Potato Harvest

I have just harvested my first ever batch of potatoes. It was so painfully easy that I am convinced absolutely anyone could do it. Look at the bounty just four seed potatoes produced!

  When it comes to gardening I’m an experimenter. Yes, some information is good but I’m convinced the best way to learn is to have a go for yourself. Each garden is unique, as is ever gardener. You may have loads of sun or hardly any, lots of time or be dashing from one place to the next all day long. I have a tiny garden where everything is in containers and I like minimal input and watering for my bounty. With the right, well placed plants such materials and habits can still produce lots of fresh fruit and veg.

This potato growing method below worked for me and it is really simple. Hopefully this will encourage you to try it for yourself and not worry about following lots of rules and regulations. It’ll be fresh new potatoes for dinner in no time!

Getting Started:

All you need is a good sized tub (I used an old recycling box -  about two ft across and 1 and a half ft deep - that I scrubbed, sanded and painted to look less bin-like), some multipurpose compost and some seed potatoes. For my recycling box I used four seed potatoes which seemed adequate room for them and produced a good crop. I planted in May and harvested in late August.

Planting:

When your seed potatoes arrive (I got mine from Rocket Gardens) fill your box half full of compost and place the potatoes in. Cover with about ten centimetres of compost and water well. Within a few days shoots will start appearing above the compost. When this happens cover them completely with another 10cm layer of compost. Continue this process until your box is full. This encourages new potatoes to form all the way up the length of the plant.

Looking after:

My potato plants were fine in a more shady spot and the mass of foliage keeps the soil nice and moist so I found them to be very little work with infrequent watering required. I even managed to turn the whole box over one day (don’t ask!) and they survived that so I’m confident it would be pretty hard to kill them! I left mine to grow for three and a half months and harvested them as the foliage started to yellow and look a bit sad. I had a good harvest from this but some small ones so a couple more weeks wouldn’t hurt I’d say!

All in all I’m chuffed with my potato season! If you have any questions or hints from your own garden feel free to comment below.

Sugar craft for (very lovely) dummies

I have always been a fan of cupcakes. Not just because they are amazing when stuffed into one's mouth but also because they are little mini works of art. There is nothing like spending an afternoon crafting them to perfection while singing along to the radio at the top of your voice to really restore the soul (if not the neighbours sanity). Luckily if you have driven your neighbours mental in the baking stage they will love you at the eating stage. Cupcakes are just meant to be given away and let’s be honest, we all love a bit of oohing and ahhing over our culinary creations.

In an effort to become a cupcake baker extraordinaire I went off for a lesson with the lovely Jo Taylor of Just Iced Cupcakes. At this session (don’t worry Jo I won’t give all your secrets away) and in my subsequent sugar crafting adventures (and misadventures!) I have discovered a few helpful things for the budding sugar crafter. I’m not saying I will make you into a professional baker but I can at least give you some hints and tips on creating gorgeous homemade cupcakes cheaply and as fast as you can sing though a Glee album.

To get sugar crafting there are only really a few things that you need.

1. Some sugar paste. Obviously. Though not quite so easy if, like me, you are a cake decorating novice. There are loads and loads of varieties on the scene and no one likes to look like a cake dunce or end up with piles of sugar paste that they don’t know what to do with. So what you need is flower paste as it dries hard and is good for detailed work. A word of warning, this can dry out fast so you’re best to decide on a colour scheme for your cupcakes and just get a couple of colours or get a white pack and some food colouring (paste food colouring is good) and make up your own colours. I defiantly favour this now as you can get much richer colours – hot pink roses anyone?!
2. A teeny tiny rolling pin. Quite frankly these are so cute you should own one anyway just for the sheer fun of it. These are basically smooth plastic rods that you use to roll out the sugar paste. You could also do with a non stick board to roll onto but if you don’t want to get this till later you can use icing sugar on your worktop to prevent the paste sticking but this does dilute the colour of your sugar paste a bit.
3. Some cutters. You don’t have to have these, I will show you how to make roses without any equipment at all, but they are really cute. This is where sugar crafting gets very fun indeed and be warned it is easy to go a little crazy and own a whole menagerie of cutter animals.
4. Some glitter. Again, this isn’t essential but oh so lovely. I would put glitter on my macaroni if I could get away with it.

And that is really it! There are some great stockists online and with this basic kit you can see if you like it before you start buying all sorts of kit you might not use.

Some good retailers to check out are:

http://www.cakescookiesandcraftsshop.co.uk/

http://www.squires-shop.com/

http://www.cakecraftshop.co.uk/

http://www.lakeland.co.uk/

Next time in cupcake school (much better than regualr school isn't it?!), how to make sugar roses. These really do cause people to collapse in awe of your domestic goddess skills, so well worth a try!