T stands for....rhubarb syrup!

 Yesterday I read about Nicole's gardening and her delicious veggie harvest. So I thought I'd share my own, as gardening is in full swing over here.

The first row of potatoes with six plants brought almost 6 kgs of huge potatoes. Yum! And six more rows to go.

We have neighbors which own over 60 fruit trees. Most of them, lke apples and pears go into juice making, which you can then buy from local shops. But others are so delicious like these pears he brought us. We usually pay back in tomato sauce, lettuce and zucchini, as they don't have a veggie garden. 

We had a very rainy (much needed) July, so the tomatoes only start to ripen by now. This was the first from last week, but I picked about 15 more of this variety yesterday.

Since the climate gets milder and warmer, I can now grow plants, which wouldn't grow without a greenhouse some years ago. Like these eggplants/aubergines. Left is a variety called "Blauhilde", right is called "Little Green". I will try and make veggie "Schnitzel" from them. A co-worker gave me the recipe.

I grow lots of different veggies and fruits in my garden in mixed cultivation beds and sometimes it looks like a big jungle and there's always something to pick. Sometimes it's all green: zucchini, cucumbers, bush and runner beans, basil.

I also got some berry bushes, as gifts or bought end of seasons for little money. Berries are incredibly expensive, when you have to buy them at the grocery store, so growing them in the garden also saves money. I have blueberries (not the native variety, but the American), blackberries, raspberries, black currants and wild strawberries. 

And once everything is harvested, the canning starts. This weekend I canned: Pesto alla Genovese, dill pickles from the mini cucumbers, pears for dessert or cake, rhubarb sauce and syrup. The beans don't get canned, but blanched and frozen.

And the rhubard syrup buys me the ticket for T stands for...., hosted by Bleubeard and Elizabeth. Get well soon!

The #wildkräuterreise continues

 I was invited by a dear friend on Bluesky to join a "#wildkräuterreise" (wild herb trip), which leads us to find and get to know 12 wild herbs around the Summer Solstice. The fun thing is, that I have most of them in my garden, but also found some during my lunch break walks. I already presented four pages some time ago, so here are the remainging eight to fnish the journey. Hope you like!

Ribwort Plantain

Elderberry

Pineapple Weed

Common Daisy

Cleavers

Viper's Bugloss

Lavender

Vervain

T stands for....wasps and willows!

Monday morning and I needed a "real coffee", I mean one from a Moka Express, with the typical noise and heavenly smell and all. 

Not much on the drawing table lately, but I finished this little bookmark. I had it sketched out for quite a while, but only colored it last week. It's Grey Heron. I love to make bookmarks from paper cutoffs, which otherwise would go to the bin.

While I'm not much at the drawing table, I spent a lot of time in the garden, as the weather was nice and warm last week. I spotted the first wild bee burrows. I have a slope in my garden and during spring and summer, the whole slope is covered with burrows and a cloud of flying bees in all sizes. Amazing how these small creatures can dig these holes into our clay soil, which is hard as concrete, when dry.

And for those, who aren't already in love with those little souls: Here's a male Hairy-Footed Flower Bee (Anthophora plumipes). Isn't he gorgeous and cute? And it's perfectly clear, why they are called "hairy-footed".

And since these beauties fly very early in spring, it's essential that they find something to eat. Besides crocus and many other early bloomers, willows offer lots of food. Gladly I planted some of them in my hedgerow. Look at these colors!

And there are lots of other species foraging on the willows. And yes, that's a wasp. But one of the Polistinae family, which are much more relaxed than the pesty little members of the Vespinae family. "Feldwespen", as they are called in German, don't go after your breakfast. ;)

Sharing this post with Bleubeard and Elizabeth for T stands for.... Happy T Day!

 

How does your garden grow?: Snow and first sowings

Two weeks ago, right after I thought, that winter is over and after having some sunny days, we got....SNOW. Yes, I know, some of you have very harsh winters with lots of snow, but here, we don't have lots of snow days for some years now.

I love snow days, especially when I don't have to go to work, and so I enjoyed the views and did some indoor sowings. Besides onions I usually sow chilis, peppers and eggplants mid February, as they need some time germinating and growing.

I have lot of varieties from small open source seed sellers, as I don't want to support the "BIG" firms for several reasons. I wrote about that more than once and I strongly recommend to find and support such sellers, too, if you grow your own veggies.

Sooooo how does your garden grow?

How does your garden grow?

 Writing this in the middle of a heavy snow shower taking place outside my window, while the pictures were taken in much sunnier weather.

For the second time I'm growing garlic in my garden during winter. Three varieties planted in November are now showing the first green (ok, light pink in the first photo).

Garlic: Messidrome, Germidour and Sprint are the varieties I planted.

I have four rows in the garden and one pot on the terrace. All looking great, but the pot seems to have it a bit warmer, as I planted this one later than the rows in the garden and it came up faster.

Endives are looking good, but where way bigger around this time last year. I think the low temps in January caused this, although I covered them with a fleece.

Celery

The rhubarb is only showing a small ball of leaves.

Besides the veggies there are some wildflowers showing their leafves already: Rose Campion (Silene coronaria), which is not really a wildflower here, but grows everywhere in my garden.

Clary Sage (Salvia sclarea)

I cut down the wild teasels from last year, but I'm sure, there is some offspring somewhere in the garden. They were about 2.5 metres high from all the rain we got last summer. Did you know these plants store rain water in their leaves? Good thing for birds and insects.

And right in front of my compost ( the most impractical place in my garden for BIG flowers) there grow Mullein (Verbascum spec.) and Evening Primrose (Oenothera spec.). Maybe I'll use the other compost during summer. :D

Also the two cichory plants (Cichorium intybus) are coming again and I'm really looking forward to their blue flowers, which are only open until around 11 am, when it gets too warm. Then they are gone. They also grew up to 2.5 metres last year and had hundreds of blue flowers over months.

How does your garden grow?

T stands for....a lovely tea advent calendar!

I'm late to the T party, but here we go. I got a very nice looking advent calendar from my co-workers, filled with tasty teas. I'm usually ver sceptical, when it comes to tea advent calendars, as I got some over the years, which had very bad tasting teas included (like they were in a cupboard for centuries and just came out to be stuffed in that calendar :D). But this one from Cupper is yummy. And look at that cute design!

And while sipping a cup of tea I'm in full giftmaking mode. This year it's all about beeswax and things from the garden. Like these cute soaps with beeswax.

I also made some lipbalm and....

....hand cream with beeswax.

And on top some tealights, which smell heavenly.

I also made different varieties of vinegar and oil and some herb salt, all ingredients, except the olive oil and the vinegar, are from my garden. Worked on this for the past months and am so happy seeing it all come together.

I'll pack the sets into these upcycled cereal containers, which I think, look great.

Sharing it all with T stands for..... over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's place.

T stands for....a new cup (paired up with Christmas card printing and winter gardening)

I finished my Christmas cards and am now looking forward to sending them out to some lovely people. This year I printed them with different techniques like linocut or gelli plate. I found this fun video of creating printing templates for the gelli plate with a hot glue gun. :)

I'm always searching for veggies that can be planted in the garden during winter. Winter here doesn't bring as much snow and cold temps as it did 10 years ago, but it can get quite frosty on some days. So here we have a winter pea, which will bring peas in early spring, planted in November.

There's some winter garlic, which will be ready for harvest in June/July.

I also have some broad beans (Vicia faba), which can deal with low temps and will be ready for harvest in May/June.

And to qualify for "T stands for...." with Bleubeard and Elizabeth, I'll show you a tea can I made at a team building event in office. Was a lot of fun and ofc mine has to picture a bird.

I'll enjoy some tea or coffee from this one in the very near future.