was an innocuous little packet of tea we bought in Whittards. It was cold and dark and Kate and I were trampling along the high street near to…

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A garden update for August

A garden update for August

It’s the end of August, summer is beginning to pass to make way for all the gorgeous colours of autumn and I guess that’s probably the perfect time to give you an update on the garden for this season so far and let you know how things have been with the new greenhouse.

I’ve probably done fewer updates this year than normal, but it’s not because there is nothing happening, it’s simply because…

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Blossom end rot on my tomatoes for the first time ever

Blossom end rot on my tomatoes for the first time ever. Sigh!

I’ve a sad story to tell today, we’ve had our very first experience of blossom end rot. Sigh! Thing is, it’s not necessarily unusual for gardeners to experience this with their tomatoes, it’s just the first time we’ve seen it so we thought it would be a great thing to share and hopefully help you guys learn along with us and make it less common.

It sound dramatic, doesn’t it, blossom end rot!…

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Iced coffee - 3 ways, latte, and freddo

Iced coffee – 3 ways, latte, and freddo

I have been getting into iced coffee this summer in a big way thanks to my teammate Iraklis who introduced me to Freddo Espresso. I’m not a huge fan of those sweet high st. coffee chain iced coffees so when he introduced me to the strong, black greek version I was hooked.

So I thought I’d share my iced coffee secrets with you guys since we’re about to get a warm snap and you might fancy one.

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Deadheading your flowers: why, how and when?

Deadheading your flowers: why, how and when?

Deadheading basically just means taking the spent flowers off your plants and there are two good reasons why you should:

dead and decaying flowers just don’t look great and can make your whole plant look a bit ropey

it can encourage your plant to keep flowering for longer or even give you a whole second flush of flowers

Why & when?

Well, basically the whole purpose of life (plants and…

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The jade plant adventure finishes

The jade plant adventure finishes.

Well my adventure with the jade plants has come to an end. The very last of the little cuttings has gone to it’s forever home and my plants are looking happy and healthy.

I am becoming quite the regular at delivering plants by bike.

I can’t believe I went from absolute panic that I was going to lose my plant, and I really believed I was, to having so many healthy jade plants that I was…

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Carrot salad with ginger and lemon dressing

Carrot salad with ginger and lemon dressing

It’s been mad hot this last few weeks and the idea of being in a hot kitchen cooking or even sitting eating hot food might not be so appealing, but then again not everyone gets excited at the idea of salad for lunch so we thought we’d share one of our favourite and quick to make salads so you guys can add it to your arsenal. It’s great on it’s own but goes amazingly with BBQ as well, a great…

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The bounty of the greenhouse and a lesson in keeping a garden journal

The bounty of the greenhouse and a lesson in keeping a garden journal

We are eating tomatoes and peppers from the greenhouse, along with carrots and courgettes from the beds – hooray! Nothing beats that feeling of making a meal with produce from the garden, bring on the smugness.

However, when I sat down to write this post for you today to tell you about the exciting news, I was about to misinform you (shock horror, Eli say it isn’t true!) I have been so excited…

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Reduce, Reuse then Recycle: we’re trying to reduce our reliance on plastic

Reduce, Reuse then Recycle: we’re trying to reduce our reliance on plastic

Our awareness (and I mean our as in all of us humans here) of plastic and how it’s trashing our planet has very much risen over the last year or so, I’d say steadily but I think I have definitely noticed a spike over the last year.

Obviously we are no longer using plastic shopping bags, we switched to reusable bags a few years ago (this is now the norm in Scotland and you are strongly…

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Hanging baskets - time for a bit of a refresh

Hanging baskets – time for a bit of a refresh

When the garden is in bloom there is no better antidote to the blues. Bright, colourful flowers and a bit of sun may just be the best thing in the world. However, this weekend saw us give in and accept that the hanging baskets needed a wee bit of help. They weren’t horrendous, I mean there was stuff in them, they were just a…

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A walk around the garden with a selfie stick – June update 2019 It's been a good while since we just went for a walk around the garden and talked about what's happening, so come for a walk with me and a go-pro on a selfie stick.

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Remember Colin? Let us introduce you to Jim...

Remember Colin? Let us introduce you to Jim…

Remember Colin? Every year we named one of the courgette plants Colin and used him as a way of updating you guys as to how things were going with the seedlings.

Colin over the years

Well this year we thought we’d do something different. In honour of Jim McColl, our favourite gardener who retired from Beechgrove Garden this year, let us introduce you to Jim the tomato plant.

Jim the blue…

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Creating a bee friendly garden

Creating a bee friendly garden

When we first started gardening, I was terrified of having bees in the garden. I should have written terrified in capital letters to get over to you guys what a big deal it was. I didn’t want flowers near any of the areas where we sat because if a bee went anywhere near me I freaked out and would literally run off in a panic. I could probably argue that this wasn’t an over reaction, as I had been…

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Jade plant cuttings - an update on my adventure

Jade plant cuttings – an update on my adventure

I have a very happy update for you, my jade plants are now, all, very happy which is such a relief for me. It’s really hard to get over in a blog post, just how much I was worrying about my plants after I almost killed them with love. But happily all the plants ( all 12) are healthy and growing well.

For those of you who didn’t follow along with me as I learned to save and look after my…

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Greenhouses: glass versus polycarbonate. Is there much difference?

Greenhouses: glass versus polycarbonate. Is there much difference?

I wrote a blog post a good while back now asking if an unheated greenhouse really made much difference and I think having one here in the cold, wet north really was a great tester.

http://www.eliapplebydonald.co.uk/blog/unheated-greenhouse-does-it-really-make-a-difference/

In that post, one of the things I commented on was the fact that I had no experience of the difference between a…

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[edonald774]

See ya suckers!! Pruning tomato plants for better harvests.

See ya suckers!! Pruning tomato plants for better harvests.

I suspect this may be the most talked about, googled and youtubed piece of advice for gardeners growing tomatoes, but also the one which is surrounded by the most confusion. Pruning your tomatoes.

The thing is, it actually doesn’t have to be confusing or complicated, here is my simple guide to tomato plant pruning.

Pruning tomato suckers is more important with vine-type varieties…

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Supporting your tomato plants - we go fancy pants

Supporting your tomato plants – we go fancy pants

Tomato plants get big. Really big. So they generally need a bit of support to keep them upright and stop them falling over with their own weight.

We’ve generally done this one of two ways in the greenhouse, a bamboo cane which we loosely tie the stem of the plant to, to help keep it upright, or a big bit of string hanging from the roof that we twirl around the plant. Both have worked…

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