It was getting tough in 2006 and the workhouse still threatens us in 2011

[Deleted User]

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Ellidee

Hello ! I have been lurking on here for the last few days so when I saw a recipe for oven dried tomatoes I thought I should share.

It was in yesterday's ( Saturday) Daily Telegraph, in the Gardening Section, under the heading 'Too much of a good thing can be wonderful' They gave 3 recipes for gluts including the tomato one. I have looked online for a link to post but can't find one so here goes !

Slice cherry tomatoes in half and larger tomatoes into quarters and place on on baking trays, cut sides up.

Put the oven on it's lowest setting and slide the tomatoes in, leaving the door slightly ajar.

Leave for at least four hours, checking regularly. You want to drive off a good deal of the moisture to concentrate the flavour, without browning the edges too much. When they are crinkled but still juicy inside tip them into small, sterilised jars and cover with warm olive oil.

Hope this helps !

Gigervamp

kittie wrote: »

Gooseberries need pollinators

Is that just some types? I have a red gooseberry and it fruited without another gooseberry.

nobodyspecial

Gigervamp wrote: »

Is that just some types? I have a red gooseberry and it fruited without another gooseberry.

Yes I too have a lone red gooseberry that has fruited. I was thinking of getting a green one, but would I then need two or would the red pollinate the green?

Dunners

kittie wrote: »

Dunners re long runners. If you don`t want/need more plants then just cut them off. Gooseberries need pollinators

Sorry to sound dim, what do I do with them if I do want more plants? The runers are getting pretty long and I don't know if just leaving them will work in the hanging baskets? thanks

Gigervamp

In last weeks Gardeners World, Monty Don showed how to get new plants from the runners. It'll be on BBC I-player.

Money_maker

Dunners wrote: »

Sorry to sound dim, what do I do with them if I do want more plants? The runers are getting pretty long and I don't know if just leaving them will work in the hanging baskets? thanks

Take the hanging baskets down so they are on the ground. Either place on soil or make some small pots with potting compost. Push down the little plantlets into the soil/compost using stiff wire (in a u shape) or similar to maintain their position. Each runner can produce several little plants so you could have a string of pots from each plant! Plants can be severed from mother plant once roots are growing. Don't forget to water

Sounds complicated but dead easy. You may even see little knobbles under each plantlet now - these are the roots starting.

Gooseberries are self fertile so do not need a partner. Your little one will probably have half a dozen or so fruits next year then more the year following.

GreyQueen

Good morning, all!

Feeling bright as a button and chipper, but expect that Monday-itus will soon knock that out of me.

Have a plea for help. In a moment of madness this Spring I sowed a whole packet of Turk's Turban squash, basically an act of whimsy because they look so daft.

Their survival was touch-and-go in the greenhouse as seedings as frost penetrated, and I had to chuck them out into a dustbowl and go off for a week in early June to leave them to fend for themselves. With the good luck which sometimes blesses the ignorant gardener and the ignored plant, they have grown like Triffids with hub-cap sized leaves.

I had a peek under the foliage last week and saw one or two cooking-apple-size turbanettes but when I did the same last night I swore with astonishment; they've doubled in size at least and there seem to be quite a lot of them.

So, does anyone know at what size I should harvest them and some interesting things to do with them, please? All advice greatfully received.

Towel theft That is disgusting and I'd be spitting tacks. Was it reported to the Police and did they do anything?

The lottie is going gangbusters and I'm constantly de-runnering my strawberries, as I have been all year. These beds were only established last autumn when I divvied up a very congested bed and the plants are relatively small themselves, so I want the runners off so that they will conserve their energy into making themselves nice big plants so that I have a bumper crop next year. There's also the fact that a strawberry on the ground with it's leapfrogging-runner growth habit will quickly cover the whole lottie.

Well, at least until they hit the squash patch where they'll have to duke it out for supermacy with the butternuts and the turbans. Squash are great fun to grow, I've discovered, I'm sure they'd be a hit with anyone who has small children as they're crazily-quick and very interesting. I'm having to "steer" the stalks slightly to stop them invading the beetroot seed bed because they'd take over the entire allotment if left unattended.

Good job they're frost-tender or they'd rule the world.

Hope everyone is having a good start to the day.

ceridwen

Morning

Well - looks like "the deal has been done" - almost...re the US economy - so....hmmm....well its a start to the day.

You've got my brain in gear to start the day GreyQueen - just been off to "pinch some new words" - so got those googling fingers checking out what they meant - "duke it out" and "going gangbusters" duly added to vocabulary:rotfl::):rotfl:

Now trying to think of some words to swap back with you - as we both borrow vocab......errrmm....I've got quite a few regional dialect ones - but I'll save them for later on (as they're a bit of an identifier)...I had to learn how to speak in my own regional dialect. I'm a fast learner and our local radio station is priceless for learning this....LOL

I was teasing someone yesterday that I could tell she was living here, rather than here as a holidaymaker, as she pronounced the name of our locality with just the correct intonation...LOL

GreyQueen

ceridwen wrote: »

Morning

Well - looks like "the deal has been done" - almost...re the US economy - so....hmmm....well its a start to the day.

You've got my brain in gear to start the day GreyQueen - just been off to "pinch some new words" - so got those googling fingers checking out what they meant - "duke it out" and "going gangbusters" duly added to vocabulary:rotfl::):rotfl:

Now trying to think of some words to swap back with you - as we both borrow vocab......errrmm....I've got quite a few regional dialect ones - but I'll save them for later on (as they're a bit of an identifier)...I had to learn how to speak in my own regional dialect. I'm a fast learner and our local radio station is priceless for learning this....LOL

I was teasing someone yesterday that I could tell she was living here, rather than here as a holidaymaker, as she pronounced the name of our locality with just the correct intonation...LOL

I deliberately don't use words from my region's dialect in my posts as that'd be a bit tooooo much of a real world identifier. Mind you, the local dialect isn't the cutest thing you ever heard, either.

I'm a purely local-yokel but you'd never place me by my speech as I speak a regionless recieved-pronounciation accent caused by being brainwashed by BBC Radio 4 in the parental home. Goodness knows what might have happened if they'd been tuned into one of the BBC local stations.

I can "do" the local accent for sh*ts and giggles (another phrase for your collection but not one for polite society, of course). Mostly I don't bother as why would even a wind-up merchant mock her own?

Hey, my top-tip for place name pronounciation anywhere is to drop the middle sylable of any three-sylable place name and then you've basically got it like the natives.

Except, of course, if you live in my region, where we have delibrately developed place-names which sound nothing like they look, with the express purpose of identifying incomers for our own nefarious and humourous purposes.

Like many a predominantly rural area, we specialise in a style of humour where the Good Old Farmboy gets one over on the educated, Sophisticated Incomer with lots of money. And preferable relieves him of some cash in the process. I think this is probably a global phenonema.

I found a book in the library which was some of the oldest written gags still existing, from Greece in ancient times. A few jokes didn't travel 2,000 years very well but a lot of them did; nothing much changes in humanity.